In the day of success
Just as, back in 1955, dear Vivien Leigh discovered about the Weird Sisters, La Cieca today is ready today to say of her cher public, “I have learned by the perfectest report they have more in them than mortal knowledge.” Or, to put it in less allusive terms, it’s time for you to put your skills to the test in yet another voice identification quiz, this one with a Scottish theme.
Your doyenne’s precious little sister DeCaffarrelli—I call her little in spite of the fact she’s somewhat older than I. Just slightly. Less than a year—well, anyway, DeCaffarrelli has devised yet another potpourri of live performances by divas obscure and, uh, not so obscure. Between the 18 of them, they sing the entrance aria of Lady Macbeth from Verdi’s masterpiece, and it’s up to you to discern who is whom.
Make your guesses in the comments section below, and the first commenter to guess all 18 correctly in the proper order—or, failing that, the commenter with the highest number of correct identifications as of midnight on Friday, August 10—will win a coveted Amazon.com Gift Card
Here’s the clip, cher public, and off you go!
With the possibility of embarassing myself, here are my guesses. I’m expecting just a few to be correct. I listened to the recording just once, I might have the wrong number of selections.
01 Callas
02 Galvany
03 Callas
04 Verrett
05 Dimitrova
06 !!!!!!! I wanna know who this is!
07 ?
08 Verrett
Verrett
10 Jones
11
12
13 Suliotis
14 Sass
15 Scotto
16
17 Deutekom
18
And here I thought I knew my Ladies! Very tough Decaf!
1. Callas
2. Galvany
3.
4.
5. Voigt
6. Silja
7.
8.
9. Zajick
10.
11. Ludwig
12. Dmitrova
13. Suliotis
14. Balsta
15. Scotto
16, Larmore
17.
18.
oops, my bad -- that should read:
12. Dimitrova
14. Baltsa
Not even the cabaletta complete, anyway:
12. Dimitrova
13. Suliotis
14. Sass
15. Scotto
16. Larmore
17. Zampieri
18.
I am no good at these quizzes, partly through not caring enough about which singer is which, but just want to say thanks for a fab picture of my favourite actress!
1. Maria Callas
2. Marisa Galvany
3. Tiziana Fabbricini or Francesca Patane?
4. ?
5. Deborah Voigt
6. Anja Silja
7. ?
8. Leyla Gencer
9. ?
10. Galina Vishnevskya
11. Christa Ludwig
12. Ghena Dimitrova
13. Elena Suliotis
14. ?
15. Renata Scotto
16. Jennifer Larmore (nice embellishments!)
17. Mara Zampieri
18. ?
1) Callas
Negri
2) Galvany
3) Verrett
4) Malfitano (a stab in the dark)
5) I would never have thought of Voigt but she seems the most likely. (I came up with Barstow or Marrocu!)
6) Silja
7) Gencer
9) Zajick
10) Vishnevskaya
11) Ludwig
12) Dimitrova
13) Suliotis
14) Monastyrskaya
15) Scotto
16) Larmore
17) Zampieri
18) Deutekom
AAAAAA!!! Another vocal-identification quiz! You can sure call me a happy boy… thanks again DeCaffarrelli, and of course, our august hostess for more tortuous fun and games.
My god, these are tricky, some of them. I’ve come up with a sort-of list, but looking at the names of some of the singers some of these sound like- it just doesn’t make any sense, But still, I feel pretty good about a lot of these.
