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!
The first measures of the first one frightened me so much I could not continue.
I am too busy and most of the Elettre are so awful that I can’t do justice to it or bear to listen again, but I think I heard in the mix Varady, Deshorties, Behrens, Udovick, Penda[tchsanska] and (the best of all, second as I recall on the actual aria itself) Moser.
Thanks for all the work!
Tomowa-Sintow also I think. I thought I heard Behrens twice.
Netrebko might be in there, actually. It would be so much fun to put together one of these quizzes and watch people guess…
I swear I used to be good at these. Everyone sounded like Edda Moser to me. I’ll give it another listen tomorrow, with headphones on. (Like girlfriends--with headphones on!)
Some of them distinctly sounded like *Elder* Eddas…
All that cackling over my morning coffee. I hear Anja Harteros (5), the divine Elisabeth Grummer (7), a very fierce Edda Moser (10), Martha Modl (12), and Pauline Tinsley (14).
And thanks a lot for putting this together!
I skipped one, sorry, so it is: 6) Harteros,
Grümmer, 11) Moser, 13) Mödl, 15) Tinsley
Grümmer is 8 I mean, from the Fricsay recording.
Ok -- back to my first effort -- I did not skip anything.
The last one’s Netrebko.
httpv://youtube/taOTV2UgYY0?t=5m48s
Was there Gruberova? IMHO I don’t think there’s Pendatchanska. Thanks for this excerpt! Wonderful party stuff.
http://www.youtube/taOTV2UgYY0?t=5m48s
I give up. 5:48 onwards.
Oh yes, there’s definitely Gruberova, at her most annoying. It’s amazing what polar reaction her singing inspires in me.
I’ve never been a fan -- and I saw her a couple of times at the peak of her career, as Giulietta and as Zerbinetta. I’ve always found the sound glassy and a bit yowly (and she ain’t too great at trilling either.) I think she had a malign influence on the current generation of mid-European coloraturas too. They all seem to want to sound like her.
I was blown away by Gruberova’s Zerbinetta when I was ?15 or so. Still some of the most astonishing singing I’ve ever heard live.
I heard her last year as Anna Bolena, and though a lot of concessions had to be made to her age, there was still something very impressive going on.
She’s very mannered, and her tone strikes some people as ugly and others as beautiful, so she’s always going to be a divisive artist, I think.
Has anyone sung “Grossmachtige Prinzessin” as well? She’s astonishingly good in it.
Especially the original version, on her Orfeo recital.
Sorry, but in the Solti Ariadne (which doesn’t show any of the principals at their best, even the blessed Leontyne, who is really not in good form) she hits a horrible flat top note at the end of the aria, having been slithering around for 10 minutes of so beforehand. Maybe it’s something to do with my perceptions, but I’ve never got what all the fuss was about with Gruberova, even if she could do some good tricks with diminuendi on top C’s, or whatever!
Well, she’s pretty fantastic in this live performance from 1976. It’s not just that she gets all the notes and trills on the high D. She also has the right tone and delivery.
Having said that, I don’t own a recording of her complete Zerbinetta. How is she on the Masur/Norman set? (I know it’s odd that a huge Jessye fan like me doesn’t own that recording).
I’ve had that Masur recording for about 25 years and listened to it about twice! I remember it being very ponderous, with Jessye in über-grand mode (like on her VLL with Masur, which always left me cold, though I was a big fan of hers for about 10 years). If I remember rightly, she’s better in the Met video from the same kind of period. I was lucky enough to see her do Ariadne twice in 1985 with Battle, also at her very best. A few years later, Anna T-S and Gruberova replaced them in the soul revival of the rather gorgeous production by Martinoty.
Whoops, I mean ‘sole revival’ — haha!
Does that final top note remain flat for its duration, Monty? Her usual thing seems to have been to hit them flat and end up sharp by the end for anything over a top c-sharp or so.
I never really liked Gruberova until I heard her live, like ArmerJ just a couple of years ago (at the Wigmore Hall, in my case). That concert showed me what an amazingly beautiful voice it is, for me at least, and has sort of given me a way into her recordings from her prime which I now enjoy much more. I still find her mannered in the extreme and sometimes infuriating, but I do admire and enjoy a lot of her stuff now.
If I remember rightly, she hits it squarely flat and it stays squarely flat. I could dig out the CDs to check, I suppose …
We must insist that you do.
One thing I always remember from her interview in Matheopoulos’s ‘Diva’ is where we’re told that whoever was in charge of whichever A opera house where she first joined the ensemble really wasn’t very impressed, didn’t like her much and didn’t want to give her any exposure in leading roles. I never found that very difficult to understand, although having found the voice extremely beautiful when I finally did see her live as I said, I’m not sure I feel the same way now. Amusing, though.
This quizz is waaaay out of my league. However, I might have recognized Birgit Nilsson’s attack in the first Elettra…
I think it’s Nilsson #1, Netrebko #5. And yes, way out of my league. I will be anxious to read this thread after every one wakes up and posts.
It is hard to find anything more spectacular on Youtube than this:
The great Vaness is in there for sure.
The one’s I’d bet some money on:
1. Birgit Nilsson
6. Carol Vaness
7. Elisabeth Gruemmer
10. Edda Moser
11. Leyla Gencer (those glottals!)
12. Edita Gruberova
16. Anna Netrebko
I think 13 might be Julia Varady but I came up blank on the rest.