Fully equipped with fire and music
“The Greek drama affords us one character which, had Shakespeare studied it in the three great tragedians of that people, and then, preserving Greek manners as ably as he did Roman, written it from his own heart and mind, might have been worthy to succeed the greatest achievement of the stage. The character I mean is Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon, the sister of Orestes.”
That’s an excerpt, as you all surely recognize, from Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons: interspersed with anecdotes of authors and actors. Sad to say, neither Shakespeare nor the Queen of Drury Lane (pictured) ever created an Electra; however, fortunately for posterity, her contemporary Mozart did set this wild and whirling creature to music. And thus we are brought in a roundabout way to yet another of our beloved vocal identification quizzes.
The following sound file—compiled and curated by none other than Our Own DeCaffarrelli—contains snippets of 16 performances of the scena “Oh smania! oh furie!… D’Oreste, d’Ajace” from Idomeneo. Your task will be to identify all 16 singers in the correct order. Make your guesses in the comments section below, and the first commenter to guess all 16 correctly, or, failing that, the commenter with the highest number of correct identifications as of midnight on Monday, July 23 will win a coveted Amazon.com Gift Card
Here’s the clip, cher public, and off you go!
Cud you people show a little restraint, please. It’s all very veal and good to indulge in vapid word play, but I don’t get what your beef is. Taken loin by loin, each post tries to outdo the other, as if you had misteaken this for some Olympic competition. I thought you gnu better.
Holy cow, Betsy -- that’s really thinking outside the ox.
They can’t help it Betsy. They have hoof and mouth disease.
Peter, that is a complete misdia-gnu-sis.
Ok, I’m going to try this, here. (These things sure are a lot of fun, but they’re not exactly good for ones Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
1) Birgit Nilsson
Luba Orgonasova
2) Anna Caterina Antonacci
3) Anja Harteros
4) Annette Dasch
5) Mariella Devia
6) Carol Vaness
7) Elisabeth Grummer
9) Mirelle Delunsch
10) Edda Moser
11) Leyla Gencer
12) Edita Gruberova
13) Julia Varady
14) Eva Mei
15) Pauline Tinsley
16) Anna Netrebko
Some interesting things I discovered as I drove myself to the brink of insanity listening, stopping, pausing, (drinking), splicing snippets from recordings and YouTube overtop of the amalgamated aria we have here to see if I have an exact match, (drinking some more…), etc.:
Nilsson is, of course, a definite- the attack is unmistakable.
Antonacci is also a definite. The aria is on YouTube and I played both at the same time and found them to be an exact match.
Likewise with Harteros for number 3. Interestingly, for the longest time I was absolutely sure that number 3 was Josephine Barstow. It was when I was listening to Harteros’s version, thinking of her for perhaps another one of the Elettras that I realized my mistake. Still, when I listen to it- KNOWING that it’s Harteros- I’m amazed at how much she sounds like Dame Jo. The voice has the same curdled, ‘crone-ish’ quality to it in parts… I had never realized it before, but now I find it almost uncanny.
4 as Annette Dasch I’m not quite sure about. I thought Dasch’s voice was heavier than the voice we have here. What leads me to lean to Dasch is that the clean attack on the high note on ‘AH-lla rivale’. Both Dasch and Number 4 attack it cleanly, no portamento to speak of, and it sounds pretty much the same. Still not positive, though
Devia as 5 I’m sure of, and I was proud of myself for figuring this out. It’s the thickness of the voice, and its ease with pianissimo and notes on high.
Number 6 as Vaness I’m not sure of… the voice is just not all that distinctive to me. I listened to some Vaness Elettra and tried to compare and, while there are similarities, nothing that left me feeling very definitive about it…
Elisabeth Grummer as 7, absolutely. It’s the exact same voice as my Elsa in the venerated Kempe Lohengrin.
Number 8 is Luba Orgonasova. I found this out the same way I did my Number 2 = Antonacci- playing both the recording and the amalgamated aria overtop of one another to see if they are the same. They are. When I first started out I had this in as Pendatchanska on a less Kunst-y day and then, oddly, Measha Bruggergosman. But if you were to ask me why, I don’t know if I’d be able to tell you…
Mirelle Delunsch as number 9 I’m not quite sure about. There are a lot of similarities between what I hear from her and this lady, but like with my number 6… not enough to be positive.
Edda Moser as 10 I have just because this Elettra is one fierce bitch.
Leyla Gencer is unmistakable as 11. As another learned Parterrian pointed out- it’s those glottals!
Edita Gruberova is 12, and definitely not at her best. Moving on…
I have Julia Varady as 13 and I’m pretty sure about her. It’s those ‘d’s! I like Varady a lot and one thing I’ve noticed about her is the way she pronounces her ‘d’s- they’re more pronounced, more cacaphonic, almost spat out. When I heard how this lady sang ‘mi DA’, I was sure at once that it was Varady. Interestingly, Angela Gheorghiu (a singer I despise for all of her megalomania) phrases her ‘d’s the same way… maybe it’s a Romanian thing?
14 is the worst of the lot for me. Eva Mei is a sheer and simple guess based on what choices I have remaining for me that might fit. It was a toss-up between her and Hillevi Martinpelto, but the lack of a good lower register has me leaning towards Mei.