I was so hoping that my gazillion recordings might come in handy (some of you may recall that- like Elektras and La Mort de Cleopatres, I have a tendency to horde Macbeths…), but the only help most of them were to me were to remind me of how important (I think) it is- even with all the low and chest notes aside, for a Lady to have such a strong upper register that can cut through and soar over, almost ‘dominate’ the ensembles. What a visceral effect somebody like a Leonie Rysanek (who I love, even though she does bugs the shit out of me sometimes with both her hooty and hardly-there lower register AND her incessant histrionics, shrieking, and all) has in this role, by being able to do just that…
Anyway, on to my list. I’m feeling pretty good about it, but then again I thought that Ingeborg Hallstein was Julia Varady on the last quiz, so what the hell do I know? Here goes:
1) Maria Callas
Maria Guleghina
2) Marisa Galvany
3) Nelly Miricioiu
4) Cristina Deutekom
5) Liudmyla Monastryska
6) Anja Silja
7) Birgit Nilsson
9) Adelaide Negri (sl, ya beat me too it! And here I was so proud of myself!!)
10) Irene Dalis
11) Christa Ludwig
12) Grace Bumbry
13) Elena Suliotis
14) Carol Vaness
15) Renata Scotto
16) Jennifer Larmore
17) Mara Zampieri
18) Astrid Varnay
Like with the last quiz, I’d like to explain the justifications (however flawed, erroneous, or delusional) for my choices:
1 as Callas is a sure thing… any Callas fan, any Macbeth fan, has heard that speaking voice read that letter.
2 as Galvany is another one I’m sure of because of the quality of the voice itself which for some reason I always think of as ‘slightly sour’. Those high notes she had sure were fabulous though, weren’t they?
My 3 is Nelly Miriciou and I think she sounds kick-ass here, the quick slide off of the C notwithstanding. A talented artist who always puts so many of her own personal stamps on each and every one of her roles, there were a few things that led me to La Miriciou- there’s a glottal attack here (Miricioiu’s and Gencer’s glottals are my favorites), there’s also no lingering on the C, like I said (which would make sense if this is Miriciou, who debuted the role well into her career after her ease on high had dissipated), and there are a copule of idiosyncratic word deliveries here (the ‘za’ on ‘potenza’ sounds great and the ‘pone’ is almost spit) that leads me to be believe that this is a reading by a singer who is very much a ‘vocal actress’ a la Miriciou…
My 4 is Cristina Deutekom, and how sly of our quizmaster to put her here for this selection, which lies low and has none of the coloratura or high notes which would so instantly automatically give her away. For me, it was how this lady sounds on the lowest notes in the exerpt- juts like La Deutekom!
5 is Liudmyla Monastryska but, you know what, for much of the time I’ve been obsessing over this I was sure that-- with the exception of the brilliant top- that this had to be Waltraud Meier. Sounds just liker her to me! Except, as I said, the top, which is brilliant.
6 can’t be anybody other than Anja Silja. The voice is unmistakable. Now let us please move on from this excerpt so that hopefully we can begin forgetting about it. Moving on…
7 does not sound like Birgit Nilsson at all, but I’m-a saying Birgit Nilsson (watch how fast I pop back here to change my mind ad nauseum, though) on the strength of one word only: ‘regnar’. I heard this lady say ‘regnar’ and was like, ‘oh, that’s Birgit Nilsson’. I don’t understand it myself, but there it is…
8 is Maria Guleghina. She’s been heard of in this role so comparitively often, and recently, in comparison with a lot of our singers that (for me at least) her voice was easy to discern.
9 -- Adelaide Negri. The rather thick voice, the easy ascent up high and, more than anything else- the pinging, bell like high note are all quintessential La Negri (on a good day…)
10 I have as Irene Dalis, but am not entirely convinced. I think this Lady is a mezzo- sounds kinda ballsy and blowsy, if you ask me (like La Dalis), and she seems even in this little excerpt to be throwing her voice about quite a bit…
11 came to me as Christa Ludwig on the strength of how the voice opens up in the rise to ‘qui la notte’…
I’m thinking that 12 is Grace Bumbry (a singer I’m not wild about) because of a couple of things. This singer is definitely aggressive in tackling the notes like Bumbry was fond of doing when playing aggressive or ‘bad’ girls. This singer also strikes me as very much a mezzo, and then there was the not-entirely comfortable (or there) attack on the high note. Like I recall Bumbry doing on occasion- she jumps up there for the note with all she’s got, and she gets it… kinda.
