tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54608889574710698972010-04-28T15:55:48.984-07:00CounterlebenThe Life and Random Musings of a Highly Opinionated Countertenor
by Daniel GundlachCounterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.comBlogger59125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-35925015907217109452010-04-28T15:55:00.001-07:002010-04-28T15:55:49.097-07:00This blog has moved<br /> This blog is now located at http://counterleben.blogspot.com/.<br /> You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click <a href='http://counterleben.blogspot.com/'>here</a>.<br /><br /> For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to<br /> http://counterleben.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.<br /> <div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-3592501590721710945?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-53279856181235234942008-08-14T20:07:00.001-07:002008-08-14T20:13:05.323-07:00TranscendenceI have joined facebook and brother, can you spend (waste?) a lot of time on there.<br /><br />But through a Fan Group/Discussion Board, I found this clip.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/IQlt1UxjvWU&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/IQlt1UxjvWU&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />It's from the Peter Sellars production of Theodora that was done at Glyndebourne about ten years ago.<br /><br />I don't even want to say anything about it. There is such purity here, such clarity, such ecstatic abandon, such transcendence.<br /><br />Oops, now I am writing stuff when you should all just be listening and watching.<br /><br />Try not to weep. I dare you.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-5327985618123523494?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-8320665245760519152008-07-10T12:25:00.001-07:002008-07-10T14:29:51.362-07:00Israeli Holiday<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Welcome-to-Israel-779856.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Welcome-to-Israel-779212.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />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.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/And-in-the-distance...-726725.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/And-in-the-distance...-725874.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />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.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Rabin-Memorial-Plaque-English-766252.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Rabin-Memorial-Plaque-English-764665.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />So here they are. Enjoy.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Jaffa-Old-City-arrival-782290.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Jaffa-Old-City-arrival-781101.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Napoleon,-symbol-of-Jaffa-789727.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Napoleon,-symbol-of-Jaffa-788726.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Licensed-to-Sell-Ancient-History-757519.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Licensed-to-Sell-Ancient-History-756603.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Another-Blue-Door-737500.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Another-Blue-Door-736832.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Looking-down-on-water-793595.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Looking-down-on-water-792673.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Art-Galleries-in-Old-Jaffa-748608.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Art-Galleries-in-Old-Jaffa-747551.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Blue-Door-767532.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Blue-Door-766086.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Catholic-church-belltower-766626.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Catholic-church-belltower-765550.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Arch-736039.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Arch-735358.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Quaint-lighthouse-thingie-795126.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Quaint-lighthouse-thingie-794356.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Street-Sign-735158.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Street-Sign-734487.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Hollow-tree-791865.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Hollow-tree-791177.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Street-in-Old-Jaffa-781880.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Street-in-Old-Jaffa-780533.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Pretty-Tree-745526.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Pretty-Tree-744464.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Ombra-mai-fu-795904.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Ombra-mai-fu-795208.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Wall-746847.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Wall-745702.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Floating-Egg-and-Lemon-Tree-781262.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Floating-Egg-and-Lemon-Tree-779756.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Cat-and-Prey-I-766451.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Cat-and-Prey-I-765807.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Old-Cat-Old-Jaffa-731732.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Old-Cat-Old-Jaffa-731025.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Nice-Building-Window-Grate-789730.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Nice-Building-Window-Grate-789071.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Nice-Building-Window-768402.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Nice-Building-Window-767736.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/On-the-wall-706340.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/On-the-wall-705668.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Nice-Building-View-712524.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Nice-Building-View-711487.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-832066524576051915?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-91826761411796680372008-04-14T08:12:00.000-07:002008-04-14T08:26:38.370-07:00Where I've been/CyberSing 2008It'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. :-)<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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!)