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Transcendence

2008-08-14T20:07:00.001-07:00

I have joined facebook and brother, can you spend (waste?) a lot of time on there.

But through a Fan Group/Discussion Board, I found this clip.

It's from the Peter Sellars production of Theodora that was done at Glyndebourne about ten years ago.

I don't even want to say anything about it. There is such purity here, such clarity, such ecstatic abandon, such transcendence.

Oops, now I am writing stuff when you should all just be listening and watching.

Try not to weep. I dare you.

Israeli Holiday

2008-07-10T12:25:00.001-07:00

I haven't posted on here in about a hundred years. There are so many singers I want to write about, but today, I am only writing about myself, and only peripherally about me as a singer.

I am in Israel on tour with the Collegiate Chorale. We're doing concerts in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. We've been here for since late Tuesday afternoon. There are a total of about a hundred singers here, approximately one-third of whom are paid ringers. The non-professional contingent of the choir will be going on guided day tours of the area, some of which we are also invited to attend.

Yesterday we went to the Rabin Memorial and to Old Jaffa. I'm not so great with history on this stuff. I just respond to beauty around me. (No snide remarks, please!) Old Jaffa is the oldest part of the city that was been restored and now houses mostly art galleries.

The day I left NYC (which feels like a month ago, even though it was the beginning of the week) I was out running a few last minute errands. I decided that I was going to get a disposable digital camera, since I didn't want to spring for the Real McCoy. But after trying three different places and not being able to find one, I'd decided to give up. On an impulse, I walked into a Staples and found an inexpensive little Kodak camera. I bought it purely on impulse and it's really fabulous.

I took some pictures of Jaffa and I've been trying to email them without success, so I thought, what the hell, I'll just post them on my blog.

So here they are. Enjoy.

Where I've been/CyberSing 2008

2008-04-14T08:12:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I've posted. I've been working very hard on my various writings for children. I'm putting finishing touches on the ninth (!) of my picture books, and am on the fourth chapter of a hard-hitting young adult novel. :-)

And I did a recital at KHPR, the Public Radio Station in Honolulu (the tan has already fated from my pasty-white skin) and I am really excited about my latest performance effort: an evening of songs by Edith Piaf. Sounds weird, but believe me, it seems to work. I've tried a few out on three different audiences now, and the response has been tremendous.

But enough about me. I did want to post this information about CyberSing, the Lotte Lehmann Foundation's art song performance vocal competition. I'm not the publicist for the Foundation, but I am the vice president of the Board of Directors, and I'm dedicated to getting the word out (ever the proselytizing minister's son!)

In the meantime, sending all the best to my sometime readers. I do promise to get back on the blog bandwagon ere too long. There are so many great singers I'm eager to share with you. Just lately: Janine Micheau, Galina Vishnevskaya, Berta Kiurina, Rosanna Carteri, Hugo Hasslo, Francesco Merli... ah, the list goes on and on!

But for now, here's the press release:

The Lotte Lehmann Foundation has released the new rules, regulations, and dates for CyberSing 2008, its fourth biannual art song performance competition.

The stated objective of CyberSing is “[t]o recognize and award performance of art song by singers and pianists throughout the world.”

Entrants to the competition may enter in one of two Divisions: Division One, for singers 23 years of age and younger, and Division Two for singers over the age of 23. Prizes will include a Top Prize of $1,000 for the Division One winner, and a Top Prize of $5,000 for the Division Two winner. Prizes for best individual song performances will also be awarded in each Division.

Singers of both divisions will submit audio recordings of a range of art song repertoire, including German and French art song, a required song composed expressly for CyberSing by Larry Alan Smith, which is available for download exclusively at the CyberSing website.

In past competitions, entrants were judged exclusively on their submitted audio recordings of a prescribed art song repertoire. This year, for the first time, finalists will be requested to submit a performance DVD. The final round will be judged exclusively on these submitted DVD recordings.

The Foundation is accepting applications now through August 31, 2008. Finalists will be chosen by October 15, 2008, with a November 15, 2008 submission deadline for finalists’ DVD recordings. The winners will be announced on or before January 31, 2009.

Daniel Gundlach, the vice president of the Foundation’s Board of Directors stated, “CyberSing has always been a crucial element of the Lotte Lehmann Foundation’s activities. We are all thrilled with the new parameters of the competition, which will enable the judges to more completely and accurately evaluate the performances of the participants.”

Repertoire requirements and complete rules and regulations for the competition, as well as application forms, are available on the Foundation’s website: www.lottelehmann.org or at www.cybersing.org.

Hardly “Silent” but kinda “Heavenly”

2007-12-31T06:35:00.001-08:00

I just happened upon recordings on youtube of two great Wagnerians giving their take on "Silent Night".

So, two Scandinavian farm gals (I'm just speaking figuratively; I know that Flagstad didn't grow up on a farm) who were the two supreme Wagnerians of the last century singing the most innig of all Christmas songs. How do they do?

It's really interesting to compare and contrast them. Flagstad's was a voice of dark honey (occasionally threatening more toward molasses) and Nilsson's was one of ice (that sometimes veered more toward laser beam). Flagstad's work emphasized the humanity of her characters; Nilsson's their imperiousness. There's a reason her Turandot was so celebrated. And why Flagstad's Isolde was so revered. And there's a reason why (in my opinion) Nilsson's Isolde was not her most successful role and why Flagstad never took on Turandot (apart from the fact that her top was never as secure as Nilsson's).

Those virtues are certainly to be heard in their singing of this Christmas favorite.

And so, without further ado, here are our two contestants:

In this corner, from Norway, weighing in at 250 pounds, Kirsten Flagstad:

And in this corner, weighing in at a trim 200 pounds, Sweden's Birgit Nilsson:

They're both some kind of wonderful, these gals, aren't they!?!?

Will we ever see their equal?

Ritorna vincitor?

2007-12-31T05:39:00.000-08:00

I have been gone from the blogosphere for so long that I wonder why I would even start reposting. I hope it has nothing to do with those annoying things called New Year's Resolution. Besides, it's not yet 2008, so I am getting in just under the wire.

I have an issue with putting my work out there and feeling like no one notices. I am not passive/aggressively asking people to write to me here and say, "Oh, no, we love your writing; don't stop!" In the nearly three months that I have been away from here exactly two people have asked me why I haven't been writing. Hardly an earth-shattering fan base.

I guess I could just say that my heart has not been in it. That doesn't mean that I have less to say than before . It's just that I hate putting my work—my writing, my singing, whatever—into a vacuum. And that I would rather withdraw than be ignored.

But why? But what does this really achieve? It just means that I don't have to deal with the pain of feeling ignored. It also means that I suffer daily from denying myself the opportunity (the right!) to do those things which I really love. And who suffers when I do that? One could say that everyone suffers. Only those who miss out on my work as a result never even know what they've been denied. So in fact, I am the only one who suffers. And I've been suffering from it.

Dawn Powell remains my favorite writer. Here is someone who constantly felt the exigencies of the real world closing in on her: an alcoholic husband, an autistic (though improperly diagnosed) son, financial difficulties, loss of home, her own serious drinking problem. But she never stopped writing. The lack of appreciation embittered her, to be sure, but she never stopped. And how much poorer so many would be now if she had simply given up.

It is the survivors who inspire me. Those who fight back, or at the very least persist, when the light is taken away and the pathway is obscured. So perhaps I can take a page from their book and crawl out from under my rock and put myself back out there. (This was an intentional Block That Metaphor sentence.)

In spite of the fact that I have done no singing this fall since my recital at the Donnell, in spite of the fact that this is the first fall in fifteen years in which I have not sung a single audition, in spite of my grief that I may never again sing in the high-profile venues that I once did, in spite of the fact that I have not written in my blog now in nearly three months, I have remained faithful this fall to one artistic pursuit: my children's writing. I took another course this fall at the New School and will take the winter course as well. I now have eight picture book manuscripts and one easy reader in various stages of completion. But in my case it is less the work itself that proveds daunting: it's putting it out there in front of other people. This means risking their rejection, their incomprehension, their unfavorable response, or worst of all, their failure to notice me. I hesitate—no, I actively resist—putting my work on display. I tell myself that those fears are too great for me to bear. But here's the truth: it is the coward's way out.

I write this all only as a means of giving myself a semi-public challenge. I have so many dreams that I have just let die because I believed all the naysayers. I say SCREW THAT. Who am I living for, anyway? If I really want to overcome my need for constant approval, then why the hell do I still care what other people think? I have so much to say. Why should I stop saying it now? What do I care for all the assholes that have dissed or insulted or rejected me in the past? And whom I could (and perhaps should) name by name. They have since continued garnering adulation themselves and have completely forgotten my existence or the pain they caused me. So by remaining silent I certainly don't Make Them Feel Really Bad. Am I doing penance for never having achieved perfection?

Okay, I'm done. I shouldn't even post this shit. The only reason I do it prod myself in a semi-public way to get back out there. Only once I do these three things can I remove this entry:

1. Send out my stories to at least five editors or agents.
2. Plan my recital that I will be giving in Hawaii in March.
3. Start the ball rolling on that performance project that simultaneously lures and terrifies me.

Okay, that's it for now. The use of the non-word "proactive" is one of my pet hates. Or maybe I am just daunted by the meaning of said non-word. If that is the case, here's hoping for a more "proactive" New Year.

We all knew birds could sing...

2007-10-09T13:25:00.000-07:00

...but not all of us knew what great dancers they are, too!

I wouldn't have believed it possible, but see it right here with your own eyes!

I was just poking around youtube, and saw some other dancing cockatoos. For sheer musicality and choreographic brilliance, none of them can hold a candle to Snowball! He squawks with as much rhythm as he dances. His dance also has a real shape. When the Boys start singing, he steps up the moves. And at the climax of the piece, he lets go with the plumage. Plus that, he knows exactly when the song is over and receives his applause rapturously, as any true artist would.

I don't know of too many opera singers who were equally good dancers. I know Cathy Malfitano trained as a dancer. It's just one of the things that made her Lulu so wonderful. Going back a few years! This was probably the best thing she ever did. Certainly better than her Senta. Not sure that Snowball doesn't surpass her, though I'm not sure he has quite the technical ability to give us a credible Lulu. You never know, though.

But I digress, as happens frequently. I love me some Snowball and I hope you do, too.

I've been missing in action for a while, but I hope to get back on track with my blog entries.

Not making any promises, though, since I hate breaking them.

Tre Gioconde: Compare and contrast

2007-09-27T13:03:00.000-07:00

This will be a quickie today. I took a break from work at my best and did a youtube search on Renata Scotto. I am delighted that the Suor Angelica is back up. Also her "Suicidio!" from the (in)famous 1979 San Francisco Gioconda, to which I believe I referred in my Pavarotti tribute.

There may be those who detest this. There will be just as many who find it brilliant. I must confess that I am impartial. I remember watching this on television when I was a wee thing :-) and found it riveting. Sure, she's hammy. That's what Italian opera is all about. Those who downplay that miss the point. I remember my teacher John Wustman saying to me when I was in graduate school that if you were going to perform this music you needed a little "trash in your veins."

Scotto's dramatic performance is dictated by her vocal limitations in this repertoire. She could not give a balls-to-the-wall Zinka-style performance. But oh, what she gives us instead: a contemplative Gioconda, one who is actually weighing the possibility of suicide, dreading death yet longing for it. I find her coups de théâtre stunning: the dropped crucifix on the last syllable of the word "cammin," her well-timed collapses, her winged flight on "volevan l'ore." And does she not look extraordinary: the costume, the hair, the svelte figure? On all counts this is a brilliant performance. I wish it would be reissued on DVD. At least the audio version has been released on Gala.

Without further ado, here it is:

Now, this is probably unfair, but I also came across a performance within the past year at the Liceu featuring Deborah Voigt. Now admittedly, this is clearly not her rep. But she is much too naturalistic in her acting to be a convincing Gioconda. This music demands an over-the-top approach. I don't get any nuance from her performance. The voice is bigger but she has fewer colors at her disposal. Her stab at the high B is, to my ear, less effective than Scotto's, even if our Renatina wobbles a bit here (it is, all things considered, however, a relatively wobble-free performance from her). Well, now that I've clearly stated my opinion on the matter, I present Exhibit B:

When I take a look at Eva Marton's performance (which I will not post but which is linked here for those curious) I would be hard-pressed to say which singer is less effective. Marton handles certain chesty passages a little better than Voigt, but on the whole, she barely registers. At least her performance is a touch more idiomatic, but I never found her voice in any way an ingratiating, engaging instrument.

Finally, a heartbreaking clip of La Divina in London. In the 1973-4 season she undertook an ill-advised (but even more poorly conceived) comeback tour with Giuseppe di Stefano, who was in almost equally bad vocal estate at that time. Much of the repertoire she had never performed onstage before, and they were accompanied at most performances by a pianist whose name I cannot remember (why does Robert Sutherland stick in my mind?) EMI recorded those concerts hoping to do an audio release, but alas, Maria's voice was in such perilous condition that nothing was usable. I have a friend who was in the audience when she performed in Boston, however, and he said that she was mesmerizing. That was a night when di Stefano was indisposed, so Callas sang accompanied by Vasso Devetzi, the perhaps Mephistophelian figure who took over Callas' life and fortunes at the end. As for this London performance, so what if her voice is in tatters? Of course I'd rather that it were as healthy as in her Cetra recording, which is one of her most unfettered performances, at least in the recording studio.

It must be said, however, that she manages the aria pretty damn well here, even if it is transposed down, even if the registers are completely unknit by this point, even if the pianist is of no help to her whatsoever. In the words of the immortal Vera Galupe-Borszkh, she "gave too much," here, there and everywhere. But if she hadn't, and if Scotto hadn't, we would have been so much poorer. You see what we would have had instead as a benchmark [sic].

Florence, We Hardly Knew Ye

2007-09-24T16:17:00.001-07:00

One of my readers wrote in to me about Florence Quartararo. Evidently he heard her sing in the forties in San Francisco.

He was kind enough to do a search there for her Met performances on the Met Archives and this is what emerged.

There were two quotes from Howard Taubman writing of her in the Times.

This at her Met debut, as Micaela:

The young lady [Miss Quartararo] sang with astonishing assurance. She may be the find of the season...She has a voice of size, range and true lyric quality. It is produced with a smoothness and accuracy that make you wonder how it happened that this voice has been so well placed. One gathered that she had not had much formal vocal schooling. Perhaps it is better so.

As for Micaela's music, Miss Quartararo sang it with affecting simplicity. It is deceptive. It looks easy, and it does not overpower as does the music of Carmen. But it takes sensitivity and quality as a singer. Miss Quartararo, who is also good to look at, seems to have what it takes.

And on her Desdemona, one of only two she sang at the Met:

Florence Quartararo, one of the most promising additions to the Metropolitan last season, got a major role last night and made the most of it. Singing Desdemona in Verdi's Otello in place of Stella Roman, who was ill, Miss Quartararo gave a performance that would have been a credit to an outstanding veteran.

This was the first time that the San Francisco girl had sung Desdemona on any stage. She had done no more than two or three other roles at the Metropolitan. But aside from a somewhat unsteady start in the first act and an understandable unfamiliarity with the action, she made Desdemona convincing. And the measure of her achievement was that she did it, for the most part, by the appeal of her singing.

It was a performance that reminded old-timers of another American girl who appeared on this stage more than twenty-five years ago, also a novice in opera but with enchantment in her throat. That was Rosa Ponselle.

Miss Quartararo's voice is perfectly suited for Desdemona, and she used it last night with a sure instinct for the molding of the musical phrase, She had at her command a finely controlled range of tone from the delicately soft to the ringingly full. And in the last act, her handling of the "Willow Song" and the Ave Maria made you forget the soprano on the operatic stage and left you only with the heartbreak of the poor, bewildered Desdemona.

Miss Quartararo will sing this role even better as she gets used to it. There were several occasions last night when she almost made the wrong vocal entrance. Her costumes, obviously designed for a soprano of much ampler proportions were a persistent nuisance to her as she tried to move about the stage. But she had the voice, the feeling, the temperament and the figure for Desdemona.

What else did she sing there? A couple Donna Elviras and Countesses, a Pamina (at a student performance!), five or six Neddas, a pair of Violettas (those would have been fascinating to hear), and five Flower Maiden performances, and nearly a third of them out of town. Not a whole lot on which to hang a legend. And yet... we know how she sounded. And that, my friends, is the cruelty-free measure of what truly becomes a legend most!

...But Life Got In the Way...

2007-09-24T09:31:00.000-07:00

I've been away from here for much too long! It seems like I'm only writing about an entry a week these days, though my goal is to do it twice a week.

Things have been kinda crazy though. I sang a recital at the Donnell Library a week ago today. I shared it with my friend Marianne Labriola. I had a great time. I did a Schubert group and a Rodgers & Hart set. That last was a gesture in a new direction for me.

For the Schubert, I did four his late settings of Seidl poems, some of my favorites among his songs: "Der Wanderer an den Mond", "Am Fenster", "Im Freien", and "Die Taubenpost". Each one of them speaks so deeply to me. The first, Schubert's perpetual wanderer addressing the moon, wishing that, like the moon, he could feel that the world and the sky was his home and not that he was a stranger everywhere he went. The second is about the joy of someone who has cut himself off from the world to pursue a contemplative life. The third is the poet gazing down through the night, as if from the sky, at places that are dearest to his heart. And the last one is about a symbolic dove that carries sighs as if they were letters, all in the name of longing. So it's clear why all of those might be dear to my heart.

The Rodgers & Hart was important to me for an altogether different reason. I have written before of my interest in putting together a cabaret program (the theme of which is becoming clearer to me) and this was my first chance to sing some standards in public. I was nervous, and yet with Bill Lewis at the piano and many of my dearest friends in the office, it was not as scary as it could have been.

I sang "Glad To Be Unhappy," "I Wish I Were In Love Again," "My Funny Valentine," and "With a Song In My Heart," which is practically an aria anyway. I ended up singing the second one in my baritone range; I just couldn't make it work singing it up an octave. It's just as well. It took a lot of the pressure.

I had wanted to do "I'll Tell the Man In the Street" from I Married an Angel, but evidently it's a rarity. How was I supposed to know? I grew up with Barbra Streisand's recording on her first album and there are also okay versions by Kristen Chenoweth and Mary Cleere Haran, but other than Nelson Eddy of the original cast, I found out there aren't too many other recordings. I thought about doing it a cappella, but there will be time to suss out the music eventually.

Of the songs I did sing, I thought the last two were the best. I almost lost it when I sang "My Funny Valentine," because I flashed so clearly on all the men that I have loved in my life. And there was one day when NN called me from work on Valentine's Day to ask if I knew the words, which of course I did. In my mind's eye, not only did I see him, but I saw them all. And two of them were in the audience. So even if it weren't for the beauty of the words, I also had a personal association with the song. Anyway, whenever someone sings the meaning of the words, really sings them, the music takes flight. And I could feel it happen here, just as it did in the last two Schubert.

And "With a Song In My Heart"... well, how can you not love it? I tried not to take a page from Jessye's version, but it does have an operatic sensibility that one can't ignore. Interestingly, I was just listening to an early recording of the song by a cabaret singer called Hutch (Leslie Hutchinson), who was evidently the Prince of Wales' favorite singer! Anyway, Hutch is very much a cabaret singer who sells the song with almost no voice at all. Shades of Mabel Mercer, who I am finally learning to appreciate, even love.

The other thing that happened last week is that I was, quite unexpectedly, elected Vice President of the Lotte Lehmann Foundation at our board meeting on Wednesday. I am completely dedicated to the Foundation and its various aims, primarily perpetuating the name of Lotte Lehmann as well as furthering her legacy by bringing art song into the limelight. We now have a composition competition in partnership with ASCAP as well as a vocal competition (for which I judged the finals this past winter). So I'm proud of that.

Giannina Arangi-Lombardi

I have so many singers I've been listening to recently that I absolutely must write about: Delia Reinhardt, Judy Raskin, Povla Frijsh and Félia Litvinne, the last two of whom both proved to be completely different from what I expected, though in completely different ways. Plus Giannina Arangi-Lombardi, whom I've always loved, but now I've heard her Aida and now I'm a raving maniac (for her singing, of course).

So I hope to do entries on each of them very soon.

Two Incomparable German Chick Singers, #1

2007-09-15T11:31:00.000-07:00

I am taking a break from watching Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage (the six-part television series; it's a bit intense for viewing straight through) to post on two singers that move me deeply. Both of them are relatively new acquaintances of mine. I have known of them for years, but had never adequately explored their recordings. Thankfully in recent months I have rectified that situation.

A few months ago I was working in the kitchen, happily listening to a completely different recording (a matchless Pergolesi Stabat Mater with Maureen Lehane and Judith Raskin, who is another all-time favorite of mine and about whom I will compose an entry very soon. Let me just say in passing that she is the singer that she leaves in the dust these twittery, faceless American lyric sopranos of the past twenty-odd years).

At any rate, to get back on track, at the very satisfying conclusion of the Pergolesi, out of the blue I was struck, almost between the eyes, by this lush, creamy, magisterial voice singing "Vissi d'arte". I had to check to see who it was because I had no idea. Meta Seinemeyer. Ah, yes, a name that I knew and yet one with whose singing I had only a passing acquaintance. I had ripped a CD of her singing that I had borrowed from my friend David, with whom I almost always agree in matters aesthetic.

With Frieder Weissmann

Of course one of the the first things comes to mind to anyone who has heard the name Seinemeyer is that she died of leukemia at the tragically early age of thirty-three. She was romantically involved with the conductor Frieder Weissmann, who married her on her deathbed. So most of my knowledge of Seinemeyer was the tragic soap opera aspect of her life.

How lucky I was that I was able to get to know her through her recordings as well. They are not all that readily available. There is a Haenssler recording of selected recordings as well as a Preiser issue of her complete recordings. Here is another soprano who deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the very greatest sopranos and yet who today has been nearly forgotten.

She was born in Berlin in 1895 and began her career there at the Charlottenburg Opera. Her career was centered in Dresden, where she sang the Duchess of Parma in the premiere of Busoni's Doktor Faust, as well as a host of Wagner, Verdi and Puccini roles. Her career extended to the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, to the United States, where she sang with the Manhattan Opera House, Oscar Hammerstein's New York company that for a time (1906-1910) was a serious artistic and financial rival to the Metropolitan. She also sang at the Wiener Staatsoper and, in some of the last performances of her career, at Covent Garden. It was immediately upon her return to Dresden that she became ill. She was only to sing five more performances there until her death, a mere ten weeks after singing the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, her final performance. (These details are available on the extremely informative website devoted to Seinemeyer.)
I strongly recommend that any lovers of great singing immediately search out this extraordinary singer. I could hardly choose which single recording to offer, but I chose Butterfly's entrance for the unspeakably beautiful B-flat she sings at the words 'ove s'accoglie'. As all my readers know by now, I never make pronouncements like this, but that may be one of the most perfect notes I have ever heard in my life. Hearing it knocks the wind out of me.