13 came to me as Elena Suliotis due to the distinctive and rich low notes- the exact same ones that seemed to rise up from the earth to cast her vituperation on a helpless Ismaele in the venerated Gardelli/Gobbi (et al) Nabucco.
I put 14 down as Carol Vaness more as a result of a process of elminiation of all the remaining Lady’s that I could think of. So- not at all sure… but that seems as plausible a choice as any!
15 is unmistakably Renata Scotto. 80′s Renata Scotto at that.
I have Jennifer Larmore as number 16 and I’m positive of that because the video of the audio (if that makes any sense) of this aria from her recent production is on YouTube, and I played the two selections overtop of one another to see if they were an exact fit. They were.
16 is another easily recognizable tone- the white, rather cold timbre of Mara Zampieri (who I get a kick out of- her high notes go through you!)
Finally, my 17 is Astrid Varnay. When I first heard this last selection, and was trying to figure out who it was, I thought- “wow, this lady’s top notes are as fierce as any Elektra’s', which kinda planted a seed in my head and La Varnay is where it grew to, if you will.
There! Interested to hear everybody’s take and opinions on my choices (you smart people, you…) and hope that everybody is doing well.
Thanks again for another wonderful quiz.
My continued kind regards and best wishes to you all…
Stevey: I think your list maybe the closest so far and I enjoyed reading your reasoning for each choice. But I do think that no. 5 is Voigt.
Please forgive the erroneous spelling of ‘Miricioiu’… (who’s neurotic, me? NAHHH!
)
(And where the hell did that happy and sunny icon for Guleghina’s number come from???)
So many contribution already! The thing I can confirm (well done Enzo) ist that number 3 is Tiziana Fabbricini from Geneva 1999 (one of my favorite recordings)…
Who remembers that we have done this aria before? With fewer singers. This was back when the Big Reveal was done by playing the entire soundtrack again, this time with the pictures of the diva slowly appearing right after her voice was first heard.
It was fun. And Rysanek was definitely in that group. I still don’t hear her here.
Does anyone remember this? What approximate date so that we could find it again?
I had a friend who would torment us with Drop-the-Needle games, and I would guess Scotto for almost everything. I was eventually told that if you think it’s Scotto, it’s probably Nelly Miriciou. So now, instead of hearing Scotto four times, I hear Scotto twice and Miriciou twice.
The other day, I went to YouTube and listened to the La Wally aria about ten times, and I wondered why we haven’t done that one yet. Please, you geniuses who create these fantastic puzzles, let’s do a La Wally quiz sometime soon.
ooops…I’m having second thoughts. Maybe that earlier quiz was not the Macbeth scena. Maybe it was Nabucco. Sorry if I’m totally wrong. About EVERYTHING!
Rysanekfreak, you’re absolutely right… but I recall the quiz being on YouTube. ColoraturaFan put one together, and like this one, it was also a ‘Vieni t’affreta’ quiz. I remember this quite well because the quiz itself- however fun- wasn’t really all that hard, with the notable exception being one Sylvia Corbacho, who none of us picked or would have picked in a zillion years, as none of us had even the remotest clue who she was (I don’t even think her family knows who she is…).
The farthest-back quiz I remember where the big reveal was done by revealing the photos of the ladies behind each excerpt was Isolde’s Narrative & Curse, I can’t tell you how far back it was.
I can say, with certainty, that we all did a Zweite Brautnacht quiz in August of 2008. This I know because I actually won the quiz- it was the first time I had ever used Amazon.com (I don’t possess credit cards) and I was completely at a loss what to buy with it. Anyway, if you can believe it I saved the little email from La Cieca letting me know that I had won, and have it still in my inbox to this day (I know, sad, aren’t I?
). The date- August 28, 2008. Can hardly believe we’ve all been together that long (that long, and then some!!)