Pauline Tinsley as 15. It’s the timbre of the voice. I originally had 15 as Sena Jurinac, but Jurinac doesn’t do as much sliding all over the place (she’s a fierce Elettra, actually).
Finally Anna Netrebko as 16. The ‘ah-ah-ah-ah-ah’s are identical.
Well, that’s that, then. I’m curious to see how all of this winds up! These things sure are great, and I can’t thank you, DeCaffarrelli, as well as La Cieca, for giving them to us to figure out. Sure beats fuckin’ Sudoku…
Also, I found this site a lot of help for checking off my possible Elettra’s- it’s a discography of all the recorded Idomeneo’s- studio and otherwise. Of course, it doesn’t provide you with all of the singers that might have just performed the aria on a snippets/recital disc, but I found it really useful to listen to an Elettra and then go back and cross reference to see if I could match up the voice with one of the ladies listed on the site as having recorded the role on this site. Hope it might help some of you, too.
http://www.operadis-opera-discography.org.uk/CLMOIDOM.HTM
My continued best wishes to you all… back to my lurking!
I love these quizzes. I, too, did a bit of listening around last night to different youtube clips (though not as thoroughly as you). And of course, when one is on youtube, one invariably comes across happy discoveries. For example, I was rather impressed by Sutherland’s version of the aria. The performance is from 1979 which is not the part of her career that interests me very much, but this is very good. (Ignore the cheesy editing of the photos).
Impressive Stevey, more than, actually, but I am wondering about your Eva Mei guess. I know she has done Elettra at least twice, in Torino in the last few years but also at 2008 festival; however, upon studying the Youtube clips for that 2008 production, it seems they cut this aria after the recit. She runs off the stage into the audience up to a platform, rips off her large belt and then jumps off the platform. The audience reaction sounds as if they are quite puzzled by it all. Did you rule out Deshorties?
Thanks for the thoughtful narrative accompanying your guesses.
I assume by the modicon that you are particularly impressed by Orgonasova. I think she is really the best of the lot.
Boy, you deserve to win on the spot!
As I wrote before, I think there is no discussion about 1-8,10-12 and 16
I don’t think 9 is Delunsch. Delunsch usually breathes compleatly different and her voice has a lighter quality than on that recording
13 is in NO WAY Julia Varady.
I guessed 14 as Kermes because of that over-interpretation and lighter kind of voice.
I can go for Pauline Tinsley with 15 and it would explain why Emma Bell does the same kind of laugh
On another topic entirely, I suggest New Yorkers steer themselves over to New Jersey where I’ve herd that Genia Cowmeier will make her American debut in the Franco Heiferelli productions of both Il Re Pasture and LeCurd di Celimene. Should be ebullient. Tributes will be read for Giacomo Lowri-Volpi, Claudia Moozio, and Marcel Journ Hay.
It’s only tittle cattle.
It’s sad that Vina Bovine is so completely forgotten.
But Betsy, I thought the program was supposed to be excerpts from Lowhengrin, Cowvalleria Rusticana, L’Incowronazione di Poppea, Don Cowlos, Tails of Hoffmann, and Manure Lescaut, with encores from Billy-Goat Budd and La Sownambula.
Leave it to Batty to leave out La Filet de Regiment with Viorica Ursuleyak; Mil Corsaro with Franco Cowrelli designed by Gunther Rennet; and Curlewe River with the ever-popular Anne Sophie von Udder.
Oh crappola, Betsy, and I also forgot La Tripeata with Sharon Sweetbreads, Riboletto with Peter Hoofmann alternating with Tito Sheepa, and Un Meatballo in Maschera with Martha Moodl.
Jesus, what did I start?
Mad cow disease?
m. croche -- this kind of post is a red rag to a bull.
Less a red rag, more a pink handkerchief, I suspect
I think there’s another singer in the first five or six bad enough to be Nilsson -- I heard her complete recording of this aria at some point and, well, party music! Why did anyone think she could sing Mozart -- it just shows up her terrible legato!
Famous quote from Birgit, Irontongue: “I have not been good to Mozart, but Mozart has been very good to me.”
http://tinyurl.com/bpjwuln
Gosh, I wonder who wrote that article about the Nilsson masterclass in the NYT. Can you guess from this parargraph?
“At one point she approached the strapping young man and, in a gesture of comfort, placed her hand around his upper arm. ”Oh, you have big muscles,” she said, turning to the audience and winking as the tenor blushed. ”I thought he was so skinny.””
I actually rather like her Donna Anna under Bohm, and her coloratura in “Non mi dir” isn’t bad considering. But with that cast, it seems more likely that Donna Anna raped Giovanni…
Behrens singing D’oreste -- definitely a one of a kind interpretation:
Not the Comparable Hildegard and not “D’Oreste”, but otherwise…
It’s a playlist- easy to fall foul of this when posting YouTube clips. ‘D’Oreste, D’Ajace’ is the 11th clip in the playlist.
1. Nilsson
2. Antonacci
3. Harteros
4. Dasch
5. Devia
6. Vaness
7. Grümmer
8. Organasova
9. Tarres ?
10. Moser
11. Gencer
12. Gruberova
13. Alexander ?
14. Mei
15. Tinsley
16. Netrebko