Delicate Clusters of Sound

2007-09-08T17:59:00.000-07:00

FFJ: The Godmother of Us All

I have had enough of death and mourning. I need a chuckle. Maybe even a belly laugh.

I have a thing for REALLY bad singers. Some think that I listen to them merely to laugh at them. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Well, okay, there's an cube or two of truth in it, but that's only the tip of the iceberg.

About two years ago, I was toying with the idea of writing a book about some of my favorite bad singers. It still may turn into an article. Or sit on the back burner for a few more years and turn into something horrible and tasty and the same time.

At that time, I began a list about what was particularly treasurable about these singers. I think at the time I was laughing at them a lot more than I am now.

My list focused on the elements of humor, grotesquerie, shock, and horror that one experiences upon hearing such performances. But that is so obvious. There is something else at work here, and while I don't pretend to have completely cracked this nut, yet I have a few ideas.

Of course it is a bit of a relief to see someone else making a bigger fool of themselves than we ever possibly could, no matter how embarassing and humiliating we think our last audition or performance was. We could never possibly make the same shocking gaffes, singing the wrong notes, making up the rhythms, forgetting the words, or just plain getting lost.

Yet I don't think these artists are even aware just how bad they really are. And it is their sheer obliviousness that makes them all the more treasurable. They just sing for the joy of it and if it makes people happy, then they have done a service, and done it lovingly.

In fact, these singers often have a much wider range of vocal expression than one normally encounters. And it is precisely because of their vocal limitations that they are able to wield their instruments in a wilder way than we would ever find appropriate.

So we gasp and hoot and shriek and holler at their vocal flights of fancy, but I think that somewhere down deep we are envious of their fearlessness. Imagine what it would feel like not to stand up there and give it one's all , not giving a damn what anybody else thought. I can't fully appreciate their vision, but I can admire them for sharing this mysterious inner world with me.

In fact, these "fools" may have stumbled into another universe, a place where judgment is suspended, and where sincerity, kindness, unflinching honesty and clarity of vision are the order of the day.

Just exactly which artists am I referring to? I'm sure everyone has their favorites, but I include the following in my all-time favorites list:

Wing (also see below)
Olive Middleton
Sylvia Sawyer
Mrs. Miller
Mari Lyn (see below)
The Shaggs
Natalia de Andrade
Congress-Woman Malinda Parker Jackson

Wing

Wing embodies all the traits enumerated above. She emigrated to New Zealand from Taiwan in the nineties; as such she can't really embody the "American Dream" but she certainly has fulfilled the Immigrant's Dream. And all of this because she performed karaoke selections in hospitals and nursing homes and her audiences loved her so much that they encouraged her to put out a recording. Wing offered these recordings for sale on the internet and, a true beneficiary of the information age, she suddenly found herself with a worldwide fan base, which increased exponentially with her guest appearance on South Park two years ago.

I love almost everything she does, whether that be fumbling her way through The Lonely Goatherd, squeaking her way through Dancing Queen, not quite mastering the extreme vocal range of The Phantom of the Opera. It was her rendition of the Carpenters' "Sing" that made me completely fall in love with her, though. Who else better exemplifies the dictum "Don't worry if it's not good enough for anyone else to hear"? Learn more about her by perusing some articles posted on her website. And watch her delectable performance of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and prepare to be enchanted.

Mari Lyn

There are countless marvelous operatic counter-divas out there (how else should one refer to them?) Of course Florence Foster Jenkins is the most famous, but other favorites are Sylvia Sawyer (who actually recorded Azucena and Amneris for Capitol Records!), Olive Middleton, Tryphosa Bates-Batchellor (whose unique work can be sampled on the magical collection entitled The Muse Surmounted, which features the work of those singers just mentioned plus many others). I think my very, very favorite, however, has to be Mari Lyn, who hosted a cable TV show called The Golden Treasury of Song in the early- to mid-eighties (as best I can surmise). She wore a different wig every week and presented well-thought out and invariably intriguingly vocalized programs. She had the charisma of a limp dishrag and yet she tackled everything from Lakme to Norma without fear. And every so often, a flash of temperament would course through her not-delicate frame, and I would find myself folling on the floor in paroxysms of delight. Watch these clips on her website and see if you aren't on the floor yourself.

My favorite Mari Lyn moments are her unforgettable scat rendition of "Summertime," her southern belle impersonation in the program entitled The South Anti-Bellum Era [sic], her narration and dramatic rendering of Violetta's letter scene from Traviata, and the entire program entitled Hosanna by Ebentide, in which she shares with us her favorite hymns, including "Casta diva" (for is this not a hymn to the Moon Goddess?) She also regales us with some of her own personal religious stylings, and receives a "surprise" visit from two wacky Italians representing the Della Robbia Foundation who present her with a plaque honoring her as the Greatest Operatic Soprano of the Year. And who could forget her famous "Una voce poco fa" from the priceless Art of the Coloratura episode? Below find her rendition of "Sweet Hour of Prayer" (along with a vital, life-altering sermonette):

And while I could go on and on all night, I will end by posting a few more soundclips to supplement what I have already posted here. Click on the links to hear:

―the deranged passion of Natalia de Andrade's Santuzza as well as
―her cascades of laughter in the Manon Gavotte.
―Congress-Woman Malinda Parker Jackson cautioning against the destruction wrought by "Cousin Mosquito"
―Mrs. Miller duetting with herself in the country fave "There Goes My Everything."
―The Shaggs, quite possibly the idiot savants of music, and probably the most tragic of the figures celebrated here, in their own composition "Philosophy of the World".

In admiration and gratitude to these artists, I conclude my traversal of the underside of singing.

Another great one passes

2007-09-07T21:33:00.000-07:00

Of course the title of this entry speaks of the most famous singer of all to have died in recent months.

There are very few singers about whom I have as much ambivalence as I do Pavarotti. But that is because I abhor the commercialization of our art. I prefer to live in that rarefied sphere where money and commerce never appear. (That was not intended to be a rhyme!)

And yet Pavarotti turned opera (or "opera", if you will) into a stadium event. His handkerchief and enormous personality invaded more homes than any other singer's in recent memory. Did he turn more people on to opera, or did he simply coarsen and cheapen the taste of the general public so they believed that three tenors screeching "vincerò" in quasi-unison was what Opera all about? Was it his commercialization and commodification of our profession that opened the door for such abominations as Andrea Bocelli, Charlotte Church, Russell Watson and Katherine Jenkins? (And on that subject, I don't care if Gergiev and Abbado conduct recordings by Bocelli, that does not alchemize him into a singer.)

But you see, this is the problem with Pavarotti: that we forget (or perhaps it is only I who forget) that in his early years, he was a truly great singer. He was called the King of the High C's for a reason. Yes, it was pure hype dreamed up by Herbert Breslin or Decca's publicity hounds (or whomever) but neither Domingo or Carreras were ever in any danger of being touted for their exceptional high notes.

No, Pavarotti at his best was a superhumanly gifted singer. He was also a showman who knew how to kowtow to an audience and to appeal to the lowest common denominator. But just for once, especially on the occasion of his demise, can I not simply look the other way, or turn my ear the other way and just exult in the sheer brilliance of his singing.

He was an astute technician. One had only to watch him sing to realize the profound concentration at work whenever he opened his mouth (to sing, at least, if not always to talk).

He did not have the most beautiful tenor voice per se. To my ear the basic sound was rather resiny and the legato became gummier the heavier the repertoire he assumed. (Otello, Ernani? PLEASE!) But when he was singing the repertoire he was intended by nature to sing (Rodolfo, Tonio, Edgardo, the Duke, Riccardo, Nemorino [though here his 'ingratiating' personality really grated on me]) he was matchless. Certainly among singers in his generation he was possessed of a unique technical aplomb, acuity and self-awareness. Even when he moved beyond the completely healthy spectrum of roles and began singing Cavaradossi and Calaf, he managed by virtue of his technical grounding to convey a reasonable facsimile of those roles.

I have two reminiscences of Pavarotti. The first was the single time I heard him sing live. Ballo in Chicago. It was Scotto I went to hear; it was mere chance that he was singing Riccardo. These were the last performances that Scotto and Pavarotti were to give together. Earlier that season, in Gioconda in San Francisco, each singer was assuming their part for the first time ever. I don't remember the particulars, but somehow Pavarotti upstaged Scotto in the final curtain call or some such, and she was captured on camera having a hissy diva fit to end all hissy diva fits. She swore that, after the already-scheduled Ballo in Chicago, that their paths would never cross again. (You know, those Italians and Greeks [you know who you are]: they're so hot-blooded and grudge-holding. You cross them once and you cease to exist.) So in the second act love duet, their supposed ardor looked much more like repugnance. I will never forget the way that Scotto, singing the words, "Ebben, sì, t'amo" [All right, I confess it: I love you] looked away from him as from a particularly unsavory odor.

Another time, numerous years later, by a chance set of happy accidents, I was in Busseto, Italy, my first time abroad, playing for Carlo Bergonzi's master class at the so-called Bel Canto Institute. Some day I will have more to say about that experience. For the time being, it was, in a word, extraordinary.) One day at lunch (this event took place in Bergonzi's hotel I due Foscari, where three times a day we were fed the most magnificent food), there were excited whispers that Pavarotti was going to be stopping by that afternoon. Sure enough, shortly before the obligatory afternoon siesta, the great man showed up, his current squeeze (Madelyn Renée: anybody remember her?) in tow. He did not stay long, merely looked genial, paid his respects to Bergonzi and Maestro Mantovani, an elderly master teacher who had worked at La Scala and with Pavarotti, and who was working with students, said a few encouraging words to the students and left. Even in those few moments, even to someone who was not at all kindly disposed toward him (how could he have treated poor Renatina so badly?), the sheer charismatic force of his personality swept all before it. It was not so much that he was large of figure (though of course he was), but that he exuded a magnetism that beguiled as it blinded.

I do have a number of Pavarotti recordings, though again, his presence on them is mostly coincidental (I have pirates of the Scala Kleiber-led Bohème with Cotrubaş, the Met Bohème with Scotto that was the first Live from the Met telecast, the infamous San Francisco Gioconda with Scotto, as well as their valedictory joint appearance in the Chicago Ballo, in addition to some of his choicest studio recordings).

I have had much occasion these past few months to memorialize those supreme artists who have gone on to their greater reward. In many cases, I found myself with new-found (or newly-rediscovered) appreciation for what made them special.

The same is true here. Please listen to this live recording of O soave fanciulla featuring the young Mirella Freni to hear what I mean. Apart from the nearly flawless technique, there is a clearly-perceivable interplay between him and the gorgeous Mirella.

This is how he should be remembered, and how I want to remember him. Let us send him out in style. And with a huge debt of thanks for having at times transcended his own commercialism to give us what we really needed. And what he really needed: the adulation of his public.

Rose Ader: Liù piange

2007-09-04T21:04:00.000-07:00

Here is another great soprano. If you were to demand the name of the most beautiful voice I have ever heard, I might choose Rose Ader (1890-1955). Here is another singer about whom very little is known. I know her because of my friend the amazing Mike Richter, whose site on singers and singing, which changes every week, has published a special page on her life and artistry.

Not much of substance is known about the Austrian soprano. For twelve seasons, her career was centered in Hamburg. It was there in 1921 that she sang the first performance of Puccini's Suor Angelica in Germany. She emigrated with her family to Austria in 1933, went from there to Italy where they remained until after the war, at which time she emigrated to Argentina, where she ended her days.
There are very few recordings extant. Mike has posted all of these on his Rose Ader page. Only two recordings, of the Mimì arias, were ever published. There remain some Parlophone test pressings, including one of "Un bel dì" that simply must be heard.

Mind you, Ader appears, at least on the basis of these few recordings, not to have been the most scrupulous of musicians. She drags the beat incessantly and several of her entrances are not even close to being in tempo. But have you ever heard creamier high notes? Or the end of the aria handled with such aplomb? I don't think I have.

Puccini wrote the role of Liù with her in mind. In fact, she and Puccini were lovers. I found for sale online an autograph letter from Puccini to Ader, which the seller translates thus:

"Mia cara Rose, it hurts me to hurt you! But I must do it for your own good - it doesn't matter if I suffer - you have a future and with me you have no luck. I can do nothing or little for you... Frankly it would be better to finish it - to remain friends and send news of one another once in a while. You know that I want only good things for you and desire all the good fortune in the world for you. You are used to a life that's bright - beautiful - and staying with me, what life would you lead? Think about it seriously - it gives me much pain to think you are not happy. I received your two letters [what I wouldn't give to know what she wrote there!] and I did not want to write you right away - I am working and feeling well enough - My poets have not given me the third act [of Turandot]! Liù weeps and in writing the music I think of you, my poor and sweet and good Rose! Affectionately, your Giacomo."

As the seller of this autograph points out, Ader may very well have inspired Puccini as he composed the music to what was purportedly his favorite heroine (the masochistic ends to which she subjects herself tells us much about Puccini's treatment of women in general), Ader was denied the opportunity to create the role of Liù, a distinction which went to Maria Zamboni instead. If one knows Zamboni's recording of "Signore, ascolta" then one knows what an idiosyncratic , histrionic and rather unlovely Liù she made.

More later on other exquisite Liùs. But for now, enjoy the voice of this woman whom, in spite of her artistry and voice, is remembered today only as the most cursory footnote in music history.

Clearly she deserves better than that!

The great unknown

2007-09-04T19:05:00.000-07:00

For some time now I have been putting off my post on the greatest singer you've never heard of.

Now it is her turn in the spotlight.

Florence Quartararo. I had never heard of her before, but a number of years ago I was listening to the fourth volume of that monumental EMI collection, The Record of Singing. There were a number of singers of whom I had never heard before that completely blew me away. The Swedish baritone Hugo Hasslo was one of them. Another was the American soprano Florence Quartararo. Her clip was a version of Handel's "Care selve" that stood alongside Alma Gluck's transcendent recording. (Oh, if you don't know that, you should do yourself a favor and listen to it. Follow this link and cursor down to "Come my beloved" which you can play on Real Audio.)

But back to our Florence. I wanted to find out whatever I could about her, but I discovered very little of substance. I did note that she partnered Ramon Vinay in a pair of recordings: the first act Micaëla/José duet and the Act One scene between Tosca and Cavaradossi. I traced these to a Preiser reissue (Four Great Met Tenors) and put it on my amazon.com wishlist and never got around to ordering it until I had a few extra dollars burning a hole in my pocket last summer and finally got myself a copy.

Her Puccini was as good as her Handel, and for the Bizet she adopted a naive tonal color quite different than for Tosca. The Tosca is so vividly characterized that it came as a shock when I found that she never even sang the role onstage. Nevertheless, this was a great, great singer. And still I knew almost nothing about her.

After hearing these duets, I was eager, not to say desperate, for more. A further search yielded a recording on Guild of a live Nedda from the Met, again with Vinay, with an accompanying disc of further recordings, including the studio duets with Vinay, three solo sides she cut, also for RCA, and a great number of live radio broadcasts. I ordered a copy from amazon.co.uk (an excellent and fairly reasonably-priced option when amazon.com does not have the desired item, which in this case, it did not) and it arrived less than a week later (that's the other thing; if the item is in stock, it ships lickety split from the UK).

Okay, so here's some of the poop on L'amica Flo, all of it culled from other sources (most of them reviews of the Guild recording, plus a posting on Opera-L):

*****

“Soprano Florence Quartararo had about the shortest career of any major historical singer. Born to Italian parents in America, Quartararo was discovered through a quirk of fate at the age of 23, and never studied singing formally. Quartararo’s first public appearance was singing on the Bing Crosby radio show under the assumed name of ‘Florence Alba,’ but had reverted to her true name by the time she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1947. In 1951, Quartararo retired from singing forever when she married Italian bass Italo Tajo and never returned. At the Met, she had given only 37 performances in nine roles.

“Quartararo made four 78 sides for RCA Victor in 1947 - Handel’s Care selve, ‘La mamma morta’ from Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, and two duets with tenor Ramón Vinay. This is likely all we might have of her artistry if she had not been sought out by researcher Richard Caniell, who had seen her perform at the Met in the 1940s and interviewed Quartararo in 1982. At this time, Quartararo turned over her personal collection of recordings to Caniell, who initially issued them on three cassettes. Since then these recordings have emerged on CD reissues, helping re-establish a reputation for Quartararo as one of the great voices of the twentieth century.”

*****

“My singer discovery of the year is the American soprano of Italian parentage Florence Quartararo... She is a must hear for all lovers of great operatic singing... This is lyric soprano singing of the very highest order. The voice soars with clarity whilst words, expression, legato and colouration combine to give superb characterisation. Florence Quartararo was invited by Toscanini to sing Desdemona in his broadcast Otello. Many critics believe the recording from that broadcast to be one of the all time greats. Unfortunately for opera lovers, the Met management refused to release Quartararo for the detailed rehearsals that Toscanini demanded and the great maestro turned to his favourite Herva Nelli for the role. I believe that if Quartararo had sung the Desdemona on that recording she would not have been allowed to leave the stage forever when she did, after a mere four years at the Met, and the history of recorded opera on LP would have been very different than that which we inherit now on CD. On the evidence of the recordings on this second CD of the Guild issue Quartararo’s is a voice to set alongside the all time greats of the 20th century.”

*****

“Quartararo’s career was short, far too short. She had married the bass Italo Tajo, who then decided, on the birth of a daughter , that one singer in the family was enough. Thus a promising soprano, who had sung 37 performances of nine roles at the Met, vanished from the scene. (And the marriage?) Those four 78s would have formed Quartararo’s total discography had not Richard Caniell of the Immortal Performances Recorded Music Society met her in 1982 and subsequently issued private recordings on three cassettes. Some of those occupy the second disc in this set. Over 40 remain, but a further selection is promised.”

******

“I am not arrogating when I think that Quartararo’s career would probably have been extremely successful had it not been curtailed so soon. Her Nedda, Italianate in sound, has its own intensity, if one kept more in check than Vinay’s. At 25, she sings with a voice in full bloom. The opera’s final moments are here verismo at its most vivid and violent.”

******

“The most interesting--and significant--aspect of this release is the (re)discovery of soprano Florence (referred to at the time as ‘Fiorenza’) Quartararo. The California-born soprano sang at the Met for only four seasons--37 times in nine roles--and made a few commercial recordings, then dropped out of sight. In fact, she married the bass Italo Tajo, who believed ‘one singer in the family was enough.’ Bruno Walter and Arturo Toscanini greatly admired her. She died in 1994 at age 72. Most of the arias and scenes on this CD were recorded live. The voice is a stunning, good-sized, burnished soprano, dark in hue (not unlike Ponselle’s, just to offer a signpost), with a full, rich top, almost a real trill, agility (as witnessed in the cabaletta from the first act of Trovatore), and a fast vibrato that adds intensity. She inflects well and has ideas of her own and plenty of temperament. Very occasionally she’ll begin a phrase just under pitch, but she corrects it immediately.”

******

“Richard Caniell of IPRMS (Immortal Performances Recorded Music Society, British Columbia) restored the Quartararo recordings, most of which came from her personal collection. (The Pagliacci has also been issued on Naxos.) He became friends with Quartararo and they had many conversations. Below is a quote from his liner notes for the Quartararo collection.

[here Caniell quotes Quartararo herself] “[The] birth [of my daughter] gave me the courage to break from my career... The biggest thrill of my life was when I had my child, something totally yours. What greater fulfillment could there be than a child? It deepened my life.”

“There was, perhaps, one other experience that gave me something of that same thing - standing on the Met stage, giving oneself and the audience receiving it. There was a tremendous sense of achievement.”

“If ever I have a moment of regret for not continuing on the stage, it is the feeling of something unfinished, like something that wanted to complete itself.... It was like a great book, the end of which I had left unread. But then, you know, one’s career has a build, a momentum. By the time my child was old enough for me to consider other possibilities, the momentum had been lost. Still, it may have been brief but it was wonderfully fulfilling, rewarding in ways for which I have no language.”

******

I would love to give seven or eight examples of Quartararo’s artistry, but I will limit myself here to a single one: Her “Tacea la notte” from Trovatore. I have nothing to add to the descriptions of her voice quoted above. Except to say that her agility is flawless, breathtaking, and she spins a line like nobody’s business. Of course I am flabbergasted that Italo Tajo made her quit singing. As if he were the superior talent in that family! Thank goodness we have some artifacts of her legacy. What I wouldn’t have given for that Desdemona recording with Toscanini. I am not one of those who detests Herva Nelli, Toscanini's soprano of choice for his recordings of Otello, Ballo, Falstaff, Aida, and the Requiem (she is sometimes referred to among her detractors as “Helluva Nervi”) but surely no one would place her on Quartararo’s level.

Which is to say among the greatest singers that ever lived.

She WAS a great singer, after all

2007-09-04T09:01:00.003-07:00

I followed my own advice from my last posting and sought out some more Rose Bampton. In fact, that very afternoon, I went to Academy Records and chanced upon a live recording of her Marschallin. It's from the Teatro Colon, October 8, 1947, with Erich Kleiber conducting.

The sound sucks. But it's an interesting performance.

Elsa does Carmen

Elsa Cavelti is the Octavian. She's a Swiss mezzo, not terribly well-known, most celebrated for her 1951 recording of Das Lied von der Erde with Otto Klemperer. She makes a surprising good Octavian. She does not strain at all in the high reaches and has a wonderful vocal characterization.

The Sophie is the hitherto unknown to me Olga Chelavine. She is more than serviceable, if not quite ethereal enough. According to one source I found, she was born in Russia, and according to another, she was born and died in Buenos Aires. So yeah, Olga = Russian, Chelavine = Argentinian. Whichever nationality and wherever she was born, she's not bad at all. She's the Papagena on a live Beecham Zauberflöte. Her repertoire included Wellgunde, Yniold, Sophie in Werther: that kind of stuff. The end of the final duet, she is painfully flat, but I have heard live performances in which better singers do it worse! I also heard the execrable Christine Schäfer at the Deutsche Oper sing the most charmless Sophie I have ever heard. It didn't matter if her high B was in tune or not at the end, since I wasn't able to actually hear it. I did hear two phrases from her over the course of the evening, both in the second act, and neither one good). So I'll take a flat high B at the end over miscast charmlessness.

Emmanuel List is the Ochs, and since I really can't stand the character's music, I generally don't listen to much of his role. But he's certainly a familiar name and he sounds like the Viennese bumpkin he should.