<br /><br />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!<br /><br />But for now, here's the press release:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/lehmann-doggy-790756.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/lehmann-doggy-790754.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />The <a href="http://www.lottelehmann.org">Lotte Lehmann Foundation</a> has released the new rules, regulations, and dates for CyberSing 2008, its fourth biannual art song performance competition.<br /><br />The stated objective of CyberSing is “[t]o recognize and award performance of art song by singers and pianists throughout the world.”<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.”<br /><br />Repertoire requirements and complete rules and regulations for the competition, as well as application forms, are available on the Foundation’s website: <a href="http://lottelehmann.org">www.lottelehmann.org</a> or at <a href="http://www.cybersing.org">www.cybersing.org</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-9182676141179668037?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-1543593521377773552007-12-31T06:35:00.001-08:002007-12-31T06:55:25.546-08:00Hardly “Silent” but kinda “Heavenly”I just happened upon recordings on youtube of two great Wagnerians giving their take on "Silent Night".<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">innig</span> of all Christmas songs. How do they do?<br /><br />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).<br /><br />Those virtues are certainly to be heard in their singing of this Christmas favorite.<br /><br />And so, without further ado, here are our two contestants:<br /><br />In this corner, from Norway, weighing in at 250 pounds, Kirsten Flagstad:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-y0DY_rtysE&rel=1"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-y0DY_rtysE&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object></div><br /><br />And in this corner, weighing in at a trim 200 pounds, Sweden's Birgit Nilsson:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/gVX9hBesA8I&rel=1"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/gVX9hBesA8I&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object></div><br />They're both some kind of wonderful, these gals, aren't they!?!?<br /><br />Will we ever see their equal?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-154359352137777355?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-50022176027093677642007-12-31T05:39:00.000-08:002007-12-31T06:34:43.336-08:00Ritorna vincitor?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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Block That Metaphor</span> sentence.)<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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:<br /><br />1. Send out my stories to at least five editors or agents.<br />2. Plan my recital that I will be giving in Hawaii in March.<br />3. Start the ball rolling on that performance project that simultaneously lures and terrifies me.<br /><br />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.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-5002217602709367764?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-82160409831947674772007-10-09T13:25:00.000-07:002007-10-10T16:30:58.099-07:00We all knew birds could sing...<a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/cockatoo-741939.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/cockatoo-741936.jpg" border="0" /></a> <div align="left">...but not all of us knew what great <em>dancers</em> they are, too!<br /><br />I wouldn't have believed it possible, but see it right here with your own eyes!<br /></div><p align="center"><object width="320" height="280" class="BLOG_video_class" id="BLOG_video-2404ba03b1e16740" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="movie" value="http://www.blogger.com/img/videoplayer.swf?videoUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fv22.nonxt8.googlevideo.com%2Fvideoplayback%3Fid%3D2404ba03b1e16740%26itag%3D5%26begin%3D0%26len%3D86400000%26app%3Dblogger%26et%3Dplay%26el%3DEMBEDDED%26ip%3D0.0.0.0%26ipbits%3D0%26expire%3D1274642842%26sparams%3Did%252Citag%252Cip%252Cipbits%252Cexpire%26signature%3D581EDA9796D4EB1FA9B8CACFD091343FB5BEB6CA.70160045D1F2ABB3D2C5BF54FCC0402B2C3E8C55%26key%3Dck1&thumbnailUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2FThumbnailServer2%3Fapp%3Dblogger%26contentid%3D2404ba03b1e16740%26offsetms%3D5000%26itag%3Dw320%26sigh%3DvqKKzBA8n3J_FBIOoDS5lrpEmJ4&messagesUrl=video.google.com%2FFlashUiStrings.xlb%3Fframe%3Dflashstrings%26hl%3Den&nogvlm=1"><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF"><embed width="320" height="280" src="http://www.blogger.com/img/videoplayer.swf?videoUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fv22.nonxt8.googlevideo.com%2Fvideoplayback%3Fid%3D2404ba03b1e16740%26itag%3D5%26begin%3D0%26len%3D86400000%26app%3Dblogger%26et%3Dplay%26el%3DEMBEDDED%26ip%3D0.0.0.0%26ipbits%3D0%26expire%3D1274642842%26sparams%3Did%252Citag%252Cip%252Cipbits%252Cexpire%26signature%3D581EDA9796D4EB1FA9B8CACFD091343FB5BEB6CA.70160045D1F2ABB3D2C5BF54FCC0402B2C3E8C55%26key%3Dck1&thumbnailUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2FThumbnailServer2%3Fapp%3Dblogger%26contentid%3D2404ba03b1e16740%26offsetms%3D5000%26itag%3Dw320%26sigh%3DvqKKzBA8n3J_FBIOoDS5lrpEmJ4&messagesUrl=video.google.com%2FFlashUiStrings.xlb%3Fframe%3Dflashstrings%26hl%3Den&nogvlm=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object></p><p align="left">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.</p><p align="left">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.<br /><br />But I digress, as happens frequently. I love me some Snowball and I hope you do, too.<br /><br />I've been missing in action for a while, but I hope to get back on track with my blog entries.<br /><br />Not making any promises, though, since I hate breaking them.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-8216040983194767477?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-45318814281207051372007-09-27T13:03:00.000-07:002007-09-27T20:22:35.964-07:00Tre Gioconde: Compare and contrastThis 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 <em>Suor Angelica</em> is back up. Also her "Suicidio!" from the (in)famous 1979 San Francisco <em>Gioconda</em>, to which I believe I referred in my Pavarotti tribute.