Good as they are, it is Rose who is the revelation. She soars in the trio and she dedicates herself with great delicacy and individuality to the Marschallin's music. As with all great Marschallins, it is through the words in particular that she creates a memorable characterization. In fact, I shed a few tears upon hearing her sing "Heut' oder morgen". It was a cry from the soul, which was quickly put back in check. Her top is brilliant; she sings the pianissimo "Ros'n" at the end of the first act beautifully and her B at the climax of the trio is radiant.

A curious footnote: as she sings that pianissimo, she is nearly drowned out by a ringing sound that sounds for all the life of me like a pager or a cell phone. Surely the Argentinians were not carrying around such devices in 1947. I'm curious what the sound actually was.

I began listening to her Daphne as well, also from the Colon, though a year later. The sound is better, but here Bampton sounds rather throaty and metallic in her midrange, though the top is even more brilliant. I must listen to the rest of this before I render a final judgment.

For now, here is her monologue from the first act of Rosenkavalier. I hope you agree that this performance alone places her firmly in the great echelon of singers. Now when I think of her, I will remember her Marschallin first, the chicken blood second, if at all.

Rose is a rose is a rose

2007-08-31T09:00:00.000-07:00

I've been away from the blog for a while. I did want to say a word about the passing of Rose Bampton. There's not much factual that I can add to the marvelous obituary by Paul Driscoll on the Met's site, but I might add a few comments.

Bampton is another of those singers who apparently crossed from mezzo to soprano. Gwyneth Jones, Grace Bumbry, Stephanie Friede, Faith Esham, Martha Mödl and Shirley Verrett come immediately to mind. I think it's more common for singers to make the transition from soprano to mezzo, particularly as they enter the final stages of their careers (La Rysanek, Helga Dernesch, Felicity Palmer, Regina Resnik). Of course Christa Ludwig, an exceptional case in more ways than one, mixed and matched mezzo and soprano roles at the height of her career. (For those who do not know her Ariadne, the soprano role she sang least frequently, I highly recommend digging up a copy, either of the studio or the live performance, either complete or excerpted.)

Those singers that make the shift from mezzo to soprano before one's international career is in full swing probably found it easier to maintain career momentum. So often those who make this change are judged harshly, as if they didn't know their voices well enough in the first place. But it is perfectly natural for a full-voiced mezzo with a good top to make this transition. I know a lot of singers who have attempted to switch fachs only to find themselves suddenly considered "unhirable". Ah, the great imaginations of so many company administrators! Don't even get me started on that.

From Bampton's Met debut as Laura in Gioconda on November 28, 1932 (an event which coincided with her twenty-third birthday), the brilliance of her upper register was noted. I am too lazy to look up when she made her debut as a soprano (I do know that it was as Sieglinde) but she did so easily and with great success. She is the Leonore on Toscanini's broadcast Fidelio and there is a live recording of her Alceste from the Met that used to be available in this country on Naxos. One can also find a live recording from Buenos Aires of her Daphne with Erich Kleiber. I was delighted to find just now that there is also a recently released Lebendige Vergangenheit issue on Preiser records. This issue includes some of the recordings that I have on my VAI recording of Verdi and Wagner which is apparently no longer available.

I knew virtually nothing of Bampton's singing until I obtained this last recording. Evidently these recordings were made in the spring and summer of 1940 in New York and Philadelphia. They were released as part of a series of "World's Greatest Operas" with the singers unidentified. When I first heard them, I was quite favorably impressed. It's a well-equalized voice of good size and not a little beauty. In relistening to this recording yesterday I found the Wagner excerpts to be much more successful than the Verdi. One can appreciate her patrician musicianship and her lovely voice, but in many of these recordings, I found something lacking. Driscoll states in his obituary that "her voice, though an instrument of impressive size and quality, lacked the final measure of charisma that marks a great star" and I would probably agree.

There is reprinted in the liner notes a marvelous story. Evidently Bampton was a great admirer of Lotte Lehmann and they shared more than a few roles. When Melchior and Bampton sang Walküre together, Bampton found it hard to completely abandon herself in the highly erotic music of the end of the first act. In Bampton's words, Lehmann once said to her, "'I don't think you know the least thing about love.' I told her, 'Well, I certainly do, but I don't have to go around advertising that.' And she said, 'That's where you make a big mistake. Every experience that you have in life, you've got to use when you sing.' She broke down that barrier for me."

Of the recordings that I have heard, the one that best illustrates Bampton's greater sense of emotional freedom is her Liebestod from Tristan from those aforementioned 1940 recordings. She doesn't quite match Lehmann's insane ardor, but it is a beautiful performance nonetheless, and very well-sung at that, superior to Lehmann's from that standpoint only.

One amusing aside: I have no idea if this is true or not, but it always made me laugh. Even into old age, Bampton retained almost preternaturally unwrinkled skin. She made a elegant old lady, that's for sure. A friend told me that it was said that she retained her marvelous complexion by going overseas (was it Switzerland) every summer to have chicken blood injections. So whenever I would hear her name, that was what I would think of. In going back over the past few days, I'm happy to say that I'll remember her for more than just the purported injections.

I am looking forward to hearing more of her recordings. And the next post I write, I am absolutely going to introduce at least one of three favorite sopranos I have been meaning to write about for some time now: Florence Quartararo, Rose Ader and Meta Seinemeyer. But now I see that hours have passed since I began writing this and I must fly! (There he goes...)

Greatest record cover EVER?

2007-08-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

They should give awards for these things. I remember buying a copy of this in a close-out bin when I was a youngster. (Yeah, I was doing things like that when other kids were playing baseball or kickball.) I already knew Cristina Deutekom from the Solti Magic Flute recording (yeah, I know he recorded it twice; this was the relatively good one with Pilar Lorengar (another big fave of mine), Stuart Burrows and Hermann Prey.

From the very beginning she was a controversial singer. Singers often aspirate their runs when they are singing fast passagework. I don't find this to be such a grave misdeed. I have been known to do it myself; just the idea of an 'h' before each note creates a smoother emission of the air. But I have never known another singer who aspirated (or whatever the equivalent would be) with a 'g'.

I wish I had some examples of her singing to share, but I don't believe she is in my collection. So this is how the second phrase of the first act cabaletta from Ernani would have sounded. Instead of "Non v'ha gemma che in amore possa l'odio tramontar" followed by a trill, we got: "Non v'ah-ga-ga gemma-ga che d'amore po-ga-ssa-ga-ga- l'o-go-go-dio-go-go-tra-ga-ga-mo-gon-tar. Ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga" (that was the trill). To say that this was a peculiar effect would be an understatement. It sounded a little bit like one of those strange "forest creature" sounds that Yma Sumac would make.

But I digress. Suffice it to say that Deutekom proceeded, undeterred, with her career and her assumption of roles for which she was not, by nature, necessarily intended. Lady Macbeth, Norma, Odabella, Abigaille. The biggies. A friend of mine told me of going to hear her Lady Macbeth at New Jersey State Opera, or whatever it is/was called. At the intermission, he bumped into an acquaintance of his who asked him, "So what do you think?" To which Nick replied that it was about the worst thing he had ever heard. The Deutekom queen turned on him in a fury, told him that he was dissing one of the greatest performances that he would ever see, and never spoke to him again.

So clearly, she summoned up passionate feelings in admirers and detractors alike.

But no one EVER claimed that she was a fashion plate. Which brings me to the album cover. This is the sort of thing one should not even comment on. Merely present the evidence. In this case, I will simply do an A-B comparison and ask, which diva would YOU rather hang out with, much less be seen with?

The things I learned so well in my youth

2007-08-21T06:58:00.001-07:00

Marguerite and I (see previous post) were both big Dusty fans, and after one of her many displays of hospitality, I gave her the wonderful 4-CD set Simply Dusty... When I spoke to Marguerite's friend Shaun last week, he asked me if Marguerite had a favorite Dusty track that they could play at her funeral this coming Thursday.

I said that I didn't know, but the one song that came into my head before all others was "Goin' Back" by Carole King. Dusty's performance has to be the definitive one, and as I mentioned to Shaun, it was played at Dusty's own funeral.

So the day after tomorrow at the West London Crematorium at Kensal Green, they will play three excerpts from Traviata, Marguerite's favorite opera (perhaps because of Marguerite Gauthier!) and Dusty's performance of "Goin' Back" [click on the link to hear it]. So a little bit of me will be there with them. Shaun tells me that in November they plan on having a memorial service in celebration of her life. Wild horses (and/or waning finances) will not keep me from that event.

Softly and gently, dearly ransomed soul

2007-08-20T21:51:00.000-07:00

I have just spent the past week up at Bard, rehearsing and performing in the 80-voice chorus that just performed Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius. We are now on the bus home and there is a movie playing that I’m not interested in watching... can you believe that they didn’t want to watch my copy of The Passion of Joan of Arc?

Gerontius... I fell in love with the piece the first time I heard it, years and years ago in the definitive recording: John Barbirolli, Richard Lewis and the sublime Janet Baker. At that time I found it transcendently beautiful and deeply moving. In fact, I so loved the Angel’s music, which was originally written, if I am not mistaken for Clara Butt,that I filched the opening solo and prepared it for the Reine Elisabeth Competition in Brussels back in the nineties. I was asked to sing it in the semi-finals, but I did not advance beyond that point. Jurinac and Cotrubas and a number of others were on the jury, I think maybe Dame Joan as well, although I have never been a true worshiper at her throne... but talk about hard hitters!!

Clara Butt

But back to the Angel: I always harbored a secret wish that I would someday sing this part. I was rudely disabused of that notion this week. Elgar’s orchestra is ginormous (I’m not sure how to spell that; the ‘g’ is soft and the ‘i’ is long) and the role of the Angel is quite rangy and challenging. I was forced to admit that it is not within my capabilities, nor was it ever, in all honesty.

Returning to the piece now, so many years later, during rehearsals I had a slightly different evaluation of the piece as a whole. It has some exquisite music, some of it almost unbearably beautiful, but there is also a lot of pomposity. There is a huge choral passage which seemed to me fairly uninspired while we were rehearsing it, though it was enormously rousing in performance just a few hours ago.

Our performance was the crowning event of Bard’s Elgar Festival. There were symposia and concerts over the past two weekends that covered an enormous range of scholarly and musical material. I was able to attend a few of the concerts and the symposium this morning and I learned a lot. Two nights ago I heard a rare performance of the Frank Bridge Piano Quintet. I have heard a few Bridge pieces and never been terribly impressed, but this one completely blew me away. The response of the friend I attended the concert with was, “I want this played at my funeral.” The performance was brilliant as well, one of those chamber music events where the players were completely on the same wavelength, to the extent that they breathed as one.

And just this afternoon, I heard the American première of Herbert Howells’ Piano Quartet, in a performance almost as brilliant as the Bridge. The piece itself is nearly as memorable. The Bridge was a craggier piece, I thought, moments of soaring lyricism springing out of jagged sequential passages. But the Howells had a deeply moving second movement. There were gems like this all weekend, and during the first weekend as well.

But our Gerontius concert really swept everything before it. In rehearsals I had serious doubts about Vinson Cole as Gerontius. The voice has weathered time fairly well, but in rehearsal his distorted vowels and jabbed consonants resulted in a total lack of legato singing. It was never a large or plush sound, and when he sang out, one had the sense that he was at the edge of his resources. His piano singing verged on crooning, but it was very beautiful nonetheless. In the performance today, he surpassed himself, delivering a performance that was moving on its own terms. The vowels remained problematic, but the audience brought out the best in him.

There were two other performers this afternoon who were truly exceptional. Jane Irwin sang the Angel. She is one of those beautiful, plangent English mezzo, in the Janet Baker tradition, such as Sarah Walker or Sarah Connolly. None of those singers can surpass Janet Baker at her best, but Jane Irwin gave a performance that bordered on greatness. She radiated such calm, such poise, yet such deep intensity that it was palpable even to the chorus, as far upstage as we were. Some were concerned about her tendency to singing flat, but I found those moments few and far between. The Angel’s farewell was about enough to rip your heart out. I believe that Jane Irwin is the singer who sang Mère Marie in Dialogues des Carmélites in Chicago this past season, replacing the late lamented Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. That is a singer I would have loved to have heard in this part as well, but on the basis of her performance this afternoon, Jane Irwin can withstand comparison with the very best.

The other singer who knocked my socks off is named Carolyn Betty. She sang Mary Magdalene’s solo in The Kingdom, one of three excerpts we performed at the beginning of the concert. I remembered her from her Met Competition win a few years ago, but at the time (and over the radio) I was not particularly impressed. She seemed to have a troubled passaggio that led to a hampered top. Well, either I was mistaken at the time or else she has improved beyond recognition. This woman, aged just twenty-nine, seems to have it all. Her musicianship is beyond reproach, the voice itself is extraordinarily beautiful, and her technique seems rock-solid, which allows for beautiful legato singing as well as access to a full dynamic palette, from beautiful floated pianissimi to intense, soaring fortissimi. This woman is the real thing. Run, do not walk to hear this singer (either of these singers) should you get a chance.

One reason this piece was so moving to me right now is that my beloved friend Marguerite died in London this past Wednesday morning. She was stricken with leukemia this past year and while she had a short remission at the end of last year, the cancer returned with a vengeance this past April. By the end it had metastisized to her brain. Her friend Shaun has been very good about keeping in touch with me during her final decline and it was he who texted me on Wednesday and to whom I spoke on Thursday morning.

I can’t possibly sum up Marguerite in a few words, so I will just say that she is perhaps the most extraordinary person I have ever known. She was the funerals director for the City of Westminster. In this capacity, she arranged for the funerals and burials of those (more often than not, elderly) persons who died without any known relatives or friends. She would also take it upon herself to try to find any remaining friends or next of kin. The extraordinary stories that she told about her work experiences would have made an amazing book. I proposed more than once that we collaborate on her autobiography, which now, alas, will never happen.

Marguerite also volunteered for years for the Terrence Higgins Trust, the foremost AIDS organization in the UK. She was the buddy to probably a dozen different men in their daily struggles with the disease, and in their final days. She was a great lover of the opera and the ballet. She had a bawdy sense of humor that was irreverent and raunchy, and, no shrinking violet, she put her money where her mouth was. She was generous and kind and always ready to offer hospitality to any friends of friends that happened to come to London. My brother Jon and his wife Mary Kay spent their honeymoon in London, and Marguerite, thought she had never met them before, took them under her wing just because they were my family.

Indeed, I met her through an ex-boyfriend of mine who met her by chance when he was staying at the Y in London almost twenty years ago. At that point, Marguerite was working as an administrator there and she helped Tim get tickets to a Covent Garden gala performance of Trovatore. Then when I traveled to London to perform with La Gran Scena, she came to my performance at the Bloomsbury Theatre and from that moment on we became dear friends.

Over the years, I stayed with her five or six times in her beautiful but small flat in Pimlico. She traveled to Athens at Christmas 2000 to hear me sing the Weihnachts-Oratorium with Helmuth Rilling. She came to visit me and Nick when we lived in New Jersey. Nick had never met her before, but they also became hard and fast friends. When Nick and I went through an extremely painful breakup two and a half years ago, she asked me if I would mind if she remained in touch with him. Though Nick and I are no longer in touch, I am happy to say that he and Marguerite remained friends until the end of her life.

Marguerite had a great love for animals, and our Finnegan loved her immediately when she came to visit us those years ago. Every night he would park himself outside the door to the guest bedroom. It took a good bit of prodding to get him to come downstairs and get his breakfast. Then he would wait by the upstairs door until Marguerite would come down, perfectly coiffed and put together. He would greet her like a long lost friend. They, too, had a special bond.

Given Marguerite’s death, singing this piece about a dying soul’s dream of its journey into the afterlife proved to be overwhelming. It is a gargantuan piece, and yet to me some of the most moving moments are the gentle ones. The Angel’s farewell is one of the great moments in this piece, and as Jane Irwin sang it so beautifully, I looked out into the hall, remembering the many times that Marguerite was in the audience when I sang. And at that moment, I felt her with me again, not in any material sense, perhaps, but in a way that transcended the physical, filled me with awe and gratitude, and brought into vivid relief the very progress of the soul into the world beyond that Elgar depicts so masterfully in this work.

Not really hidden, but treasures nonetheless

2007-08-10T08:40:00.000-07:00

I have been wanting to post some more sound files of some singers. I have been putting off sketches and snippets of three singers that I have discovered not so long ago and that I really want to share. Proselytizing just comes in the genes, I guess.

But before I do that (and God knows when I will get around to doing that), I wanted to put up sound clips of a few of the singers that I mentioned in my last post.

First, Ninon Vallin, whom I find to be the quintessential French singer. She is well-known enough that I need not say too much about her. Her recordings of Louise and Werther with Georges Thill are definitive. She sings one of the most subtle thrilling renditions of the Falla "Siete cancionces popular espanolas" ever. No matter what she sings, she does it with such discipline and taste, such a flavor for the language and the style and such personal charisma that it is impossible to resist her. To me, she is in the Conchita Supervia mold, yet without that curious vibrato that is off-putting to so many listeners. Of Vallin is simply impossible to pick one selection, and yet, having to do so, I choose her "Dis-moi que je suis belle", the Mirror Aria from Thaïs.

Another singer who has made an enormous impression on me, but is not nearly as well-known as Vallin, is Friedel Beckmann. She was born in 1904 and had a provincial career in the German houses (Münster, Königsberg, Duisburg, Kiel) before arriving in 1938 at the Deutsches Opernhaus Berlin. I have done a little online research, but I have no information on how long she lived. She was particularly celebrated for her Orfeo and her Carmen, and evidently sang a good number of soprano roles as well, including Tatyana, Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, Sieglinde and Giorgetta in Il tabarro (!). (Again, shades of Christa Ludwig, with whom she shares a certain plangent vocal quality, though Ludwig sang the Färberin, Leonore in Fidelio, the Marschallin, and a few Ariadnes, none of the soprano roles that Beckmann did.)

I simply adore this singer. Her most famous recording is probably a complete Matthäus-Passion under Günther Ramin from 1941 (with Lemnitz, Erb and Hüsch), as well as a Pfitzner song, "Ist der Himmel darum im Lenz so blau". I have heard parts of the Matthew Passion, and they do not sit so comfortably on our ears. The Pfitzner is exquisite; indeed, it is the first recording of hers that I ever heard, which convinced me of her extraordinary artistry in less than three minutes. But today I post one of her soprano assumptions, "Die Kraft versagt" from Hermann Goetz's Die Wiederspenstigen Zähmung (The Taming of the Shrew).

I also promised a snippet from Liane, the wonderful cabaret singer from the fifties. Her full name was Liane Augustin. I am not sure of her nationality, since her French, English and German all seem to my ear to have a slight accent. She made many recordings with the quaintly-named Boheme Bar Trio which were released on Vanguard Records and reissued less than ten years ago but which have went out of print almost immediately and which are not so easy to find. Some of her most charming are songs of the great American popular song composers, Gershwin and Cole Porter. For Liane I am actually posting two songs, the first her rendition of Porter's "C'est Magnifique" and the second an odd little novelty song called "Hallo, wer ist dort an der Tür". It's as saucy and suggestive as the Porter is sophisticated and classy.

Amazingly, I just found a youtube clip of her, from the 1958 Eurovision competition singing a song called "Die ganze Welt braucht Liebe" ("The Whole World Needs Love"). The sound and video quality are beyond horrible, but you get a nice idea of her charm and élan.

As for Carmen Melis, I listened to her Tosca last night and found it not terribly special. Let me qualify that statement, her characterization and sense of style are irreproachable, but the voice itself is rather shrill, though it is a good remastering. The extraordinary singer on this set is Apollo Granforte as Scarpia. I must post something of his performance here, and I have chosen the "Te Deum", though it is hardly my favorite Puccini moment. You can hear the way that his electric singing perfectly characterizes the animal intensity of this character. He is truly one of the great baritones. But don't get me started on baritones... Hugo Hasslo, Pavel Lisitsian, Giuseppe de Luca. That'll have to wait a while.

And now for someone completely obscure...

2007-08-08T11:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, there's a small backstory here: One of my favorite haunts in the city (and surely the most dangerous to my pocketbook) is Academy Records on 18th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. So convenient to the 1 train, too. It sells used CDs, DVDs and LPs, many of them quite obscure and most of them at quite reasonable prices. Of course it is generally true that the more obscure items are costlier, but not always. I found the Ninon Vallin 2-CD set on Marston Records for only eighteen bucks. That one has been out of print for some time. I have seen it on amazon.com for close to a hundred bucks. Also I have found some recordings by the delectable cabaret singer Liane for less than ten bucks. I just found one of hers listed on ebay for $106.52. So you get the idea.

Preiser has a fabulous series of compilations under the moniker "Four Famous [fill in the blank]s of the Past". These are very enjoyable as well. It was through these recordings that I got to hear more of Friedel Beckmann's recordings (another singer obscure to most who sometimes sounds remarkably like Christa Ludwig, with an equally impressive intensity and musicality) as well as many, many others. Academy always has many of these titles on their shelves, but they were always going for eleven or twelve bucks, which seemed a little expensive to me for a single CD. However, Academy has recently begun moving items that have not sold into a bargain bin. Just last week I found an early Scala Tosca recording featuring Carmen Melis (Tebaldi's teacher) and Apollo Granforte as Scarpia. For only eight bucks. Likewise, they moved a good number of the Preiser series into the bargain bin. For four bucks, I found one of the many "Four Famous Sopranos of the Past" volumes. This one features Lotte Schöne (who sings with a charm matched by few others –possibly Bidú Sayao and Elisabeth Schumann – and whom I highly recommend), Fritzi Jokl, Irene Eisinger (another goodie!) and someone named Luise Szabó, whose name was vaguely familiar to me, but about whom I knew nothing. I still know virtually nothing about her, except what scant information there was about her in the liner notes; I have Googled her and found nothing else.

Here's what the liner notes, such as they are, reveal about her:

Very little is known about the short career of the Hungarian coloratura soprano Szabó Lujza (Luise Szabó). Born in Budapest in 1904 she studied at the local Music Academy and made her debut in 1927 at the National Opera House in Budapest. She caused quite a sensation as Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte at the Städtische Oper, Berlin in 1931 under the baton of Bruno Walter. Szabó also interpreted this role in the same year in Amsterdam as well as for German broadcast. In Hungary the soprano recorded her Hungarian repertoire for HMV, in Berlin she did 12 titles in German for Ultraphon — some of the latter ones have also been published under the Austrian label Kalliope. Before Luise Szabó’s career had even reached its zenith the singer died during an operation in Budapest on November 19, 1934. There was no family relationship with the soprano Ilonka Szabó.

Anyway, it has taken me a long time to tell this story. The point is that this woman is extraordinarily good. I know of no other current issues of her recordings. Her Queen of the Night is one of the best I've heard. My favorites are still Edda Moser, Lucia Popp and Erna Berger, but Szabó holds her own in this company.

Listen here to her account of "Der Hölle Rache" and see if you don't agree. Her staccati are breathtaking, fearless and pin-point accurate, as are her triplets in the middle of the aria. She even handles those final phrases of the aria quite impressively, where so many lighter-voiced voiced coloraturas collapse. So hers is not the most menacing characterization I have heard, but there is a delightful surprise at the end (though it is less thrilling than the famous version by Florence Foster Jenkins!)

When I have a moment, I will post recordings the other singers I have mentioned here (Vallin, Liane, Beckmann, Melis and Granforte). For now, enjoy the tragically short-lived Szabó.

Justifying her reputation...

2007-08-01T07:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, I am going to stop. Very, very soon. But I was just checking youtube to see if either the Sass Violetta from Aix or the Verrett Sleepwalking Scene from Scala had been reposted and unfortunately neither has. But I did find a concert performance of the Sass singing the Sleepwalking Scene. It is different than Verrett's. For one thing, I don't think Sass is nearly as subtle an actor as Verrett. But her singing on this occasion is quite stunning. I know nothing of the provenance of this performance. It's just something to be savored.

And, as a curio, a concert performance in 2004 of the Letter Duet from Nozze di Figaro with Andrea Röst before an obviously adoring, presumably Hungarian, public. I refer readers to a previous post in which I described hearing her in recital at the Hungarian Embassy in Paris in 2005. Let me just say that she is in much better form here than she was in Paris. But if I were Susanna, I would be very, very scared of my mistress. All those weird gestures... she seems more like Lady Macbeth!

So that we do not end on a completely bizarre note, I would like to include a sound file. This is from Sass' Richard Strauss recording. Her Vier letzte Lieder are decidedly strange, but not awful. But this song, "Verführung", with which I was completely unfamiliar, is quite stunningly done. And it's worth listening to just to hear an unknown Strauss Orchesterlied.

And making another surprise reappearance...

2007-08-01T07:12:00.000-07:00

Shirley Verrett as Lady Macbeth! This one is matchless. I've already gone on at great length about this performance. There's a later concert performance posted on an earlier blog, but this one, I think, takes the cake. Now, if someone reposts her Sleepwalking Scene from the same 1975 Scala performance, I'll be in hog heaven! Be amazed, and enjoy!

She's BAAA-AAACK!

2007-08-01T06:43:00.001-07:00

Who? Why, Ileana Cotrubas, who else?!?!

I have been doing a little online research on her this morning and I was delighted to discover that an enlightened youtube user has reposted the “Sempre libera” from her 1981 Met Traviata.

Here is a review from the New York Times (March 19, 1981) of her Violetta. Okay, so it's by Donal Henahan, who often had his head up his butt. But even he got it right sometimes:

“It is unlikely that there is a better Violetta now on the world's stages than Ileana Cotrubas. In her first Metropolitan appearance as the pathetic courtesan, she gave a transfixing performance. A singing actress of great imagination and temperament, she was able to exploit the full range of emotions in her first-act scene, and unless a Violetta does that the jig is up. From the first puzzled and tentative notes of ‘e strano’ straight through to the almost delirious brilliance of ‘sempre libera’ she drew one long, unerring curve of vocal and dramatic excitement. She was not, like some Violettas, a case of conspicuous consumption throughout the night, hacking and wheezing incessantly. She coughed a little and fainted when necessary, and generally played on our sympathy like a virtuoso.”

Well, judge for yourselves.

I also found “Caro nome” from her Met Gilda a few years before that (1977, I believe). She is less perfect here; the voice is a little strained on the top, but her musicianship is always paramount. This performance is preceded by an adorable interview in which she present quite a winsome side to her personality than the adamant, demanding one that we acknowledge as well.

Yet she was and is demanding because her standards are SO high. As evidence, I submit her recording of the “Et incarnatus est” from the Mozart C Minor Mass. If this were the only evidence we had of her artistry, she would be assured of her place among the great Mozarteans, not only of recent years, but of all time.

Finally, I found this quote from an interview in which she rages against Regietheater. I espouse this viewpoint myself, so of course I quote it here:

“I teach both technique and interpretation, because you cannot separate them. I think it is nonsense to say that you have to develop a rock solid technique first and then think about interpretation later. You have to develop both of them at the same time. If you explain technique too clinically, as is often done today, you will forget everything about ‘singing,’ and this is the worst disaster you can have. I have to warn American singers about this especially. Often they are fantastic technically, but they lose all the emotion.”

Another one...

2007-07-31T20:15:00.000-07:00

Another great artist has transitioned to another plane: Ingmar Bergman.

God! I think the first Bergman I saw was Smiles of a Summer Night. I did not realize until years later that Sondheim's Little Night Music was based on that near-perfect film. Now, I like Sondheim (after many many years of not getting him) and I like Night Music, but it is a completely different experience than the film. And for me, the film is only one among his many peerless masterpieces.

I've seen some bad Bergman, too, but most directors wish they could make movies as good as Bergman's worst. (Maybe I should withhold that comment until after I have seen The Serpent's Egg!)

In fact, I have not seen every Bergman film. Not even close. But I have seen many of his early ones (I believe the earliest I've seen is Sommarlek (or Summer Interlude, as it is sometimes translated) and I saw his last one, Saraband, which reunites the characters of Scenes from a Marriage thirty-odd years after their divorce. The former is really good, even memorable, but not great, the latter is his final masterpiece, absolutely breath-taking. And I've seen many if not all of the great ones in between. Wild Strawberries, The Virgin Spring, The Seventh Seal, The Magician, the great trilogy from the early sixties (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence, the last of which I was privileged to see on the big screen at the Berlinniale two years ago... it was fucking amazing), Persona, Autumn Sonata. But my favorite of all has got to be Cries and Whispers. It is as great as anything by Ibsen, anything by any of the greatest Scandinavian artists, by any artist of any time.

I can't even describe it. I don't want to try. You just gotta see it. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to the memory of a supreme artist.

Life in the Big City

2007-07-31T18:46:00.000-07:00

I had the most extraordinary day on Friday. Merriam-Webster online offers these definitions of the word extraordinary:

1 a : going beyond what is usual, regular, or customary b : exceptional to a very marked extent c of a financial transaction : NONRECURRING

All three definitions apply.

On my trip back uptown from one of my weekly standing appointments, I rode in a very crowded subway car. I had my backpack on, looped through both arms. It's a very snazzy backpack. Coach. Leather. Very attractive. Normally I only loop it through one arm; I can keep a closer eye on it this way and it also occupies less room during rush hour. But that day I was trying to read a book and I needed both hands. At one point someone bumped into my backpack and I rearranged myself.

On my short walk home, I reached into the exterior zipper pockets to extract my keys and discovered that both zipper pockets had been unzipped. I knew that they had been zipped, so I realized immediately that I had been pickpocketed. I rummaged through the pockets to ascertain what was missing. My cell phone was still there, my checkbook was still there. My wallet was in the zippered leg pocket of my cargo shorts. So what was actually missing? My glucometer (I'm diabetic) and my keys. And the thing about my keys was this: on my way out the door to my appointment, I could not find my own set of keys. After looking for several minutes, I grabbed the extra set of keys from the desk drawer.

Here is what is on my regular key ring, the one that I left behind in the apartment: a mailbox key, the only one we have, and a full set of keys to my friend David's apartment (which is still my legal address).

David is in London at the moment and I am charged with bringing in the mail and checking the apartment every few days.

Okay, so I was robbed, but all they had taken was the extra set of apartment keys and my glucometer. They might have thought it was a blackberry or something, since it's in a case. And the extra set of keys was in a little pouch that looked like a coin purse. So they probably thought they were getting a lot more than they actually got.

I arrived at the apartment remarkably calm. I had assessed the losses, and was amazed at my relative good fortune: no credit cards or stolen checks to deal with, no irreplaceable keys lost, no cell phone lost, no wallet stolen, no money of any kind lost. This kind of theft simply doesn't HAPPEN in Manhattan. Such events are major catastrophes. This was Robbery Lite.

I just had to get the extra set of keys from the super. I couldn't find the super. I rang his bell and he did not answer. He started work just a few weeks ago, so I hadn't programmed his number into my phone. I wasn't even positive what he looked like. But there was a man standing outside the building; I asked him if he was the super and he said no and I explained my situation to him and asked if he would let me into the building. Amazingly, he consented. (I guess it's a good thing I'm not a young African American male or I would have had the cops on me.) I decided to just check each floor to see if the super was lurking somewhere. I hit the fourth floor and sure enough, I saw a refrigerator going through an apartment door. Ah-ha! There he was. He asked me even more questions, and rightly so. I said to him, when we open the apartment door, a big black dog will come barrelling out and you will be able to tell from her response to me that I belong there. Phoebe was there and corroborated my identity with her usual yelps, caught somewhere between ecstasy [you're back!] and desperation [where have you been?].

I made a few calls and my glucometer was in the mail, replaced completely free of charge. (What a blessing insurance can be; it would have cost me more than a few shekels to replace.) I said to myself, "Self," I said, "someone was really watching out for you back there."

Oh, and the kicker: my full set of keys was right there on the dining room table, right where I thought they were, right where they most definitely were not when I had been looking for them earlier. "Self," said I...

* * * *

A few hours later, I was to meet friends for one of the final performances of the revival of 110 in the Shade.

(A little aside on 110: when I think about it, the story's very much like La fanciulla del West, except that Lizzie (Minnie) does not go off with Starbuck (Dick Johnson) at the end, but stays behind with File (Jack Rance). The Jack Rance stand-in is a much nicer guy in this version. How un-Puccini-like! But the essential plot points are virtually the same, down to Lizzie bargaining with the sheriff to let the outlaw go free.)

I had been advised by David that I simply had to see this show. He had seen it in previews and then again just a few weeks ago, and he waxed rhapsodic over Audra McDonald. I am a fan anyway, and we tend to have quite similar taste in things musical and theatrical, so I knew I was in for a treat. However, when he wrote the following to me after seeing the show the second time, I thought he was being excessive:

"At the end of the show I was thinking that I never saw Callas or Bernhardt,
but I have been lucky enough to see Audra McDonald.
That's how good she is."

Guess what? He wasn't exaggerating. It was one of the most extraordinary things I have ever seen. I went off on my own ecstatic response a few days later when I wrote to my teacher (who is also Audra's teacher):

"Audra last night was radiant. Out of this fucking world. David was not far off. One does not see this sort of performance very often in one's lifetime. She had the guts to do the "Old Maid" song that ends the first song expressionistically, barely singing it. The rage and longing came from her true center, way beyond her actual singing voice. And the end was so joyous. The audience went completely crazy. So did I. Just thinking about it now makes me smile. More than smile. [It still does.] I see why David was so beside himself when he saw it the second time. The rest of the cast was very good too, especially John Cullum as the father and the guy playing Starbuck, who evidently did not get good reviews. I thought he was just perfect, actually. The guy playing File, the sheriff, was a good actor, but that singing voice was excruciating, out of tune and unfocused. I hope he was sick, but evidently he's been more or less like this throughout. But who cares? This wasn't about him!"

The success of the show rides on the Lizzie, and Audra had moments I will simply never forget. Of course "Raunchy" was show-stopping, even better than it had been on the Tonys telecast, but it was the little moments that told the most. Her transformation from homely to radiant happened entirely in her face. All Starbuck did was let down her hair; the magic, again, came from within. Every so often one sees something that one will simply never forget, that can never be surpassed. I saw Vickers do Tristan and Otello, I saw Stratas as Suor Angelica, I saw Cotrubas as Mimi, I saw Quasthoff sing Winterreise, I saw Lois Smith in Trip to Bountiful, I saw Vanessa Redgrave as Lady Torrance in Orpheus Descending (twice!). I've seen a handful of other things that matched those. And this was one of them. I think she should be dubbed "The Duse of Broadway" in the same way that Muzio was known as "The Duse of Song."

So even on the day that I was robbed on the subway, I was still grateful to be a New Yorker. Sometimes it still does feel to me like the greatest city in the world!

Days past/Days to come

2007-07-24T06:49:00.001-07:00

I have been asked to put more recordings on here of singers that I have referenced in earlier postings.

I will be very happy to do so in the near future. Right now, I am newly home from the anniversary party, which was a trip, to say the least. A trip down memory lane and a few other places as well, but on the whole, a positive experience, and eye-opening, as every visit to my family proves to be.

My younger brother has his camera constantly at the ready, and he captured some pretty wonderful photos. These may not mean anything to people who don't know me or my family, but I'm going to post two or three of them anyway.

Enjoy. I promise that you will enjoy those recordings even more. I have so many things I want to share!

My parents

The three brothers

The five siblings

My brother Jonathan and me

And my personal favorite:

"The Gundlach females" (as my mother calls them): my sister Diane, my sister-in-law Mary Kay, my sister Sarah, and my sister-in-law Sharon (each captured in her full essence)

Happy Anniversary!

2007-07-20T23:09:00.000-07:00

My parents are celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary tomorrow. I am here in Milwaukee at my brother's. Each of their children has been asked to "say a few words" in honor of the occasion. As Jonathan and I discussed it, all I could think of were either excruciatingly painful memories or ridiculing, slightly disdainful reminiscences. My childhood was not what I would call a happy one. Growing up gay in a household that veered so exaggeratedly to the right that it's amazing the whole thing didn't tip over, I lived in fear that my minister father would damn me to eternal hellfire. I suffered from being never understood, never nurtured in ways in which I needed to be nurtured, never valued or treasured for who I was. Hardly appropriate material for such an occasion.

I finally decided that I was just going to turn the whole thing into a big joke. I was pretty surprised when I sat down at my computer to write it out and this came out instead:

When my paternal grandparents celebrated their fiftieth anniversary twenty-eight years ago, I remember thinking to myself, jeez, are these people OLD! Just yesterday I sat in a restaurant with my parents and my niece, telling Laura stories about Miss Lisius, the Jewel Tea man, and Frieda’s heroic efforts in the summer of 1973; my beloved grandmother who would be ninety-nine if she were with us today. These and so many other memories, be they vignettes or monumental events, have long since taken their place in our family lore. I imagined myself in Laura’s shoes, listening to these stories that occurred years before she was even born. She was probably thinking to herself: jeez, are these people OLD!

For a person who has been thirty-five for quite some time now, I find it hard to wrap my mind around the passage of time. I see my mother and father in front of me today and I am amazed that they have aged at all, since in essence they are very much the same people they have always been, the same parents that I have loved all these years. Those incremental changes from week to week that one barely notices one’s self appear more jarring to me since we only see each other a few times a year. In my mind’s eye we are all still the same as we were in 1971. Reading over some of Dad’s old Christmas letters yesterday (whose parenthetical glories we all remember with such… strong feelings), I was struck by how clearly our destinies were written even then. Those images were sketched very early, but the etching of all of these age lines has rendered those drawings deeper and more subtle with the passage of time.

So today we not only celebrate fifty years of Ted and Jane’s married life, but we also acknowledge all the past experiences that formed us and them. We laugh, cry and ruminate over memories that both delight and haunt us. And we bow before the very passage of time itself. I am in wonder and awe that these two very different people have shared such a rich lifetime, that they created and shaped the lives of five very different children, that they now delight in a new generation of their children’s children. (Sorry to let you down on that one, but some of my other siblings have more than made up for that!)

Time passes. There’s no escaping that. But perhaps it’s not something we should even attempt to escape. Without the passage of time our lives would have no perspective. Without the passage of time we would have no memories to treasure. Without the passage of time, our relationships would not evolve, mature and deepen. And without the passage of time we would not be here celebrating our love for these two people and their shared lifetime of love.

I guess I'm going to live through this after all!

Thank you, Jerry

2007-07-17T06:41:00.001-07:00

...and thanks to each of you wonderful people who wrote with your own tributes to him. I was profoundly moved to read them, and I'm sure others reading this blog will have the same response.

Those of us who suffered with/from depression know what havoc this can wreak on our lives. As a friend said to me last night, we must support each other so that we never fall into that deep pit of despair ourselves.

There are artists the memory of whose tragic lives often threatens to take precedence over their artistry: Judy Garland, Piaf, Billie Holiday, Callas, and others. And those who died nobly but too young are not exempt from these either: Ferrier, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and Lipatti, among others. And those others who also ended their lives by their own hands: Saramae Endich, Marie Collier, and Susannah McCorkle, about whom I was just writing the other day. And yet in the end, one wants these people to be remembered for their supreme and unique artistry. Jerry represents the very best among his generation of tenors and I hope he will always be remembered this way.

I was just writing to another friend this morning about some of my favorite memories of Jerry. One day he and I took a U-Haul out to Jersey to pick up some furniture that a friend of ours was buying from another friend who was moving away. We had the most rollicking good time. I remember he backed the van into the mailbox as he was maneuvering onto the driveway. Loading up the van was somehow uproariously funny as well. And afterward, we sat at the GWB for ages waiting for the backup, and just talked and talked about anything and everything.

I don't quite have the heart to post a clip of his singing right now, but I have Lipatti's performance of the Schubert G-flat impromptu that I will put here instead. This is from his last recital in Besançon, 16 September 1950. Leukemia felled him less than three months later. Here is an almost desperate lyricism, the summoning of waning strength to share one last moment of Schubert's poetry. I think it's a fitting tribute to Jerry, and to all those other artists whom we have lost before their time.

Jerry... if we had only known

2007-07-12T09:18:00.000-07:00

What a blow yesterday to read of Jerry Hadley's botched-but-probably-soon-to-be-successful suicide attempt. To say that I am crushed and devastated would be an understatement.

Jerry was a friend of mine. A few years ago as he was revamping his repertoire he coached some of his roles with me: Cavaradossi, Faust (Damnation de Faust), Pinkerton. These last two he had done frequently, but at the time Cavaradossi was still new for him. What an honor it was for me to work with him. What was even more amazing to me was his humility and his willingness to take my suggestions and run with them.

Yeah, he was a tortured soul. But he didn't wear it on his sleeve. He was such an affable guy. And frighteningly intelligent. He knew absolutely everything there was to know about the Civil War and he would regale people with it as long as he held the floor. (Kind of the way that I can go on and on about singers and singing if I feel like I have somebody's ear.)

Long before I even met Jerry, there were stories going around in the business (and if I was privy to them, then they were hardly secrets) that in spite of his continuing success (this was in the mid-nineties) that he was dissatisfied and unfulfilled in his life. And there had been such a slew of setbacks for him in recent years. The public ones we know about; the personal ones can only be guessed at by those who didn't know him.

>I could get up on my soapbox and talk about what a cruel business this is; that someone can be on top of the world at one moment and a piece of dog shit on the sidewalk the next. I have had this experience repeatedly myself, albeit on a much lesser level ('s-Hertogenbosch, Stuttgart, Paris and other places as well) and it's no fun. And if one is plagued by perpetual self-doubt, as both Jerry and I were/are, it's not such an easy thing to laugh off.

Someone I was speaking to about this yesterday said: What a selfish thing for him to do. And yes, suicide is often seen as the ultimate narcissistic act. But part of that is because it's just too scary for the survivors to try and get into the head of the person who has done this unspeakable thing. Frankly, there are a lot of people in this business who should be feeling hugely guilty right now for the way they treated him.

I am reminded of Susannah McCorkle, that beautiful jazz singer who also suffered from crippling depression and who, after a particularly public professional slap in the face, committed suicide. I was haunted by her death for months. Those who have not experienced this depth of depression just can't understand what would drive a person to do this. And intelligence and the powers of reasoning are nothing against this torture.

The only way one can do justice to those great artists whose lives end tragically or in suicide is to remember their contribution to our lives, how, putting all demons aside, they managed to bring us joy, sadness, beauty: the whole range of human experience. Life isn't all tragedy; we should remember primarily the happiness Jerry brought, both to his public and to his friends. We need to fight for joy as best we can.

Jerry Hadley the Artist I will remember as one who sang with such taste, musicality, scrupulousness. His operetta recordings are possibly the best we've heard from an American tenor ever. And his performances in the lyric tenor repertoire, Mozart especially, are to be treasured. The guy Jerry Hadley that I am going to remember is beautifully captured in the photo below. Pure joy, in spite of all that other crap: this was the essence of Jerry.

A Fairy From the Ice

2007-07-11T07:40:00.000-07:00

I gave a friend a recording of Eidé Noréna the other day; he had never heard of her and asked me to write a blog entry about her. I am all too happy to acquiesce, first of all because it allows me to put off other work, and second because she is one of the greatest singers I have heard and surely one with one of the most unusual career trajectories. Which fact is, of course, of great comfort and inspiration to the likes of me!

Karoline Hansen was born in Oslo in 1884. She made her debut in 1904 as Amor in Orfeo. She made a few recordings under this name for Pathé, but for all intents and purposes it was a provincial career through WWI and beyond. We are told that the voice was small and unremarkable. I have not heard these early recordings, so I cannot comment.

She married a famous Norwegian actor named Egel Eide and began singing under the name Kaja Eide. Eide (Egel, that is) proved to be greatly instrumental in perfecting her acting style, which was consistently remarked upon.

She received vocal advice from Nellie Melba, not a singer celebrated for her generosity toward other singers, sopranos in particular. Thus armed with some fragments of technique taught to Melba by her legendary teacher, Mathilde Marchesi, Kaja Eide completely reworked her technique with Raimund von zur Mühlen until she had achieved a voice of great purity and evenness, but also one strong enough to sustain the great dramatic intent she brought to her singing.

Eide Norena (for she had by now changed her name one last time), made a Scala debut at age forty as Gilda under Toscanini. The same year she sang at Covent Garden and eventually sang in Chicago, Salzburg, Amsterdam and eventually the Met (there is, in fact, a broadcast recording extant of her Juliette in Roméo et Juliette with Charles Hackett from 1935, two years before her retirement at age 55). Her career, however, was centered in Paris (hence the accents aigus often added to her name).

The range of her roles was extraordinary: Ophélie, Butterfly, Blondchen, Desdemona, the Queen of Shemakha in Le coq d'or, Mathilde in Guillaume Tell, Violetta, Liu, Antonia in Contes d'Hoffmann, Mimi, Marguerite, Nedda. She held her own against Martinelli's Moor, Thill's Don José and Maria Nemeth's Turandot. She clearly possessed an extraordinary technique to be able to conquer such a wide range of repertoire make an impression next to such huge voices. At the end of her career, she made a recording of Handel's "Care selve" from Atalanta which is at least the equal of the celebrated recording of Alma Gluck and the less well-known version by Florence Quartararo (who will, I hope, be the subject of my next entry).

How can I possibly choose one or two recordings to share of this singer, whom the always hyperbolic André Tubeuf referred to as une fée des glaces (a fairy from the ice).