<br /><br />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."<br /><br />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 <em>coups de théâtre </em>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 <em>look</em> 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 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ponchielli-Gioconda-Bartoletti-Scotto-Pavarotti/dp/B00000JWHM/ref=sr_1_1/104-1962563-4237545?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1190924060&sr=8-1">audio version</a> has been released on Gala.<br /><br />Without further ado, here it is:<br /><br /><div align="center"></div><div align="center"><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7t7f9ZJxsbQ"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7t7f9ZJxsbQ" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object></div><div align="center"></div><div align="left">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:</div><div align="center"><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/z-5IglEpauA"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/z-5IglEpauA" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object></div><div align="left">When I take a look at Eva Marton's performance (which I will not post but which is linked <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxB6U57T5zk">here</a> 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.</div><div align="left"> </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">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 <a href="http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.110302-04">her Cetra recording</a>, which is one of her most unfettered performances, at least in the recording studio.</div><p align="center"><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/u3gi51ZJ0lI"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/u3gi51ZJ0lI" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object></p><div align="left">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 <a href="http://www.granscena.org/">Vera Galupe-Borszkh</a>, 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].</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-4531881428120705137?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-78917989315821503402007-09-24T16:17:00.001-07:002007-09-24T16:53:13.030-07:00Florence, We Hardly Knew Ye<div align="left">One of my readers wrote in to me about Florence Quartararo. Evidently he heard her sing in the forties in San Francisco.<br /><br />He was kind enough to do a search there for her <a href="http://66.187.153.86/archives/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=BibSpeed/gisrch2k.r?Term=Quartararo,%20Florence%20%5BSoprano%5D&limit=5000&vsrchtype=no&xBranch=ALL&xmtype=&Start=&End=&theterm=%51%75a%72%74a%72a%72o,%20Flo%72%65nc%65%20%5BSop%72ano%5D&srt=&x=0&xHome=http://66.187.153.86/archives/bibpro.htm&xHomePath=http://66.187.153.86/archives">Met performances</a> on the <a href="http://66.187.153.86/archives/frame.htm">Met Archives</a> and this is what emerged.<br /><br />There were two quotes from Howard Taubman writing of her in the Times.<br /><br />This at her Met debut, as Micaela:</div><div align="left"><blockquote>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.<br /><br />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. </blockquote></div>And on her Desdemona, one of only two she sang at the Met:<br /><br /><blockquote>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 <em>Otello</em> in place of Stella Roman, who was ill, Miss Quartararo gave a performance that would have been a credit to an outstanding veteran.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. </blockquote><p>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 <em>truly</em> becomes a legend most!</p><p><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/bubbles-fur-736023.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/bubbles-fur-736019.jpg" border="0" /></a> </p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-7891798931582150340?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-17068732133528633972007-09-24T09:31:00.000-07:002007-09-24T15:03:18.074-07:00...But Life Got In the Way...<a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/franz_Schubert-773569.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/franz_Schubert-773567.jpg" border="0" /></a>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.<br /><br /><div></div><div>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.</div><br /><div>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.</div><br /><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/rodgers-and-hart-796375.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/rodgers-and-hart-796372.jpg" border="0" /></a> <div>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.</div><br /><div>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.</div><br /><div>I had wanted to do "I'll Tell the Man In the Street" from <em>I Married an Angel</em>, 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.</div><div></div><div>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, <em>really</em> sings them, the music takes flight. And I could feel it happen here, just as it did in the last two Schubert.</div><br /><div>And "With a Song In My Heart"... well, how can you not love it? I tried <em>not</em> 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.</div><br /><div>The other thing that happened last week is that I was, quite unexpectedly, elected Vice President of the <a href="http://www.%20lottelehmann.org/">Lotte Lehmann Foundation</a> 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.</div><br /><div><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/arangi-lombardi-764025.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/arangi-lombardi-764024.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><div align="center">Giannina Arangi-Lombardi</div><div> </div><div>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).</div><div></div><div><br />So I hope to do entries on each of them very soon.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-1706873213352863397?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-14540297278122658522007-09-15T11:31:00.000-07:002007-09-15T19:57:50.969-07:00Two Incomparable German Chick Singers, #1<a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/seinemeyer2-739938.