All right, I'll pick if I have to: in tribute to her Norwegian heritage, I offer her recording of "Våren" by Edward Grieg and Pamina's aria from La flute enchantée (for, like so many of her recordings, it's sung in French). You can hear the vulnerability, the beauty and the great inner strength of this singer. Eide Norena, Eidé Noréna, Eidé Norena: I don't care how it's spelled. Hers is some of the most perfect singing (whatever that means) on record: exquisitely inflected, clearly articulated, informed by a great technique and a deep commitment to the drama.

I'm looking for more photos; she was clearly a beautiful, glamorous woman.

God, I wish I had room to post her Liu as well. Or her Juliette. Or her Violetta. Well, perhaps some other time. If I get any requests...

Ma belle amie est morte

2007-07-06T07:16:00.000-07:00

I am getting sick of paying tribute to the greats. I love singing their praises, but it breaks my heart observing their passing. What a week of loss for lovers of great singing. First Bubbles and now Régine Crespin. As I wrote to a friend earlier, in the course of a few days we lose the quintessential American soprano and now the quintessential French soprano.

This is a singer I loved like few others. She had enormous reserves of power but her singing always had delicacy and a certain Gallic élan that few non-native French speakers ever muster (of course I except Maggie Teyte and Mary Garden). I was privileged to be able to see her when I was young as Madame de Croissy in Dialogues of the Carmelites (and yes, it was in English) on the Minneapolis stop of the Met tour. Her performance was riveting, perhaps surpassed in my experience only by Teresa Stratas as Suor Angelica (what is it with these divas and nuns?) One really felt that she was going through the death agonies. I only hope that, unlike her Croissy's, her passing yesterday was peaceful.

In my Sills entry, I forgot to mention that in my mind, she will always be as she was in the mid-seventies. The other, more hard-boiled Sills was perhaps a natural outgrowth of that other persona, but she should be remembered as a singer, not an administrator, as she herself said. But Crespin always gave the sense of being beyond age. Her Carmen and Charlotte toward the end of her career were as magnificent as her Kundry and Marschallin toward the beginning. And she always presented herself with such a sense of glamour and "womanliness", the term used perhaps most frequently to describe her and her singing.

There are so many recordings of hers I'd love to put on here. But how could I possibly choose: her faultless recording of Fauré's "Soir" from her 1966 EMI song recital? But what about that transcendent "Sombre foret" or "D'amor sull'ali rosee" from her 1958 EMI aria recording? Much less well-known but riveting are the excerpts from Hérodiade from 1963, one of a series of excerpts from French operas done by Pathé in the sixties. Even her effervescent Offenbach and Satie recordings from later in her career are to be treasured.

Given these and so many others that are more readily available (her definitive Nuits d'été and Shéhérazade, her exquisite Poulenc recordings (the Stabat Mater, which displays her exquisite pianissimi, the Dialogues des Carmélites, the ultra-beautiful profoundly moving recording of "C") I have chosen two of her more rare recordings. They are both from a 1967 Hunter College recital with my dear John Wustman at the piano.

Hugo Wolf: Kennst du das Land

Hector Berlioz: Le spectre de la rose

I have friends who were actually at this recital and they said that it was as unbelievable live as it is on recording. This is how I will always remember her, expressive, exquisite, powerful, and sublime.

Sitting shiva for Beverly

2007-07-04T07:09:00.000-07:00

I join my voice with multitudes of others who mourn the passing of this extraordinary singer.

I sat up half the night last night reading the various tributes to her, including those posted on her wonderful website, listening to her recordings and watching the rare and marvelous clips on youtube which I cannot recommend highly enough.

In my youth I would argue her supremacy over Joan Sutherland. As far as I was concerned, there was no contest, particularly in roles that they shared (Lucia, Bolena, Fille du Régiment, etc.)

Here is a woman at the beginning of her career, as a house soprano (not unlike Sutherland, in fact), sang anything and everything. Yes, she did over-ornament her da capo arias, sometimes even before the da capo. It was not by chance that the frilliest pink iris of them all is named the "Beverly Sills".

But she was no shrinking violet: she was a risk-taker, and we loved her for that:

With her light voice, to take on Roberto Devereux (which many consider her greatest role) and to open the door to so much unexplored bel canto repertoire.

To give the best years of her career to City Opera, the company that she loved, and in more that one way, saved.

To have the courage to say no to the Met until the right role came along.

To overcome her first battle with cancer toward the end of her singing career.

To take on new and challenging roles (Norma, Thais, Giulietta in Capuleti) even as her voice began to fail her somewhat.

To find the strength to persevere in spite of personal heartbreak.

To popularize opera without trivializing it, all the while remaining quintessentially American (and specifically New-Yorkian).

To commit so completely to the dramatic element of opera, even if it took years off of her career.

To move ahead, to not look back, and to continue to dedicate her life to music, even after her singing career was over.

There are those who say that the voice was never beautiful. I strongly disagree. The flutter became excessive at the end, but her technique never abandoned her. Here is the final vocal performance she gave on any stage and even at this late date, the voice is exquisite, as is the personality behind it:

It just so happens that today I finally figured out how to post sound files on my blog, so here is a fitting tribute to a woman who unknowingly changed my life, as she did for so many others:

Gehen wir ins chambre séparée (Der Opernball)

Ruh' in Frieden, gesegnete Sängerin. Wir werden dir niemals vergessen.

Just in time for Gay Pride!

2007-06-20T05:26:00.000-07:00

If only my parents had had this! If only countless families throughout the country had had enough foresight to protect themselves!

Thanks to Janice Hall for the link!

Adorable vs. Uproarious

2007-06-19T20:08:00.000-07:00

I encountered two amusing things over the past couple days that I simply must share.

Being a great Lotte Lehmann aficionado (as well as a board member of the Lotte Lehmann Foundation... shameless plug for the foundation, I was searching on youtube for an excerpt from her single Hollywood film, Big City for MGM (which I did not find on youtube, but which I actually found on the Lehmann Foundation website (click on this link to view it in QuickTime... and DO watch the clip; her warmth and charm come through like gangbusters).

I also found this clip on youtube of footage from Lehmann's Australian tour in 1937 and it is adorable. Always wondered what a laughing kookaburra really sounded like!

Someone in my building has been discarding boxes of old LPs. I have retained a childhood fascination for the long playing record. There was something so satisfying about going through bins of LPs, a peculiar mystique that CDs cannot match. Anyway, there were some real treasures among those LPs, including a 1959 Maureen O'Hara album on RCA entitled "Love Letters from Maureen O'Hara" and a 1958 Abbe Lane album, also on RCA, entitled "The Lady in Red" with Sid Ramin's orchestra.

My two favorite album covers in the lot, though, were two on the Audio Fidelity label, both with Jo Basile, his Accordion and Orchestra. One is called "Cafe Italiano" and the other is entitled "Accordion de Paris." My scanner won't accommodate the entire album cover, but I was able to capture the essence of each and I hope they will delight you as much as they did me, particularly "Accordion"...

One of the best things is that they clearly used the same table and chairs for each photo (even though the table cloths appear to be different colors and the chairs may have been spray painted between photo shoots)! Just throw some sausages and cheese on the table ed eccoci, siamo in Italia. Merely replace with a bottle of wine and two half-empty glasses, et voilà, nous sommes transportés à Paris!

Sylvia and Shirley

2007-06-19T07:06:00.000-07:00

I AM OUTRAGED! THOSE LADY MACBETH CLIPS OF VERRETT HAVE BEEN REMOVED FROM YOUTUBE. SO HAS MOST OF THE GOOD STUFF!

Well, I haven't really been inundated with guesses on the previous post's Violetta, so let me just do the "reveal": Sylvia Sass. This was the performance that catapulted her onto the world stages. Aix, 1976. Her acting is no great shakes, except for the one moment during Alfredo's serenade, but she looks amazing and proved her acting chops elsewhere (supposedly her death scene was incredible, though there are no clips from it on youtube, not yet, anyway). There are more than a dozen Sass clips on youtube at present, posted mostly by a user named "sylviasasslives."

By the way, I can indeed attest that she lives. I saw her sing a benefit at the Hungarian Embassy in Paris about two and a half years ago. To say that the voice is more or less completely shot is to be kind. She looked amazing, however. She presented this Hungarian would-be stud baritone, his hair slicked back in a pony-tail, as her "protege" (God knows exactly what that meant) who sang a not very good rendition of the Ravel Don Quichotte songs. The only thing he lacked were the pointed incisors!

She sang Liszt and Kodaly songs with very gusty, explosive vocalism that only exposed the sorry condition of her voice. They were performing in a salle in the embassy that was the most amazing room: very narrow, very deep, with the most amazing trimmed gold leaf on every column and molding. There was a platform at the front of the stage from which the singers entered stage right. There were some precarious stairs and La Sass was wearing some pretty spiky stiletto heels, and there was one narrowly averted accident in her traversal of those stairs.
The final number on the program was the Tosca-Scarpia duet from Act One (!?), hardly the most scintillating excerpt from the opera, and yet one was glad that something more ambitious was not attempted. But it gave her a chance to chew the scenery in a most engagingly theatrical way.

They saved the most grotesque number for an encore: a "La ci darem" in which our Sylvia portrayed the most artificially coy, arch Zerlina. It was a performance not to be forgotten. I only wish I had taken more thorough notes at the time. I ended up relaying my impressions by phone at the time, but I am sure I have forgotten any salient details, such as what she was wearing.

For anyone interested, be sure to check out the other Sass clips on youtube.

In closing, I simply MUST post Lady Macbeth's first scene as performed at La Scala in 1975 by the extraordinary Shirley Verrett. I have never heard anything like it, not from her and not from anyone else, either. The clip in the best condition is in two parts, both of which I post here. I believe her performance the role in its entirety is on youtube; I know I have posted the Sleepwalking Scene earlier. This is, if anything, even more amazing.

Okay, since someone has seen fit to remove these clips from youtube, I will just have to post these excerpts from Verrett's Met Tosca. She is at her most gorgeous physically here, and it is fabulous to watch a pro handle a role for which she was perhaps not perfectly intended by nature.

I also found a clip of a concert performance of the first Macbeth aria. It's not nearly as good as the Scala clip, and you miss her full characterization, but it's still damn good and it's still Shirley!

A Violetta for the ages (singing Tosca... argh!)

2007-06-15T06:05:00.000-07:00

I only have a moment this morning, but I had to post something that I found on youtube last night. Someone has been posting a lot of clips from this singer lately, and I have not seen all of them, but this one absolutely blew me away. Certainly the best singing I have ever heard from this artist, and amazingly, one of the best-sung "Sempre liberae" (?) in my experience.

Well, yet another time, youtube has seen fit to remove a video that otherwise will remain unviewed. Or rather, youtube has been forced to withdraw a video.

Which kind of ruins the suspense... okay, it was Sylvia Sass, about whom I will say more later. I have a clip of her singing "Vissi d'arte" from a few years later, but already the voice was going in the scary direction that we all remember (at least those of us who remember Sass at all!)

Anyway, here's the Tosca. It has good moments, but it can't hold a candle to that Violetta. If it ever reappears, I will repost it, I promise.

"Montserrat" and "Kiri" - the ULTIMATE Crossover

2007-06-13T15:56:00.000-07:00

And one more time on this subject. The last time, perhaps for present. But this is the most hilarious crossover skit ever. I decided to put the whole scene on here, rather than just the number at the end of the scene. Enjoy... and see if you can get the song out of your head anytime soon!!!

Two current sopranos: "Built" for Strauss/Simpering, whimpering

2007-06-13T09:23:00.000-07:00

I found a link today to a sample of Nina Stemme's new recording of the Vier letzte Lieder.

I listened to the "Im Abendrot"; it was okay. I found it interesting that the NPR commentator had to say about her: "Stemme has a voice built for this music — strong, brushed silver tempered with a touch of cream." I'm not sure I would agree that the voice is "built" for Strauss. I find it interesting that they use this particularly turn of phrase in describing her voice. It certainly "built"in that it does not sound terribly natural or free to me. As for the touch of cream, I think you need more than a touch of cream to sing these songs well. She is okay, but not a singer I would turn to again and again for this music. Flagstad sang the premiere of these songs, of course, but very few other hochdramatisch soprani have attempted these. I'm not saying that Stemme is such a singer: to my ear she does not seem to be. I do not know any of her other work and I will reserve judgment until I hear the rest of the cycle and perhaps a bit of the Tristan with Domingo if I can take it.

BTW, Rothenberger recorded it in the seventies with André Previn, I believe it was. I would be interested to hear that performance; also Augér's, two singers I usually like very much. And Elly Ameling (!) sang this at the Concertgebouw at the very end (!) of her career. I don't know how she would have managed to even hit the high B in "Frühling" or float the the high-lying ethereal phrases in "Beim Schlafengehen". Not necessarily well-advised, but I'm sure she did it with supreme taste. And besides, at that point, she could do whatever she wanted. Kind of like Sayao singing Margerita in Mefistofele at the end of her career. As to Stemme and her recording, give me Jurinac, give me della Casa, give me Janowitz, give me Isokoski. BTW, I just found a very interesting link that lists most if not all performances of these songs that are (or were ever) available on recordings.

Also to return briefly to the crossover topic with which I have been concerning myself in my last few entries:

I listened to about two-thirds of You Know Who's Haunted Heart CD on Rhapsody last night. It was like bathing in slightly rancid honey. She certainly has the style down and her voice sounds beautiful as it nearly always does, but she is as overindulgent in this music as she is in anything else. And while her distinctive vocal "style" (i.e. all that "simpering, whimpering" stuff, to quote "Bewitched", which receives a particularly masturbatory performance here) may lend itself more naturally to jazz, the self-indulgence is just as offensive in this music as it is in anything else she sings. At least one cannot say that she has poisoned the ears of an entire generation of jazz lovers as to how that music should be sung. I wish the same could be said of opera lovers.

Three crossover extremes

2007-06-12T06:31:00.000-07:00

MagnifiCathy

God, I hope people actually read these! I have so much fun writing them and I'd hate to think I was merely putting them out into a vaccuum.

Anyway, at the end of the last post, I promised to follow-up with my impressions of two different crossover albums from the nineties: Jorma Hynninen and Gérard Lesne. These are two singers that I admire and enjoy very much. I love Hynninen's big, craggy voice that he could also modeulate to the gentlest pianissimo. And I think that Lesne is/was one of the most imaginative and best vocally-equipped of the batch of countertenors that just preceded David Daniels.

I never heard Hynninen sing live, but I heard Lesne do a concert in Paris a number of years ago. I no longer remember the particulars. Maybe it was at the Athénée. It was a concert of arias with Il Seminario Musicale, the instrumental ensemble that he founded and led. They did a lot of recordings for Virgin in the nineties. I don't have all of them, but I remember his recording of Handel's Lucrezia as being particularly intrepid.

And before I get too heavily into this, I must pay tribute to another singer who has managed to produce some of the best crossover recordings ever. I am speaking of Bryn Terfel, whose "Something Wonderful" recording of Rodgers and Hammerstein is supremely beautiful. Of course I detest "There is Nothing Like a Dame" and no one is ever going to make me change my mind. But there are so many delights on that recording. I don't have it in front of me, but I remember particularly his charming "It Might as Well be Spring" from State Farm (doesn't Jeanne Crain sing it in the movie, all girlish and feminine; Terfel's take is just as effervescent but not at all girlish) and the profoundly moving "Come Home" from Allegro.

Okay, back to the matter at hand. First, the material: Hynninen album is entitled "Evergreens," which really doesn't promise much so much as genetic schlock. He sings a bunch of standards, and not all of the Cole Porter variety. He also sings such faves as "Lullaby of Birdland," "Love Me Tender," and "Yesterdays." The disc opens with "Love is a Many-Splendored Thing" (bringing back memories of Jennifer Jones' most peculiar performance in the film of the same title) and then several Cole Porter ("So in Love," "True Love," "Night and Day") and moves along the same lines, covering standards over a period of say, thirty years, from "Isn't it Romantic" to "Only You."

On his album "Mad'Lesne" (get it?), Lesne sings all his own material. The French material is cut out of the same cloth as songs from the same period sung by singers such as Liane Foly, Céline Dion (whose French-language albums from the nineties are SO much better than the English-language stuff she was producing at the same time). There are songs with names such as "Étoile," "Vampire," "Blouse," "Jeux d'humains," and "Sauve qui peut," which gives a sense of the power ballad type of music that we are looking at.

I had distinct first impressions of these recordings when I first listened to them about two weeks ago. I thought that Hynninen was bellowing like a stuffed pig and that Lesne was mercurial and kinda fabulous.

However, upon further listening, I've completely revised my opinion. Of course I admire Lesne for completely going out on a limb and presenting a completely different side of his music-making to the public. I have no idea how this recording was received in the French press at the time, but they tend to love this sort of thing. The first song is "Étoile" and I have to say that it is probably the best one on the whole album. He sings it in primarily in his baritone voice, doing some phrases in the sort of falsetto that one hears in any male pop singer. He sounds like a heavy rocker here, he spits out the words with real abandon and attitude. It's actually kinda sexy.

Unfortunately, it's pretty much downhill from there. The second song, "Les Empêcheurs" is completely banal in every way. He is still in his baritone range, but I'm sorry, lyrics like "méfie-toi des empêcheurs" and repeated cries of "menteurs" are not particularly compelling. In the next song, "Maladresse" there is a country-tinged accompaniment and he enters, singing the whole piece in a rather pallid falsetto that just doesn't work for me. And again, the words and melody are completely hackneyed: "Je suis maladroit, j'ai perdu ta mémoire"... oh, please!

"Vamp" really sounds like a Liane Foly number, sorta jazzy, with wailing saxophone and vocal lines, très nineties. I'm telling you, this could be any middle-of-the-road French pop album from those years.

"Jeux d'humains" tries to be a bit more hard-rocking, kind of like the opening track, but it doesn't have the same catchy hook. Then "Blouse" which sounds more like a Céline Dion song, with this puncutating pizzicato strings... I'm sure you can just imagine. And "Alissa" is the understated, heart-broken number. The wailing sax and the falsetto-stylings take center stage. (If I had bought this recording when it first came out, I probably would have listened to it a lot and sung along with songs like this one, like Dion's "Pour que tu m'aimes encore.")

"Les petits hommes" isn't really worthy of comment, and "Souvenirs" is in a simpler style, accompanied primarily by guitar and a violin obbligato. If it were a more memorable song, it'd be pretty.

The final track "Sauve qui peut" begins with an accordion lick followed by the same melody whistled (and not terribly well). It's would-be retro ("Je te hais moi non plus"... hmm, wonder where he got that lyric from). It's an attempt to have fun that doesn't really work. ("Parle-moi d'amour et je sors de ton lit.")

The whole thing sounds awfully dated now, so that the whole thing sounds rather stale. I just wish that Lesne's songwriting chops were stronger. The recording would have been a whole lot entertaining. And now we come to Jorma's faves. First of all, the album is dedicated to his wife, his "girlfriend of 1958." There is a photo of the two of them together out on the water; if it was taken in 1958, he is seventeen years old. Just about the most handsome seventeen-year-old you could ever want to see. I'm certainly glad I didn't know someone like that when I was seventeen years old; I would have made a complete fool of myself. (On the other hand, it might have been just what I needed, but that's another story altogether.

The songs are all piano-accompanied. The pianist/arranger, Heikki Sarmanto is referred to as "one of the most internationally known figures in Finnish jazz." (Yes, it evidently does exist, lol!) The arrangements initially seemed to me quite pallid and uninteresting, but a little tasteful restraint sounds nice after all the guitar-stylings of "Mad'Lesne." Yes, Hynninen does bark a little bit on some of the songs ("Begin the Beguine" being the most egregrious example; in general the Cole Porter numbers are the least successful on the recording.) His English is really quite good (unlike Mattila in her "Wonderful" album, he doesn't sing any of the songs in Finnish translation). There are some peculiarities of course, the most egregious being the "u" vowel which almost always emerges as "ü" and an insistence on singing on an "r" rather than the preceding vowel ("showrrrrrrs"). Other vowels are given strange diphthongs and certain consonants, which merely adds to the overall charm. (A bit like Elly Ameling's slightly-accented English diction... now I could write a volume on those pop albums!)

Anyway, the first few tracks don't bode well for the album, but once he gets past the Rodgers and Hart and Porter and into less "distinguished" songs such as "Serenade in Blue" (Harry Warren and Mack Gordon) or "Love Me or Leave Me" it becomes apparent that he actually has something to say in this songs. And by the time he gets to the songs from the fifties, it all clicks into place. It's moving to think that these are probably songs that were popular when he and his wife were courting. "My Prayer," "Only You," and "Love Me Tender" are, in fact, exquisite. And his singing of "Yesterday" is heartbreaking. In its own way, it is a perfect rendition. I certainly couldn't imagine it sung better or more simply than it is here.

"Yesterday" of course brings to mind Cathy Berberian's "Beatles Arias" album, which is cut out of altogether different cloth. One doesn't know quite what to make of these recordings. The whole thing sounds like a joke, and a good one at that, carried off with her unique aplomb (the arrangement of "Ticket to Ride" is probably the most famous, but "Help" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" are also hilarious). Her overly formal (and intentional) English pronunciation adds to the delight. And there are certain songs that come off beautifully, as more than just a gimmick ("Here, There and Everywhere," "Girl"). Her version of "Yesterday" also comes straight from her heart, or at least appears to do so. In fact, in a conversation in French at the end of the CD, she says that originally she chose to do the songs in a baroque style that would appeal to the parents of Beatles fans, but eventually she put them in her programs simply because they were wonderful music. I think it would be safe to call this the most distinctive "most unique" crossover album ever.

BTW, if anyone loves Berberian, you gotta visit her website which is one of the best-designed websites I've ever encountered. There are fantastic photos, a thorough bio, and a playlist of her singing everything from Monteverdi to "Surabaya-Johnny" to her own "Stripsody" (the reference is to comic strips, not to ecdysiasts). And if you weren't a fan before, you will be after you learn more about her. The "Ticket to Ride" on her website is the best-sung one I have ever heard from her.

Danger, Will Robinson!

2007-06-02T20:48:00.000-07:00

Voulez-vous, baby? (Call 1-800-K-A-R-I-T-A-M)

That last post was extremely self-pitying and self-indulgent but I think I’m going to leave it up there as a reminder to myself and as a warning of sorts. It’s awfully easy to start feeling sorry for one’s self. A slippery slope to tread, that’s for sure.

And speaking of slippery slopes, I am reminded of a more amusing one that’s been on my mind lately: the dangerous territory classical singers tread when they endeavor to do crossover!

And yet I am dipping my own toe in these waters; I have been trying to come up with a viable cabaret act and/or one-man show. I’m still not sure if I want it to be scripted or not. One thing I am sure of is that I do not want it to be strictly autobiographical. Of course one always incorporates elements of one’s own life and experience into one’s work, and I have every intention to do so consciously. I am not the type of person who tries to hide who they are, at least not when I am onstage in front of an audience!

I have been in conversation with a director on the various possibilities open to me, and he has encouraged me to spread my net very wide, to choose music of extreme stylistic variety. My concern, of course, is doing this music justice, and not sounding like a fool, either. On the duet recital that Mark Crayton and I performed this past season, we did three numbers by the Zellnik brothers, who wrote the musical Yank! which I was lucky enough to see at the New York Musicals Festival a year and a half ago. I asked Joe and David to adapt three numbers from their catalog for two countertenors.

Not everybody was thrilled with the result, but some people liked it, and I certainly enjoyed doing the songs, especially because they were so pointedly different from any other repertoire on the program. I’ve posted one of them (called “I’m Not Afraid”) on my website. As Joe remarked after the performance, one of the songs in particular (entitled “Just True”) seemed to bring out a different facet of my voice. And I have toyed around with singing pop stuff just for kicks. I mean, I put “Autumn Leaves” (in the original French) on my demo (and my website) and indeed, preparing that piece led to a huge vocal breakthrough for me. I just do not want to sound like an emasculated crooner or an over-the-hill contralto venturing into repertoire that she should save for those quiet solitary afternoons in her salon.

Listening to Teresa Stratas’ brilliant recording of “The Unknown Kurt Weill” I was reminded of when I sang “Wie lange noch” at a benefit concert for the Champaign-Urbana Gay Men’s Chorus when I was in graduate school. I have always had a thing for that song, so much more than for the French variant, “Je ne t’aime pas,” nice though it is. It was quite well received, in fact, though I never went any further with more public performances.

The divine Nicole Croisille

As a child I was extremely snobbish in my musical tastes, but eventually started listening to more pop music, and over time I developed a few really embarrassing gaffes in my musical taste (some of the less humiliating: Dalida and Nicole Croisille — two quite different French pop princesses (I don’t need to be embarrassed of loving Piaf and Juliette Gréco), ABBA, Trisha Yearwood... Even though I’m not a fan, I have both volumes of Madonna’s Greatest Hits... I think I’d better stop before I completely humiliate myself, and reveal that I have about eight or nine Céline Dion CDs (though I haven’t bought any since that duet with Andrea Bocelli).

Karita Mattila has a very peculiar album from the mid- to late-nineties called “Wonderful” where she does, indeed, sound wonderful, but the arrangements are really wrong-headed and there are a few priceless renditions, including one of “Taas päivä kaunein on” (aka “Someday My Prince Will Come”).

I think my very very favorite crossover album was done in the mid-eighties by the ever-surprising Sylvia Sass [you have to cursor down to see the album cover; the image is write-protected or I'd post it here; and BTW, do NOT miss the fabulous Felicia Weathers record jackets, either!]. In it she sings all your favorites... in Hungarian. I gotta say, her voice sounds really comfortable in this rep; it’s some of the most unforced, relaxed singing I ever heard from her. Though there is a certain party appeal in hearing “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” “Bridge over Troubled Water” or (most especially) “Flashdance” in Hungarian. At the climactic point in that song, a rhythmic clanking sound rings out in a pseudo-disco rhythm. I used to say it sounded like the janitor who worked in the recording studio banging on a garbage can cover.

And then there is an album by that ubiquitous and overrated soprano that so many people seem to love but who, to my ear, becomes more mannered and masturbatory and self-indulgent every time she opens her mouth. Certainly her pop renditions represent a nadir in this department. On her recent pop album, I was only able to listen to a version of Joni Mitchell’s “River” that sounded like some sort of scena di pazzia before I ran screaming out of the room. So there are real dangers in taking this stuff on.

I remember listening to Leontyne’s pop album and liking it, but that was during a period of my development when she could do no wrong. I do think that, were I to hear it now, I wouldn’t beam down such unstinting approval on her rendition of, for instance, “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss aus Liebe eingestellt” (“Falling in Love Again”). But I guarantee that this album is head and shoulders above the horror mentioned above.

Kiri has done a lot of this stuff without humiliating herself, and there’s a really nice Flicka recording of Rodgers and Hart (I haven’t heard her other endeavors). And of course in the Old Days, there was nothing remarkable about singers taking on a more popular repertoire. Of course there was not such a huge disparity in vocal styles then, either. A friend of mine opines that one learns a lot more about these great singers in the recordings of such repertoire, where they are allowed to let their hair down.

The young (and ever-sublime) Eileen Farrell in her element

The real masters of this repertoire were some of those gals from the thirties through the fifties: Grace Moore, Dorothy Kirsten, Helen Traubel, Risë Stevens, and the peerless Eileen Farrell. God her pop stuff, even the very last recordings she made, is breathtaking. Of course at least three of these women (Moore, her protégé Kirsten, and Farrell) started out as radio singers, which meant they cut their eye teeth singing everything and everything. Turning on a dime, as it were.

I have just pulled the Thomas Quasthoff jazz album off of Rhapsody and so far it’s not bad. He of course indulges himself a bit too much in the superior quality and range of his voice (not every song needs to end on Low Q just because he can do it, but he has a great feel for the material. His English is mostly excellent; he sounds kind of like a Dutch person (which reminds me, I haven’t even mentioned Elly’s crossover albums, but that will require a separate posting). I might even buy this one. Of course, I adore him; he can do almost no wrong in my book, just like the nameless soprano referred to above can do almost nothing right. Yes, I am a person of extremes, which is why I need to be proven wrong on occasion (although I am completely correct in these two instances).

Next time I’m going to write about the two crossover albums I got today, which sit on opposite extremes of the continuum: Jorma Hynninen and Gérard Lesne. Stay tuned because it was quite the roller-coaster ride listening to these two!

Where Am I Going?

2007-05-30T07:47:00.000-07:00

I just started writing a very downward-spiraling posting. Completely inappropriate for this blog, I realized. More the sort of thing to talk about with a close friend or to write about in my journal than to post for anyone happening by this page to read.

So instead of focusing on things that will only depress me further, how about taking stock of what I am doing and have done.

I sang four concerts in three weeks. Given the dearth of work over the past year, this was a welcome boost.

I am in the process of planning repertoire and structure for my one-man show. Will it be a cabaret act or will it be scripted? Will it draw on autobiographical elements or will it be theme-based? How can I choose pop music that is appropriate for my voice and won't sound like some pathetic self-produced, poorly-advised no-talent? (Oops... let's not slip into negativity there.) There are so many songs that I'd like to sing, and I'd love to nestle opera and art song right up there next to as many different pop styles as I can bring off. Keeping on the up and up with this is a real challenge.

I am well on the way to finding a new agent, and I am always thinking of new ways to create opportunities for myself instead of waiting for City Opera to call again, which, for some reason unknown to me, they have not done and simply may never do.

I have been teaching and coaching on a more consistent basis and I am very, very good at what I do. The challenge for me is to actually turn this talent into a money-making pursuit. Surely I am not SO anti-capitalist that I can't at least make a living!

I have been reworking and revising my three books for children and am taking a course at the New School starting next week on writing children's picture books. These stories are so good; I know that, and yet it's so hard for me to put my work out there to be judged.

Okay, I have aired enough of my dirty laundry for today. I have an audition coming up for a new opera this fall and if I get my shit together, I know I can get the job.

I'll come back tomorrow or the next day with a reinforced sense of myself and my own self-worth. I'll probably take this posting off anyway.

Legendary Met broadcasts

2007-05-23T11:11:00.001-07:00

Indisposed and confined at home today, I have been ripping and listening to a variety of music. The two standouts are broadcasts from the Met: a Trovatore from 1961 featuring Leontyne and Corelli coming just eight days after their legendary debuts in that house. The thrill of hearing these two in their respective primes is overwhelming.

Leontyne sings with such scrupulous musicianship and so much less whooping than one normally associates with her. The registers are more firmly knit, though she makes ample use of chest voice, and she does not use that awful measured trill in the last aria that she made such consistent use of almost immediately afterward. Her "D'amor" is by no means the finest I have ever heard from her: neither her ascent to the interpolated high D-flat in or the note itself is quite perfect, but it's still an impressive performance. In general, she is sometimes a little slovenly here and there, but the control of not only the cavatina of the the first act but the cabaletta in the first act aria is remarkable. I always found her handling of coloratura to be a little hit or miss, but she is more on top of it than I have ever heard before, both here and in the cabaletta to the Di Luna duet in the last act. At times she sounds a little at the edge of her resources by her attempts to shape the drama, but altogether, this is an exquisite documentation of an artist who, at her very best, was transcendent.

And Corelli: he is an animal, although he sings a very beautiful "Ah sì, ben mio" followed by a powerhouse "Di quella pira" (which, admittedly is down a half step, but who the f*ck cares. I have never heard a tenor who was particularly well-served by those shakes/trills in the vocal line of this aria; if the high notes come out gleamingly, then the performance is a success. But his singing of "Deserto sulla terra" and the "Miserere" are spot-on and while his mannerisms are also in evidence, anyone who loves Corelli has long ago accepted those quirks, that aggressive yet somehow assiduous musicianship that one hears (at least I do) in his bull-in-a-china-shop Roméo. Not to be vulgar or anything, but for me more than any other tenor, he sounds like sex on a stick. The high D-flat that he and Leontyne sustain at the end of the Act I trio is one of the most thrilling sounds I have ever heard.

The other principals are Irene Dalis and Mario Sereni. Dalis sings her "Stride la vampa" quite cleanly, but she is somewhat wild dramatically: it's an odd dichotomy, and the audience affords her no applause after her aria. I confess I haven't listened to more of her performance, at least not yet.

Mario Sereni was, in my opinion, an exceptionally good singer, and his work here is beyond reproach, and sometimes a good deal more than that. He deserved much more recognition as he deserves a permanent place in the collective memory of opera lovers. But alas, that doesn't happen nearly enough. How short people's memories are.

And Teresa Stratas is the Inez! She sounds very young and her Italian is not idiomatic, but she holds her own in her solo lines and it is quite clearly her!

The other live Met recording I've been enjoying in snippets is a Vespri with Caballé from 1974. The supporting cast is not quite her equal, but she is supreme. All of her big moments, especially the first act scena and the "Arrigo" are breathtaking.

Gedda as Arrigo is better than I thought he would be. That is quite simply an impossible role, and he handles it as well as almost anyone else I have heard. Mind you, I only listened to excerpts.

Aint he (not) looking yummy?

Sherrill Milnes can't hold a candle to Sereni. He is up to his usually vocal tricks, hooking up to his high notes with the most distorted and unpleasant vowels he can possibly summon. Funny that in the early years of their careers, he and Domingo were frequently paired; there was even an RCA issue of "Domingo Conducts Milnes; Milnes Conducts Domingo". Who would have predicted that the tenor would take up the baton more or less for real further down the line? And yet Milnes' star set very, very quickly. In my opinion he never lived up to his promise. Even in 1974 he sounds woolly and not terribly pleasant.

I have not yet listened to Justino Diaz as Procida.

But what a lovely way to spend a sick day!

Divas of a different stripe

2007-05-21T14:01:00.000-07:00

Summer must be upon us... I've laid my opera recordings down for a bit and am listening to pop music again.

I was just poking around online and I found this clip from the 2000 Joni Mitchell tribute.

I just think that Cyndi Lauper is one of the great pop singers of the last fifty years. Of course, I always put myself out on a limb, but I dare anyone to watch this performance of "Carey" from Joni Mitchell's BLUE album (which is without a doubt one of the great achievements in pop music) and tell me that she is not a great singer.

And if that wasn't enough, here is another one who fits into that category. Since I never watch "American Idol", I have no idea when this event occurred, but it was obviously quite recently. I run hot and cold on the song "Bridge Over Troubled Water" (I actually think it's one of those songs that I am embarrassed to like) but when it is sung like this, it's incredibly moving.

Sorry, you don't get to see this one, either, but there is still a youtube video of her doing her amazing song "Pavement Cracks"... so enjoy this instead.

Finally, a single clip of my favorite pop singer of all time, the immortal Dusty Springfield. She could, and did, sing it all. From tender to raunchy (c.f. Blind Sheep, Crumbs off the Table), from show-stopping heartbreakers to bubble gum to disco, she was supreme in all she did.

This is a clip from an American TV appearance in what appears to be the late sixties (I have the documentation somewhere): "People Get Ready". She is the epitome of cool and class. Luv hah!

OOPS! I'm running late for meeting a friend for dinner... it's so easy to lose track of time listening to this stuff, isn't it?

Yesterday's Playlist

2007-05-17T07:38:00.000-07:00

I listened to a couple amazing things yesterday while I was working at my desk:

The Julia Migenes Voix Humaine (God, that's twice I've mentioned her in two days; here she is in her element)

A live Toscanini Verdi Requiem from London in 1938 with Milanov, Thorborg, Rosvaenge and Moscona (this was a Testament issue that I borrowed from the Lincoln Center liberry), and another liberry selection:

Suzanne Danco live stuff with Anserment and the Suisse Romande: Britten Les Illuminations, the Falla Canciones orchestrated, Chabrier's La Sulamite (which in my opinion is infinitely more vivid than the Suzanne Mentzer recording), the Battered Broad aria (in Czech, surprising for that era, but not for the ever-fastidious Danco), the Enfant Prodigue aria and the Geneviève scene from Pélleas (does she sing that in the second Ansermet recording with Erna Spoorenberg?) She is amazing, sometimes a little fluttery, but it was never a sensual instrument. Her musicianship and diction are absolutely peerless, though!

Also a REALLY good Erwartung with Sinopoli and Alessandra Marc (aka Judy Borden), of all people! That disc also featured an interesting Pierrot with an Italian soprano named Luisa Castellani who specializes in contemporary music. Highly musical, one of the better versions, up there with Lucy Shelton and Jan de Gaetani and maybe even the sublime Mary Thomas, but not as lurid as any of them.

Sometime soon I will write about my experience performing Pierrot Lunaire, which I am supposed to repeat sometime soon with a major symphony orchestra (but I don't want to put the mouth on it, so I will say nothing more at present!)

Roberta Alexander

2007-05-16T09:59:00.000-07:00

I rediscovered another singer yesterday who has somehow fallen through the cracks of our collective memory.

I remember hearing her Ives and Strauss song recordings in the late eighties and thinking, yes, this is interesting. At the time, her voice and artistry struck me as lacking in freedom and spontaneity.

Having just listened to her recording of Samuel Barber songs yesterday, I wonder what the hell I was thinking back then. Perhaps I have just heard so much lousy singing since that her true worth is only now apparent.

On this recording she projects elegance and profound musicianship, as well as a voice that functions beautifully in all its registers. But even more than that, in a song such as "Bessie Bobtail" that always seemed ineffectual to me, she draws upon great stores of empathy and conviction that make the song devastingly powerful.

Her Hermit Songs also seem faultless. I love Leontyne, as I have said repeatedly here, but she was not always the most scrupulous musician, nor the most... specific... interpreter. But Roberta Alexander gives each song its own character, and she is able to modify her vocal color to convey the ecstasy of "St. Ita's Vision", the desolation of "The Crucifixion", the playfulness of "The Monk and His Cat", the drama of "Sea Snatch" and the profundity of "The Desire for Hermitage." And her sheer vocalism is pristine: St. Ita's high pianissimi, while admittedly not Leontyne-esque, are transcendently beautiful in their own way.

I found a wonderful interview with her that was conducted not quite ten years ago, in which she reveals herself to be a person of great intelligence, sensitivity and wit.

I met Roberta Alexander briefly backstage at the Châtelet when I was singing in Le Luthier de Venise and she was appearing in Peter Eötvös' Angels in America. There was enormous interest surrounding the presence of three divas who had had prominent careers in the eighties and beyond: Julia Migenes and Barbara Hendricks in addition to Roberta. Her music was written in such a guttural way that one assumed that the voice was completely decimated. And yet my friend Derek Ragin, who was also in the cast, told me of sitting in his dressing room and hearing in the hallway a voice singing Mozart that was so pure, so poised, that he couldn't figure out who it was. It was Roberta's voice; and when he complimented her on her vocal state, she said that, sadly, no one was really interested in hearing her sing that music anymore.

Which makes me lament the short-sightedness of this business, when such a magnificent singer simply falls off the map, while her voice still retains much of its former beauty.

Pleasant Surprises

2007-05-14T08:18:00.000-07:00

I have been listening to the usual plethora of singers and I have heard a number of things recently that delighted me no end, including the work of a number of artists to whom I had not previously been kindly disposed. To wit:

Kiri Te Kanawa: I always thought it was a beautiful voice, for the most part well-used, but uninvolved to the point of being unartistic. I still don’t think she is the world’s most scintillating singer, but two recordings have caused me to significantly revise my general opinion of her.

The first of these is a live Carmen from Covent Garden, 1973. In many ways, this seems to me the best recording of this opera, live or studio. Shirley Verrett is impeccable musically and a tigress dramatically. Yes, her American-tinged French rankles a bit from time to time, but it does not detract from her overall performance.

Plácido Domingo, a singer whose work I have often found generalized and inspecific, gives the best performance I have heard him give as José (pronounced with an initial ‘H’ here, à l’espagnol). He even manages a piano-ish B-flat at the end of the Flower Song. And the final scene is quite dramatic, even if he does not sing the high B on “démon” which can be so thrilling when someone like Corelli attacks it.

José van Dam is a faultless Escamillo, and this performance is at least as good as any of them he recorded in the studio (which, if I’m not mistaken, he did on four separate occasions (Lombard, Solti, Karajan and the Maazel film). Here his “Si tu m’aimes” is done with such élan and eroticism that it took my breath away. I had to play it three times in a row just to bathe in that sound, and in the way he molds the phrases, so softly and yet with such virility. Yeah, I like him.

And then there is Kiri as Micaëla. She is on the verge of international stardom and she sings the aria with such creamy tone and with such surprising urgency and drama that I would have thought to be reserved for her Elvira (which, in fairness, I’ve never heard, but which I have been assured is thrilling). The voice sails forth with such assurance that I found myself wanting to revisit more of her work. So I put her recording of Les nuit’s d’été on my player. And yes, it sounds just as beautiful as one might have imagined, but what impressed here was her scrupulous musicianship. None of that wallowing around that has become synonymous with French “style” thanks to some recent superstars who shall remain nameless on this site.

So there’s Kiri. Another shocker for me was listening to a live recording of Grace Bumbry’s Norma. I remember her studio recording of the “Casta diva” as being willful rather than plangent, and in truth, that aria is a low point in her performance. She can’t really handle the fioriture of the role, and I don’t think she was the greatest vocal actor to ever take on this part, but her commitment was laudable, and, to my great shock, her high notes were faultless. They rang out with such ping that she sounded like the natural-born soprano I never really thought her to be. Some while back I saw a DVD of a recital she gave at the Châtelet within the past five years or so. The voice was free of the excessive vibrato that has plagued it in the eighties, and once past a somewhat rocky start, she sang with such care and beauty and clarity that would be the envy of singers half her age and more. She learned from Lotte Lehmann the art of singing Lieder vividly (indeed, the recital was a tribute to her former mentor). In addition, her performance of “D’amour l’ardente flamme” (the first time she had ever sung this aria in public!) was beyond all of my expectations. (In the live Norma her Adalgisa was Lella Cuberli, a singer I had never really understood; though her high notes were no match for la Bumblebee’s, her performance was fairly admirable.)

Dawn Upshaw: Another singer I have not been thrilled with in the past, though my friend David assures me that she was unforgettable in Golijov’s Aindamar. I remember hearing a recital early in her career in which she sang, among other things, the John Harbison Mirabai Songs. I also heard a well-worn performance of Britten’s Les Illuminations at Tanglewood within the past five years which I found extremely disappointing. I also did not care much for her Tribute to Jane Bathori recording, though I think she is often quite good in French rep. But on the recommendation of a friend, I decided to listen to her recording of Blitzstein, Bernstein, Sondheim and Weill entitled “I Wish It So”. The title song is one of my favorites and her performance couldn’t hold a candle to Rosemary Clooney’s definitive version from the early sixties, but the rest of the album was a near constant-delight. Her “Saga of Jenny” from Lady in the Dark had personality to burn, as did her “Glitter and Be Gay” where, apart from her adorably humorous performance, she was the complete mistress of its technical demands.

I have always admired Dawn Upshaw for her commitment to the music of contemporary composers, and for the way that she carved out a real niche for herself, though the voice itself is not truly memorable. But the way she inflects a text, the way she, to quote Elly Ameling, “taste[s] the words” makes her immediately identifiable. I understand she recently gave a magnificent “comeback” performance and I hope she is with us for many years to come.

Perhaps most surprisingly for me, I have a new-found adoration for a singer I formerly had held in some degree of disdain: Irmgard Seefried. Yes, she had the mastery of Lieder that only a native German speaker can achieve. But her voice always struck me as relatively colorless, and her technique shamelessly bad. I remember in particular a live performance of “Exsultate jubilate” on a Christmas collection that shocked the bejesus out of me. But I decided to give her one more chance. There are a number of live Salzburg recitals from the late fifties available on the Orfeo d’Or label, and I sampled the Schumann first. It was revelatory. She carried the mantel of Lehmann in the immediacy of her delivery, the insight with which she pointed the texts, the plangency of her tone and the exquisite musicianship. She is often thought of in coupling with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and yet these two singers are polar opposites. To my ear, La Blackhead is so mannered, so calculating in her delivery as to render the music stillborn (though I might even be revising my opinion of her: stay tuned), whereas Seefried is so eager, so astute, so spontaneous. And in song, the limitations of her technique are barely in evidence. I have since listened to her live Wolf recording which is even better. The humor of the Italienisches Liederbuch is enormously difficult to convey. Either it’s too heavy-handed (Thomas Quasthoff, a singer I normally revere, and Angela Denoke in a Carnegie Hall performance with Barenboim several years ago was the most egregious example of this) or it’s so damn cutesy you want to throttle the singer. So Seefried’s insouciance, though by this time it came as no surprise, was a constant delight.

I nearly forgot to mention the real kicker in all of this: On Sunday I happened to hear a 1944 recording of excerpts from the Verdi Requiem conducted by Karl Böhm in which Seefried appeared as the soprano soloist. This seemed like the most egregious bit of miscasting of this part EVER, and that includes Schwarzkopf's two traversals with de Sabata and Giulini (ah, the benefits of being married to the head of a record company). So imagine my surprise to find that Seefried, while hardly idiomatic, delivers a vocally quite secure performance of the "Libera me". I tell you, if I hadn't heard it with my own ears, I wouldn't believe it! Admittedly, the only comparably early recording of hers is her famous live Komponist in honor of Strauss' eightieth birthday (which I must confess I have never heard), but the last thing I expected to hear in her Verdi was a secure top, able to handle both fortissimo and (relatively successfully) a pianissimo B-flat on "Requiem". Just proves I guess that the proof is in the pudding.

Finally, a singer that, amazingly, I used to not “get” in the least, but whose memory I hold in deepest reverence (there really is no other word): Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. My lukewarm opinion of her changed when I heard her recording of the Bach cantata “Ich habe genug”. I never dreamed that someone could surpass Janet Baker’s recording of this in my esteem, and yet Hunt Lieberson did. The depth and desperation and resignation of her performance floored me. There are not nearly enough examples of her work by which to remember her, but this is the supreme one. Also ineffable is the live recording of her husband’s Neruda Songs. The end of the last song actually evoked Das Lied von der Erde for me, and that is the music I want to hear on my deathbed.
Yesterday I got a copy of her Wigmore lunchtime recital from the late nineties. The Mahler Rückert Lieder, two Handel arias and several works by her husband, Peter Lieberson. All of them beautifully conveyed (except the Ariodante aria, which I found too fast and rather messy in a not-good way). But it was the two encores that brought me to tears. Brahms’ “Unbewegte laue Luft” has been a favorite of mine since I heard Elly Ameling’s early recording of it as a youngster. But Hunt Lieberson captures the initial mystery and subsequent rapture of this piece in a way I have never heard before. She dares to take a very slow tempo at the beginning, which allows the music to unfold in a way that suspends time, and makes the transport of the following section that much more moving. And then there is “Deep River”. Of course, now that the singer is no longer with us, it feels as if she is speaking to us from the great beyond. She conveys such peace, such fervency, such sadness and calmness, that words fail me.

And for now, that’s where I will let this rest.

Losing My Callas Virginity

2007-05-02T19:25:00.000-07:00

There is nothing I can add to the wealth of material that has been written on Callas (a large of amount of it pure trash, to be sure), so I won’t attempt any overreaching statements or opinions.

The most controversial singer of the last century (and perhaps also the greatest), her voice divided opinion from the very beginning, though her brilliant musicianship and theatrical sense were universally acknowledged. As I wrote a while back here, when I first heard her voice, I thought the LP was pressed off-center.

And yet she fascinated me nonetheless, even before I became a Callas freak (memorizing what she sang, where and when, collecting postcards, studying her recordings) – even before all of this, it was the eyes that haunted me: the cat eyes looking sideways, the hair pulled back, the lips preternaturally red on that otherwise all-white cover of the Lucia stereo remake. That, and her strange, imperfect voice which wove itself around me. I found that there were people, some of them quite aware musically, who found it impossible to get beyond the peculiarities of the voice itself to the profound musical intelligence underneath. I have actually questioned my compatibility with friends and lovers who were not beguiled by Callas.

Of course it is because the voice was imperfect that she was compelled to make her mark in other, subtler ways. Tebaldi and Milanov, for example, possessed instantly recognizable voices as well, but neither one of those was allied with the musical genius of a Callas. Their voices were intrinsically beautiful in a way that Callas’ was not, but she dug deeper because she could not compete in that arena.

It was through her recording of “J’ai perdu mon Euridice” that I first ‘got’ Callas. She embodies Orphée in all his desperation with that instantly recognizable sound, plangent yet bottled. She makes ample use of chest voice, yet is infinitely subtle as well. The tenderness of “C’est ton époux” broke my heart over and over. I simply could not stop listening to this recording. There were other things on that recording of French Opera Heroines that I treasured (the Dalila in particular), yet it was this first cut that held me riveted.

One day in September 1977, my mother looked up from her newspaper and said, “you’ll never guess who died.” Without a single beat, I replied, “Callas.” And she asked if I had heard it on the radio and I said no, I could just tell from the tone in her voice. She didn’t believe me, but it was true.

The next day, a Saturday, was a prayer retreat that I was obligated to attend. Genuinely bereft, if also just a touch melodramatic, I dressed quite ostentatiously all in black. No one else there showed the slightest grief over Callas’ death: those who had heard of her knew her only as Onassis’ mistress. My peers, out of earshot of their parents, referred to her as Maria Cow Ass.

All those children of God, young and old alike, whether they knew who Callas was or not, were in agreement on one thing: my behavior was just more proof that Pastor Ted’s middle son was strange and most likely ungodly, concerning himself with matters that no “normal” Christian cared about. Didn’t the Greeks worship idols, after all? And what about that other opera singer that he was always going on about, that black woman with the big lips and the afro and the weird name?

I found solace alone in my room with Callas as Orphée, who sang of the utmost heartbreak in a melody which, though unremittingly in the major mode, yet conveyed the profoundest sense of alienation and loss.

Another iconic Callas recording for me is the Berlin Lucia. The first time I heard this recording, it was Christmas break of my freshman year of college. My parents moved away from Oshkosh the day after I graduated from high school. I arranged to stay behind with a family from my father’s former church, since I already had two summer jobs lined up and, more significantly, did not want to say goodbye to my high school friends before it was time. So when I returned to Oshkosh at break, my visit had particular poignancy.

One person that I particularly wanted to see was my high school English teacher. In my junior year of high school I had been dangerously depressed: my family had moved a few months before, I had no friends, nor did I know how to make any. Unlike the people around me who should have noticed but were clueless, Gladys recognized that I was in trouble. She took me under her wing and I gradually gained confidence to step less fearfully, more confidently, into the big world beyond my father’s church. It is not exaggerating to say that in so doing, she saved my life.

So I went to Gladys’ on one memorable evening during my Christmas pilgrimage. A few other friends of Gladys’ were visiting, persons I had never met before, which made me a little uncomfortable. Conversation turned to the gift that Gail, Gladys’ daughter-in-law had given her: a live recording of Lucia from Berlin, conducted by Karajan. I did not know the opera all that well, but I knew the mad scene, from the Sutherland recording that, a few years before, I had listened to and vocalized with ad nauseum. Sure Dame Joan is vocally astounding, but with her garbled diction and a voice of a single color, she is a far cry from actually being Lucia. This was the first time I had ever heard a recording of Callas live, and it blew my mind. I was stunned by her daring tightrope walk through the omnipresent musical and vocal pitfalls. When she sang the words “il fantasma” I felt a surge run through my body. I held my breath during her first cadenza with the flute; my eyes rolled back into my head at her “Spargi d’amaro pianto”. By the time she sang that final E-flat, I was overwhelmed yet electrified; I could not even speak.

Gail made a joke about the performance causing me to have an orgasm, which deeply offended my still-puritanical tendencies. She was right, though at the time it didn’t feel like a sexual thing at all. When I lost my virginity nearly a year later, I realized that great singing and great sex evoked a remarkably similar response in me. In both cases, my life changed entirely over the course of a few short moments, relatively speaking. Maybe I really lost my virginity to Callas that night after all.

Abissi di luce

2007-04-11T20:58:00.000-07:00

My last few entries have been very autobiographical, not necessarily my original vision for this blog. Maybe I should just let it evolve as it wants to. Upon closer reflection, there are a couple reasons for the nature of the past few entries. First of all, the restructuring of my website has caused me to think back to some of the formative experiences of my career and life. I am also thinking along these terms because I am planning a one-man show whose form and content are still vague, but which may prove to be autobiographical. So putting all this stuff down is also helping me in that regard.

Before I return to the enumeration of my favorite singers, I want to write a bit about the first three sopranos on my previous list. I may very well not choose another ten favorite sopranos because I would have to eliminate far too many. I may decide to do a singer of the day type of thing as this blog unfolds. But in the meantime, I have scribbled a few lines about the three top singers on my list.

Claudia Muzio

The first time I heard Muzio’s voice I was a freshman at St. Olaf College – the single year that I spent at that institution. The bookstore was having a sale on discontinued recordings. I bought two: a compilation of Ernestine Schumann-Heink and a selection of the best of the Muzio Edison diamond discs. Schumann-Heink I liked well enough, but I didn’t fully appreciate her until much later. The voice of Muzio, on the other hand, reached out from the crackling grooves and grabbed me by the throat. Lauri-Volpi called it a voice “made of tears and sighs and restrained interior fire.” Yup. In those earlyish recordings the color of the voice is beautiful in and of itself (see Bachelet’s “Chère Nuit”) but it is the way that she exposes the palpitating heart inside the music that reveals her true greatness. The aria that broke my heart was from Leoncavallo’s Zazà: “Dir che ci sono al mondo.” This remains in my opinion one of the greatest recordings ever made.

In fact, Muzio made several such discs that I’d put on my desert island list: The thrilling abandon of her “Dove son” from Catalani’s Loreley, the plangency and depth of her “Spiagge amate” from Gluck’s Paride ed Elena, the soaring climaxes of her “Sorgi o padre” from Bellini’s early Bianca e Fernando, all Edisons. Years later, I discovered her late recordings, which reveal a voice more or less intact but weakened by her own failing physical condition. Certain of her high notes go flat, the breath is often (but not always) short. There is, however, no trace of a wobble ever, and her artistry is transcendent. I have said many times to students, colleagues, friends, anyone who will listen, that one can give the illusion of spinning out an endless line no matter how many times one takes a breath. And I cite as an example these late Muzio recordings, in particular the two Otello duets with Francesco Merli, where she breathes practically every two bars and yet gives the illusion of one unending line.

From this flawed treasure trove emerge several nearly faultless discs: In Donaudy’s “O del mio amato ben” she conveys a lifetime of heartbreak in just four minutes. I cannot listen to this recording without tears and having heard her rendition of this song, I simply cannot bear to hear anyone else attempt it. Even more poignant is her recording of the song “Ombra di nube” by Licinio Refice, a passionate plea for the dark clouds obscuring the sun to disperse. In her performance, heartbreak and hope meet in a way no other singer has ever surpassed, and few have equalled.

Two other iconic Muzio recordings are also of music by Refice, from his curious sacra rappresentazione, Cecilia, a liturgical opera written expressly for Muzio, and the last new role she took on. In and of itself, it’s pure trash. Without the contribution of a great artist like Muzio (or Scotto, who revived it in concert in the 70's) it is an embarrassment. Certainly no singer today would have the nerve, the fervor, or the fearlessness to attempt it.

Yet Muzio’s records of two excerpts, an introductory “annunzio” of the birth of Cecilia, and the final tableau depicting Cecilia’s death, are without equal, perhaps the greatest recorded examples of her artistry. When her voice bursts forth after the long, rather turgid orchestral introduction to the annunzio it is the voice of an empathic angel that is nevertheless pure flesh and blood. She shapes and colors the words and the vocal line so lovingly, with such aching urgency that one has no choice but to be carried away. In the dramatic scene of Cecilia’s death, Muzio really does seem to be in a trance (the likes of which I have only experienced once in live opera, when I saw Stratas sing the second of her Suor Angelicas at the Met, not coincidentally another bit of Italian religio-trash, and one of my favorite operas). At Cecilia’s death Muzio ecstatically intones the words “giardini di luce, abissi di luce, fontane di luce” (gardens of light, abysses of light, fountains of light) and one is swept away in that same vision. In fact, I can think of no better description of her shatteringly beautiful voice than just that.

The Divine Anastasia Stratakis (I mean Stratas)

2007-04-01T21:30:00.000-07:00

Oh, now I am on a Stratas kick and I just have to post these other two YouTube excerpts. Winsome as Perichole, as Nedda a wild bird. Watch these and fall in love with her. (I think that Lulu in Paris was recorded for TV, but I'm not certain; I'd pay money to see that, for sure!)

Well, youtube has removed the Perichole as well, which is a pity. For now the Nedda remains, and it's something to see!

Why I Love Opera

2007-04-01T21:02:00.000-07:00

I hardly think any comment is necessary here; these excerpts speak for themselves. Shirley Verrett in the Sleepwalking Scene is superb beyond my powers of description and Scotto, though her vocal powers are already on the wane, breaks my heart with her Suor Angelica.

Thanks, youtube fuckers for taking off these great videos. I've put in Verrett doing the Judgment Scene from Aida instead; but, great though it is, it's no match for that Sleepwalking Scene. If we can't have it on youtube, someone better be putting it out on DVD. Sheesh!

And instead of Scotto's sublime Angelica, I post instead her La Wally from a late concert in Canada. Though it's late Scotto, her voice sounds remarkably fresh; maybe it's because she hadn't been singing as much at that time. Anyway, it's beautiful.

Stratas' Nedda still appears to be on youtube, but one doesn't know how long it will remain, so enjoy it now!

Speaking of Angelica, I was present at the Met for two of the three complete Trittico performances that Teresa Stratas sang and I only wish that the first one I saw (the second of the three that she sang) had been recorded for posterity. Never have I actually been frightened for a performer's sanity: she was possessed by something completely outside of herself. Oh, what the hell, here's an excerpt from a 1978 Met telecast of her Nedda in Pagliacci. Some of that abandon that I thrilled to in her Suor Angelica is here; she's almost Canio's match here. Which reminds me, there's some tenor up there, too; can't remember his name. Actually, while I'm no Domingo fan, he is a little less generalized and a little freer on top than was normally the case. But for great operatic acting, it's Stratas you should watch.

Ice Cream With Jesus

2007-04-01T19:59:00.000-07:00

In my last post I wrote about how dreams have played a significant part in crucial decisions I have made in my life, how they gave me courage to pursue my aspirations, those other dreams.

Some people are so fragile that ridicule or disapproval is enough to make them doubt their own desires and instincts. All too often, especially in my younger years, I have been that kind of person.

So my dream of becoming a singer was put on hold for a while; put on hold but not put down completely. At least I stayed with music: I got both my bachelors and masters degrees in music. My BA is from some small liberal arts college or other; I also received a Masters in Vocal Accompanying and Coaching at the University of Illinois in Urbana, where I studied with John Wustman. My pianism was never more than a means of bringing me closer to singers; I was never terribly adroit technically, but through enormously hard work in those years with Wustman, I still managed to play some very difficult music: Wolf’s "Ich hab in Penna" from the Italienisches Liederbuch (indeed the entire Liederbuch), as well as his "Storchenbotschaft" and Tatyana’s Letter Scene from Eugene Onegin. Those were probably the most difficult pieces I played, but in those years, I played about ten recitals every semester. It was intense, but it was also a very settled, happy time in my life.

Working with John Wustman changed my life completely. Observing a person who had dedicated his entire life to music, who had worked with the greatest singers in the world, who had strong and clearly formulated ideas about what made for great music-making, and who demanded that his students exceed their expectation of their own abilities. This last is how I managed to make it through that taxing repertoire. John reformulated everything that I thought I already knew about music, taught me how to make a real sound at the piano, and what legato was really all about. I left there with a more clearly defined sense of music in general and what kind of musician I was specifically.

But this all sounds so serious. The reason I learned so much from him is because he wasn’t all heavy and serious with me. He and I spent a significant amount of each lesson shooting the shit and cracking each other up. I heard more gossip about singers and it all made me feel like I was really a part of that world. Yes, he had an acerbic sense of humor (and still does), but I was never treated harshly in any way.

Immediately after getting my masters I went out to San Francisco, where I was an apprentice coach/accompanist in the Merola Program of the San Francisco Opera. Only in retrospect do I realize what an emotionally destabilizing experience that was for me. All of the administration and support staff remarked on what a friendly, well-adjusted, non-competitive batch of Merolini we were. What, in my great naiveté, did not realize, was that we were being observed and judged every second, and that the competition among some in our group was furtive, but no less harmful to someone like me, who had always lived in my own rarefied world, with no concern for or awareness of the political aspects of the world of music. The realization of this was shattering to me. I prefer not to dwell on the details of my disillusionment. I was green as they come when I arrived there and I left there no more worldly-wise but with no stars left in my eyes.

In spite of this, it was my intention to move to New York after I left San Francisco, and while I was in SF, I met the man with whom I would spend more than fifteen years of my life. That February I moved into his apartment in New York; in April we went to Italy together. I had been awarded a small study grant at the Merola Grand Finals which I used for a month of Italian study at the Universita per Stranieri in Perugia. Our first night in Perugia we stayed in a hotel, where we found that the word for double bed was "letto matrimoniale." We also learned that two young American men who requested such an amenity would not be accorded the highest regard.

The following morning we went to the administration building on campus to register and to arrange for housing. In those olden, pre-internet days, it was not possible to make such arrangements in advance, unless of course one sublet a fully-appointed private apartment, which was not financially viable for us. The administration building was sheer chaos, outside and in. The registration process involved going to at least three different rooms and by the time we left, we had our carte d’identita, but at what cost!

If the interior of the building was chaotic, upon exiting we encountered the sheer insanity such as only the Italians and the Greeks are able to sustain over time. Families with rooms to rent were supposed to register with the housing office, but more of them preferred to make arrangements themselves, perhaps to waive any fee the university might charge, or perhaps to simply have closer scrutiny over the foreign students they might house. My friend and I found it hard to get our bearings, so overwhelming was the scene, when suddenly a little Italian nonna appeared before us and asked "Lei cerca una camera?" Any wariness was offset by the thought of further administrative dealings, and the deal was cinched.

The nonna and her husband lived about ten minutes from that end of the campus. The charm of that walk is still present in my memory: thick tangled stems of wisteria just bursting into bloom, a church with a pair of beautiful bas-relief doors which N. later photographed. The house itself was very clean, but also very cold and dark. Our room at least had a large window looking out on a small patch of garden. The man of the house, the nonna’s husband, took particular pride in the bathroom, announcing as he turned on the taps in both sink and tub, "sempre acqua calda." We followed his lead and ran our fingers under the water, which at that moment was indeed hot. It was, however, the last time that month that hot water flowed from either tap.

Meals were not provided in the arrangement, but our tuition covered lunch and dinner in the student cafeteria, where the selections were less than stellar. The scariest selection was some scrawny variety of whitefish or other, always less than half-cooked, nearly unchewable, much less digestible. The safest bet was pasta con aglio ed olio.

On weekends, N and I traveled and explored other cities. Easter weekend, our first weekend there, we went to Roma, to St. Peter’s no less, and took in that whole spectacle, the ritual of the wizened, bent figure on the balcony, all in white. His voice echoed out over tinny loudspeakers as a rain just stronger than a drizzle fell in the piazza.

Another weekend we spent in Venezia, which enchanted me more than any other Italian city. Memories of the palazzo ducale, San Marco, Caff Florian, the vaporetti, the foul, intoxicating smell of the canals, are trumped for me the picture by a sheer curtain blowing in the window, set at an angle in the corner of our tiny hotel room.

A third weekend we took a trip to Firenze where the husband of N’s voice teacher was singing a lead role at the Maggio Musicale. On our other weekends away, we would return home on Sunday evening, but for a reason I no longer remember we stayed in Firenze an extra night, returning Monday morning. Having missed the first of our three daily classes at the Universita, we went straight "home" from the train station.

The moment we walked in the room, it was apparent that something was different. N said, someone’s been in this room, and I knew he was right. We were always suspicious that the nonna came into our room while we were out (which, alas, was void of a letto matrimoniale) and at first we thought this was what had happened. But no, after a few minutes, she came knocking on our door, which she rarely did, to tell us that the day before, she heard noise in our room and, entering the room, had surprised an intruder who was just escaping through the window into the garden. As far as she (or we) could tell, nothing had been taken, but a few things had been moved — what I noticed was the stuffed toucan named Tio that I used to travel with — and we could see where the window had been jimmied open.

That night I had the most vivid dream of my life. In real life, I had come out to my parents during my senior year of college; not surprisingly this had not gone terribly well. In the dream, they, distraught over my "self-avowed homosexuality" and my refusal to see a nice Christian "therapist" who would help me "change" were resorting to subterfuge: they had hired such a therapist who had agreed to examine me incognito. They would take me out for ice cream and she would pose as our waitress, which would enable her to evaluate the effects my godless lifestyle had already had on my soul, and the possibility of helping me turn back to Christ.

I can recreate the entire dreamscape in my mind: black and white tiles, sticky naugahyde booths, Wendy’s style lighting fixtures suspended from the ceiling, the attached fake cherry fan blades turning gently. And, dressed in a blue and white checkered waitress outfit, with a small frilly white apron, carrying a small order pad in one hand and the stub of pencil in the other hand, our "waitress" who had donned a curly blond wig perhaps to appear less formidable.

My parents, poor actors, were feigning such naturalness that even if it were not for the blond wig I would have known that something was up. The waitress was much more interested in the state of my soul than in what kind of ice cream I wanted. Instead of closing myself off, I decided to be honest with her. I told her everything: growing up knowing I was different, feeling isolated, facing incomprehension and judgment of everyone around me and finally, realizing that being gay was what had made me feel different all that time. And now that I finally knew who I was, I wouldn’t give that up for anything or anyone.

As I spoke, the shrink sat down in the booth opposite me – she had stopped taking notes on her order pad and was listening to me intently. When I finished, she said to me, is there anything you would like to say to your parents about all of this. I turned to them, tongue-tied upon seeing their angry faces. My mouth opened all by itself and a beautiful mezzo-soprano voice poured out. "Va, laisse couler mes larmes." "Let my tears flow, they do me good. The tears that one doesn’t cry fall inside our souls and hammer the sad and tired heart. The heart collapses and weakens, nothing can fill it and too fragile, it breaks."

As I sang, the sounds from my mouth turned into musical notes, which morphed into colors which wrapped themselves around me until I was bathed in a blue light. A bird flew up to me and settled on my outstretched hand. (Hey, it was a dream!)

When I finished, my parents were looking blankly at me, understanding nothing of what had just happened. But the waitress-shrink’s eyes were filled with tears. She turned to my parents and said, "There is nothing I can do for him, because there is nothing wrong with him."

My parents turned on her angrily, and launched a double-barreled attack on me. In spite of my best efforts, they remained in the dark. But someone else, someone who had been an adversary, had understood and had come to my defense. I began screaming and woke myself up in tears yelling, "There is nothing wrong with me, there is nothing wrong with me."

* * *

I am sitting at my desk, having just finished writing those last words and thinking to myself, this story is in two pieces. What does the first part have to do with that dream? My first inclination is to say, nothing whatsoever. That dream came from somewhere completely outside of me: it was a sign from a higher power about what would save my life.

Another part of me says that this dream rose up from the deepest part of my unconscious, that in spite of everything, my inner self knew what message it needed to impart to me. All these prior events in my life had contributed to this hidden knowledge. Wandering through a foreign country, both literally and figuratively, trying to absorb everything around me, beginning a new life with someone I loved, living through a stressful summer in which I doubted my own abilities and nearly lost my love for music. And traveling even further back in time, beyond the Bubbles dream, beyond the Callas records, even beyond the Victor Book of the Opera and that first record player, a little child whose mother would sing him to sleep with the lullaby "All Through the Night," a gift from my own mother who wasn’t even fully aware of what she was giving me.

Sleep my child, let peace attend thee,
All through the night.
Guardian angels God will send thee,
All through the night.
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping,
Hill and vale in slumber sleeping,
I my loving vigil keeping,
All through the night.

My Twenty Favorite Sopranos: A Half-List

2007-03-29T10:28:00.000-07:00

Taking a break from the story of my journey to a life in singing. Instead, today I am desperately trying to come up with a list of my Twenty Favorite Sopranos. I always say that I am not entirely convinced of the validity of music criticism, which only means that I should be doubly suspicious of this compiling of lists. However, it has been fun to pore through my CD collection and my memory to come up with a list of singers who have evoked extreme emotions in me.

The first ten are pretty easy. It’s limiting my choices to only ten more that is going to prove impossible.

So today it’ll be just the first ten. Interestingly, only one of them appeared on BBC Music Magazine’s definitive list (I just can’t get that out of my craw!)

Here they are; I’ll elaborate on them later.

1. Claudia Muzio

2. Lotte Lehmann

3. Maria Callas

4. Renata Scotto

5. Eide Noréna

6. Anita Cerquetti

7. Elisabeth Rethberg

8. Ileana Cotrubas

9. Hilde Güden

10. Florence Quartararo

I’m not sure these are in any particular order, or that this list will not change tomorrow. In fact, Noréna and Quartararo are fairly recent additions. And I could easily replace Rethberg with Delia Reinhardt. That’s the nice thing about a personal list like this; it’s fluid, and not at all definitive.

More later on these gals.

Hors d'oeuvres with Bubbles

2007-03-28T21:05:00.000-07:00

Herein follows Part Two of the Gundlach journey to singing:

In the next few years, my further exposure to opera was limited. I remember seeing part of a Fledermaus on Public Television with a singer I learned later was Gundula Janowitz. When I turned ten years old, I was able to get a special stamp on my library card that allowed me to take out adult materials, including records. The first two records I checked out where an old Columbia pressing of the Opéra Comique version of Les contes d’Hoffmann under Cluytens and the Boulez recording of Pelléas. The Offenbach had no libretto, but the Pelléas had the original French and translations in English and German and Italian. I wouldn’t say that I quite faught myself conversational French in this way, but I sure as hell knew every word of Maeterlinck’s text. There were other recordings as well, particularly the Karajan Zauberflöte with Seefried, Dermota, Kunz and Wilma Lipp. This youngster loved Kunz and Lipp the most.

At the age of twelve, I began to earn some money as the associate organist at my father’s church (the main organist took a rather active dislike to the pastor’s kid, a know-it-all, big-mouthed pre-fag). With the money I earned, I started to buy my own recordings. When my parents found out that I was buying recordings of Bartók (the “granddaddy of cacophony”) and Wozzeck (the “devil’s tool”), I was cut off from buying any other recordings.

During this painful early adolescence, my parents sought to stave off the tell-tale signs of homosexuality by forcing me to join the junior high wrestling team. How grabbing at the shoulders, arms and thighs of my more generously muscled classmates was supposed to nip any latent homosexuality in the bug is beyond me. Actually, I believe it was advised by Dr. James Dobson in one of the books they took to heart. After three excruciating and humiliating weeks of after-school practice, I finally quit the teams. I fled instead to the public library, returning home only after practice would have ended.

My mother, of course, found out from the meddlesome mother of a boy in our church who was also on the wrestling team, that I had quit the team. She arranged a surprise attack, coming to pick me up at school after wrestling practice and of course not finding me anywhere. When I was confronted with my perfidy, I could offer nothing in my defense except that I hated wrestling and didn’t want to be on the team in the first place. My punishment was to be grounded from music for six weeks: no records, either of my own or from the library, no radio, no piano lessons. My older brother, with whom I shared a room, reported me for lying on my bed with his clock radio (at the lowest possible volume) pressed to my ear.

Shortly thereafter I assigned myself the task of listening to every opera recording in the Oshkosh Public Library (to which city we had by now moved). This was the best-stocked library I had ever had access to, replete not just with recordings, but with piano-vocal scores as well, and I took full advantage. I made so many miraculous discoveries from the beginning. First was the Ludwig-Berry-Kertész recording of Bluebeard’s Castle, which haunted me with its wealth of orchestral color and the peculiar inflections of the Hungarian language. There followed the first EMI Callas Norma. I hated it; I checked to see if the recording had been pressed off-center, so ugly did her voice sound to me. Only after I heard her “J’ai perdu mon Euridice” (recorded when the voice was in much more precarious condition) did I finally “get” her. But even at first exposure it was clear that Callas as Norma left Sutherland completely in the dust.

Another pleasure from early in the alphabet was the Lear-Böhm recording of the two-act Lulu torso (some baritone or other who shall remain nameless was Doktor Schön). The library had a vocal score of the opera as well, published only in German. Armed with an English singing translationof the libretty and an extremely fine-tipped pen, I wrote the entire English text above the printed German text.

Around this time, I had a dream that changed my life. This was neither the first nor the last time this happened to me. There was a convention attended by all the world’s greatest singers and due to a last-minute emergency, it was being held in the basement of our house, in a half-finished room where I holed up for hours every day listening to records. It was my responsibility to make sure that the singers had enough to eat, so I was passing trays of canapés to Birgit Nilsson and Jon Vickers, too deep in conversation to even notice me. Martina Arroyo was there; I complimented her on her Ballo recording which I had just heard. Tatiana Troyanos was there, and Shirley Verrett, just transitioning into soprano rep. Scotto was primping in a mirror, admiring her new svelte figure. Even my adored Leontyne was there, but I was much too intimidated to even take the tray or hors d’oeuvres over to her, much less speak to her.

The master of ceremonies at this event was Beverly Sills, nearing the end of her “Bubbles” period, before she became the more formidable BEVERLY. I had borrowed one of those enormous coffee urns from the church, when Bubbles grabbed my arm and interrupted my duties. What are you doing, waiting on everyone, she asked. You’re supposed to be up here with us. When I found my tongue, I said, but I’ve never even studied voice, I barely know how to play the piano—and she cut me off. You don’t believe me now, she said, but you wait, and you’ll see that I’m right.

Though “only a dream” this pronouncement had a huge effect on me. No one in my family ever had exhibit such enthusiasm for or belief in my vocal talent. Perhaps this was unsurprising, since my only vocalizing consisted of me singing along at climactic phrases of arias as recorded by my favorite sopranos: Leontyne singing Thaïs’ Mirror Aria, Sutherland singing the final pages of the Lucia mad scene, Janowitz singing “Ozean, du Ungeheuer,” Tebaldi singing Desdemonda’s “Ave Maria,” Scotto floating her magical pianissimi in the Canzone di Doretta. This was hardly a typical pastime for a red-blooded American boy; I had merely given up trying to make myself into something that I wasn’t.

A few weeks after I had had my Bubbles Dream, my parents asked if I intended to pursue music when I went to college. By “music” they meant my piano studies, so it came as rather a shock to them when I said to them, I’m going to become a singer. Their shock turned quickly to amusement: who are you kidding, they said, no one wants to hear you sing. And they laughed. It was an extremely hot and sticky summer evening and I went down to the basement and turned on the tap in the cinder block shower, and stuck my head under the water and cried.
But my wish wasn’t killed, just trodden underfoot. It took another dream twelve years later for me to finally realize that there was only one lot for me in life, and that was, after all, to be a singer.

A is for Aida

2007-03-25T17:04:00.000-07:00

A bit of advice is given to young artists of any stripe: if you can do anything with your life other than be an artist, for God’s sake, DO IT! If you can’t live without pursuing your art, then the choice is made for you, but otherwise... Music chose me; I didn’t have that much to say about it. Apollo or one of those damn muses must have deposited me from some distant planet into the middle of a typically dysfunctional family that happened to live in Wisconsin. Nothing was out of the ordinary in this family except for the religious zeal that formed the basis of our existence. My father was a minister in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, one of the most conservative factions of any branch of Christianity. In our family, whether one embraced the hand of Jesus or pushed it away (which was something one could only do in secret), the motivating force of either action was the same.

And yet I somehow existed on a different plane, and all thanks to Sophia Loren. Early in the days when my parents were dating, they went to the drive-in to see Aida. This hybrid Italian production featured a young Sophia Loren as Aida singing with the voice of Renata Tebaldi. Though neither of my parents had the slightest interest in opera (but rather in fact, a mild aversion to it), the film nonetheless played some kind of significant role in their courtship.

For their first Christmas as a married couple, my father bought my mother an edition of The Victor Book of the Opera and inscribed it thus: "To my darling wife, that she may enjoy this festival even more. I hope this gives you many hours of happy reading. Love, Ted". I’m not sure my mother spent too many hours reading the book herself, but once I came along, I gravitated toward it, and we would spend whole afternoons and evenings (at least so it seemed to me) reading the story of Aida. We never got much past this story together; it seemed to occupy a singular place in my mother’s imagination. We planned to write an operatic alphabet in verse, but never got farther than the letter "A":

"‘A’ is for Aida,
Written by Verdi.
They get sealed in a tomb,
But they don’t get scaredy."

It’s possible that it was the buried alive part that attracted my mother’s fancy. She did, after all, recommend the works of Edgar Allan Poe to me when I was ten years old. (But this is more a matter for my shrink than for my blog!) Whatever the source of my mother’s fascination with one opera in particular, mine extended to opera in general, at least tragic opera. Not for me Barber of Seville, Marriage of Figaro, Rosenkavalier (at least not at that age); if someone didn’t die at the end, I wasn’t interested.

I would pore over the photos of the great opera stars whose photos were reproduced in the Victor Book: Gladys Swarthout as Carmen, her face imperious and mocking behind her fan, Olive Fremstad as Kundry, lying on the ground in rags, staring madly something outside the range of the camera, Ezio Pinza as Giovanni in an immaculate white period outfit (and sporting an earring, which fascinated me no end), the all-glamorous Jarmila Novotna as Manon, swathed in mink, Lotte Lehmann as Sieglinde proferring that horn (its significance escaped me); Bidú Sayao as Mélisande, hair trailing nearly to the ground, looking anxiously over her shoulder.

What was odd about all of this was that I had no idea what opera actually sounded like. My mother told me it was people singing high and loud in a language no one could understand. But what this actually sounded like I had no idea. All I knew was that they acted out these stories that had completely captivated my imagination. I was desperate to know all there was to know about opera.

My father had a few records from the time before he and my mother were married, but we had no record player, so classical music in general was a relative mystery to me. And yet the lure of this unknown Thing was so great that I could not forget about it and move on to something else. I was hungering for food that I had never tasted.

Finally at my fourth Christmas Santa Claus brought me a record player (we were disabused of the notion of Santa Claus very early on, but at this point I was none the wiser). The record player looked like nothing so much as a suitcase, which is what they told me it was when my grandfather brought it out of the back room after everyone else had opened all their presents. They couldn’t fool me, though, because the little metal sticker on the front bore the Columbia Records emblem (my father’s records were all from the Columbia Record Club, so I recognized the trademark immediately).
Finally I was able to listen to all those records that had been lying in the basement gathering dust. One of my favorites was Aida: Opera for Orchestra with André Kostelanetz and His Orchestra. So nice to have all the tunes without those pesky loud voices entering into the aural picture.

My life was now filled with music at nearly every waking moment, from the Firebird Suite to Scheherazade (which I would proudly and perfect spell for anyone who would listen), the Tchaikovsky Fourth (which I dubbed "The Lady Picking The Flowers" because of the picture on the cover) to the Dvorák New World Symphony to the Grand Canyon Suite to Bernstein’s Fancy Free and Milhaud’s Création du Monde. Each favorite piece of music had a specific narrative associated with it (for wasn’t all music like opera, in that it told a story?)

My father had a few jazz albums as well, but my favorite pop albums were Saturday Night Mood, a collection of twelve fox trots by "your favorite dance bands", the Norman Luboff Choir singing Easy to Remember and other nostalgic gems, and, especially, The Second Barbra Streisand Album, which belonged to my father’s sister Judy. It took some doing to get my parents to allow this record into the house; not only was the singer in question a "conceited" "hook-nosed Jew" but, worst of all, she had campaigned for JFK, who, though dead, was still The Enemy. I couldn’t be bothered with any of these particulars; I just loved "Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home", "Down With Love" and "When the Sun Comes Out" (shit, I had good taste even then!) I would dance around my bedroom holding the record cover (with that famous pageboy photo) in front of me, pretending that I was dancing with Miss Streisand herself. At this moment in my life, I wanted two things: to work in a record store and to meet Barbra Streisand (neither actually transpired, however).

All this time and I still did not know what opera sounded like, until one Saturday afternoon my father called me up into his study where he was studying his sermon. He always listened to classical music on the radio while doing his work, and he happened upon a live Met broadcast of Aida with Leontyne Price (pronounced "Lee-ON-teen"). Imagine, my first exposure to actual sung opera was Leontyne singing "O patria mia" in her creamy prime. It was a sound that I could never have imagined in the farthest reaches of my mind. All this talk we always heard of angels and I was finally hearing what one sounded like. I was bewitched. Somehow against all odds, music had found me, and has been at the center of my life every single day since.

Twenty Greatest Sopranos of All Time?

2007-03-15T17:10:00.000-07:00

Finally, what we've all been waiting for: BBC Music Magazine has compiled the definitive list of the greatest sopranos of all time. And who might they be, you ask? Well, here they are, in descending order:

20. Elly Ameling
19. Rosa Ponselle
18. Renata Tebaldi
17. Christine Brewer
16. Elisabeth Schumann
15. Karita Mattila
14. Gundula Janowitz
13. Galina Vishnevskaya
12. Régine Crespin
11. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
10. Emma Kirkby
9. Kirsten Flagstad
8. Margaret Price
7. Lucia Popp
6. Montserrat Caballé
5. Birgit Nilsson
4. Leontyne Price
3. Victoria de los Angeles
2. Joan Sutherland
1. Maria Callas

Boy, I really got sucked into that one... yesterday I wrote this long rant against the choices, but this morning I feel a little more composed and realize that one should view this as a sociological phenomenon.

For one thing, this is so clearly a British creation, otherwise we would not be seeing people like Emma Kirkby and Margaret Price on the list (or Christine Brewer, though she is an American, who has a much more prominent career over there than she does here). And if this list had been compiled by the same forces ten to fifteen years ago, it would no doubt have included Kiri Te Kanawa and Felicity Lott as well.

I was also greatly amused to know that Emma Kirkby is a greater singer than Rosa Ponselle. Amused and relieved. Thank GOODNESS we no longer have to contend with opulent voices like Ponselle's when we can derive greater satisfaction from the Kirkby chirpings.

It's also good to know that Lucia Popp surpasses either Crespin, Tebaldi or Flagstad. Number SEVEN? Guess she got bumped up a few notches for the sympathy vote!

At least Mattila, one of the two great artists of today, is on the list, although Soile Isokoski, her even greater compatriot, is nowhere to be seen.

This would not be nearly as offensive if it were simply to have been called "The Twenty Sopranos Most Highly Regarded as of This Very Moment of A Certain Panel of Experts," which is of course what it really is. Seen in this light, it becomes a lot less toxic.

Admittedly, there aren't too many that one could agree on. Callas, for sure, but any list that doesn't have Muzio and Lehmann on it is just plain bogus. Neither Lehmann or Muzio ever sang a phrase that didn't emanate from their heart, and if that's not the primary criterion for greatness, then I'm packing my toys and going home. And okay, so Betty Blackhead is a shoo-in in the eyes of many, but how many phrases did she ever sing that emanated straight from her heart? I won't posit a guess, but out of generosity I will say less than half. :-)

musicalamerica.com was all upset because Gheorghiu, Netrebko and Fleming weren't on the list. It's supposedly a list of the greatest singers of all time, not the most hyped artists of the present day. Now THAT list would be easy to put together! Nobody's upset that Krassimira Stoyanova, Veronica Villaroel or Violeta Urmana are not on the list.

This list is obviously ridiculous and offensive, designed to rile up people just like me. Why do we have to have lists like this at all? Is this some sort of competition? If so, hadn't most singers of today just cash in their chips because they're never going to be as great as Flagstad or Callas or Ponselle? And perhaps all of us countertenors should give it up because we can't match Russell Oberlin, who was on the scene long before any of us and is still the best, bar none.

If this list serves any function whatsoever, it will be to inspire debate among opera lovers about their OWN favorites. Well, it will certainly increase this month's circulation of BBC Music Magazine as well.

I think I'm going to put together a list or two as well: MY favorite sopranos of all time, MY favorite mezzos, MY favorite lieder singers, MY favorite tenors, MY favorite "unknown" singers (no, this does not include me, though, come to think of it, it could!)

However, not today, dear, I have an audition. Look for such lists, pure expressions of my personal opinions, in future postings.

Ileana Cotrubas

2007-03-12T21:32:00.000-07:00

THOSE YOUTUBE FUCKERS KEEP REMOVING ALL MY FAVORITE VIDEOS! ANYWAY, HERE IS COTRUBAS' VIOLETTA AGAIN, ALTHOUGH I'M SURE THE MET WILL MAKE THEM TAKE THIS ONE DOWN AS WELL...

Speaking of Cotrubas, as I did in my previous post, dig her in these two Traviata excerpts. Surely one of the most scrupulously musical singers ever and one of the most emotionally and dramatically committed and, though she has not been properly acknowleged for this, one of the most technically adept singers of her time. Maybe I should just let her speak for herself, since she does it so much more eloquently than I could. Enjoy!

My journey to blogdom

2007-03-12T20:33:00.000-07:00

I was writing a blog before it was even known as a blog!

On my first audition trip to Germany in the fall of 1999, I wrote a series of emails from the road to friends, family and colleagues. My recipient list topped out at over two hundred. Some of you who are reading this now were among those first readers. A lot has changed since then.

(See what I mean? That tsunami-do went the way of all flesh years ago.)

I had some amazing singing engagements in Germany and in France, but in the end, I returned home to New York, where I have been now for nearly two years. During my time in Europe, I kept my travel emails going at sporadic intervals, but since I’ve been back in New York, I haven’t felt the need to keep them up.

In spite of all the changes in my personal life in the past two years, some things have remained constant, however. Those who know me well are aware of my strong opinions and convictions about singers and singing. Even in high school, my English teacher decided that I would become the chief music critic of the New York Times.

Obviously my aspirations led in different directions, but that has not kept me from expressing my opinions quite freely, and sometimes rather eloquently. The idea of creating my own blog came to me as I began working on revisions to my website about six weeks ago. I filed the idea away, unsure that I actually had anything of real interest to say. But I found the inspiration I needed from traveling the subways with Brigitte Fassbaender.

Recently EMI has reissued four volumes of Fassbaender’s early lieder recordings for Electrola, and though they are only sporadically available in the US, they are self-recommending to anyone who loves great singing. Has there been a greater lieder singer since Lehmann? If so, I need to be convinced. Mind you, I am a great admirer of Souzay, of Baker, Schreier, Ameling, and more recently Quasthoff, Goerne and sometimes Terfel (note that there are several significant names missing from that list!). But Fassbaender’s intensity and commitment are unique. When her voice was in optimum working order, as it is in these recordings from the mid- to late-seventies, she is without peer.

As do so many city dwellers these days, I get through the usual bustle and madness by listening to music on my headphones. Mine are connected to my iRiver, which I also use to record my voice lessons and which I affectionately refer to as my Object. The Object has very little storage space, so every few days, I replace the music I have been listening to with something new.

My tastes are very eclectic. I won’t say that I’m not a musical snob, because my standards are very high, but I do spread my net pretty wide. (Well, I may have a few hidden musical vices, but I'm not revealing all my secrets in my first posting.) Depending on my state of mind, on any given day I might be listening to Ileana Cotrubas or Rufus Wainwright, Pam Tillis or Georges Thill, Piaf or Magda Olivero, Dusty or Supervia. On these particular days of which I am writing, I had loaded Fassbaender onto the Object.

I am deeply affected by whatever music I am listening to, no matter if I’m at home, walking down the street, in the concert hall or riding in the subway. The frequency and intensity of my transcendent listening experiences can often be in complete opposition to the situation I might be in at that moment.

The other day I was heading downtown on the 1 train. As usual, I left the apartment about five minutes later than I had intended, so I had busted my ass to get onto the arriving train. I sat down totally winded. One reason I was a little late, of course, was because I had to get set with my music before I left the apartment.

Brigitte was singing Schubert, who is probably my favorite composer (I will certainly have more to say about him in subsequent postings), and I felt my heart rate slowing as my breathing got deeper. Around 103 Street, she began singing An die Musik, surely one of Schubert’s most popular songs, though not one I treasure most among his output. And yet this day, I found myself overwhelmed by the song.

How can anyone who loves music not have experienced this depth of gratitude to that art that this song reveals? I know that there have been moments in my life that without the transcendent power of music, I probably wouldn’t have survived. I have felt this way ever since I was a very young child, and I feel it even more now.

Hearing an artist like Fassbaender or Lehmann (especially as the final encore of her 1951 Town Hall farewell recital, where she breaks down before the final line) sing this song reminds me of why I chose music as my life’s calling in the first place (or, more accurately, why Music chose me). I sat in that subway car with my eyes pressed shut, feeling the tears welling up behind them, knowing that if I opened my eyes, I wouldn’t be able to keep from weeping. So I just kept them closed, dwelling in the depth and breadth of feeling that had been stirred in me.

Two days later, I found myself once again in the subway with my headphones on. This time I was at Times Square, surely the most abhorrent place in all of New York. Whether in the crush of the crowds in passageways and on platforms too narrow to accommodate them, or above ground, where eager tourists soak up the wholesomely corporate family values of Mickey Mouse (along with a good deal of bare skin, courtesy of Madison Avenue), I always feel as if I were entering the seventh circle of hell. In other words, hardly a place to find inner calm.

Passing through the gauntlet that is the platform for the uptown 1 train, one often hears a poorly-tuned and ear-splitting steel drum playing an inaccurate version of Für Elise. The crowds are impenetrable, and there is no midwest brand of politeness: in this glut of bodies, New Yorkers grab whatever few square inches of breathing room they can get and budge not one millimeter. My patience is always completely spent by the time I reach the far end of the platform.

At the end of this particularly long day, I was completely frazzled and at my wits’ end. Who should be singing in my ear at this point but Brigitte once more, and this time the selection was even more apposite. Mahler’s Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen. Suddenly it was as if I was floating over all those bodies, buoyed up by the suspended ecstasy of Mahler’s unending musical line and Rückert’s blissful text, imparted with such a sense of profound peacefulness by the glorious Fassbaender, passing beyond all of the insanity into a world where I was untouchable. Music is not always an escape, but sometimes when one needs to move into another sphere, music is the most efficient and meaningful way of doing so.

So I dunno... maybe I have something to say in a blog after all. Stay tuned. I look forward to your comments.