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/seinemeyer2-739936.jpg" border="0" /></a>I am taking a break from watching Bergman's <em><a href="http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=229">Scenes from a Marriage</a></em> (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 <em>of</em> them for years, but had never adequately explored their recordings. Thankfully in recent months I have rectified that situation.<br /><br />A few months ago I was working in the kitchen, happily listening to a completely different recording (a matchless Pergolesi <em>Stabat Mater</em> with Maureen Lehane and <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Raskin.html">Judith Raskin</a>, 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).<br /><br /><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/seinemeyer-as-tosca-720999.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/seinemeyer-as-tosca-720995.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />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. <a href="http://www.seinemeyer.com/"><strong>Meta Seinemeyer</strong></a>. 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 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/104-1962563-4237545?initialSearch=1&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+savran">David</a>, with whom I almost always agree in matters aesthetic.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/seinemeyer-weissmann-753137.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/seinemeyer-weissmann-753135.jpg" border="0" /> <p align="center"></a>With Frieder Weissmann</p><p align="left">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.</p><p><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/seinemeyer1-713060.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/seinemeyer1-713058.jpg" border="0" /></a> 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 <a href="http://www.haenssler-classic.de/index.php?id=1105&L=2&tx_scmreview_pi1[artid]=92958&tx_scmshopproduct_pi2[artid]=92958&tx_scmshopproduct_pi6[artid]=92958&cHash=3d99b2ec74">Haenssler recording of selected recordings</a> as well as a <a href="http://www.preiserrecords.at/album.php?ean=717281894029">Preiser issue of her complete recordings</a>. 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.</p><p><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/seinemeyer-helena-749142.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/seinemeyer-helena-749139.jpg" border="0" /></a> 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 <em>Doktor Faust</em>, 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, <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/hammerstein.html">Oscar Hammerstein</a>'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 <em>Der Rosenkavalier</em>, her final performance. (These details are available on the <a href="http://www.seinemeyer.com/chrono.html">extremely informative website</a> devoted to Seinemeyer.)<br /><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/seinemeyer4-791371.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/seinemeyer4-791367.jpg" border="0" /></a> I strongly recommend that any lovers of great singing <em>immediately</em> search out this extraordinary singer. I could hardly choose which single recording to offer, but I chose <a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/03AncoraunpassoorviaMadamaButterfly.wma">Butterfly's entrance</a> for the unspeakably beautiful B-flat she sings at the words 'ove s'accoglie'. As all my readers know by now, I <em>never</em> 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.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-1454029727812265852?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-11637132020893921372007-09-08T17:59:00.000-07:002007-09-15T11:22:50.376-07:00Delicate Clusters of Sound<div align="center"><a href="http://listproc.ucdavis.edu/archives/mlist/log0402/0004.html"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/florence-foster-jenkins1-743592.jpg" border="0" />FFJ: The Godmother of Us All</a></div><br /><div align="left">I have had enough of death and mourning. I need a chuckle. Maybe even a belly laugh.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />My list focused on the elements of humor, grotesquerie, shock, and horror that one experiences upon hearing such performances. But that is <em>so</em> 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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:</div><p align="center"><a href="http://www.wingmusic.co.nz/">Wing</a> (also see below)<br /><a href="http://www.collup.com/olive/olive.html">Olive Middleton<br />Sylvia Sawyer</a><br /><a href="http://www.mrsmillersworld.com/">Mrs. Miller</a><br />Mari Lyn (see below)<br /><a href="http://www.shaggs.com/">The Shaggs </a><br /><a href="http://www.homophonecd.com/Natalia.htm">Natalia de Andrade </a><br /><a href="http://radiomoog.blogspot.com/search?q=malinda+jackson+parker">Congress-Woman Malinda Parker Jackson</a></p><p align="center"><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/wing-702755.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/wing-702753.jpg" border="0" /> </a><strong>Wing</strong> </p><p align="left">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.</p><div align="left"></div><br /><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/wing-on-south-park-745693.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/wing-on-south-park-745689.jpg" border="0" /></a> <div align="left">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' "<a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/16Sing.wma">Sing</a>" 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 <a href="http://www.wingmusic.co.nz/wing_news.html">some articles posted on her website</a>. And watch her delectable performance of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and prepare to be enchanted.</div><p align="center"><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ovEASuIqVbY"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><br /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ovEASuIqVbY" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object></p><p align="center"><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rU61ZAEPtvY"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><br /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rU61ZAEPtvY" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object></p><p align="center"><strong>Mari Lyn</strong></p><div align="left">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 <a href="http://www.preiserrecords.at/album.php?ean=717281200295">Azucena</a> and Amneris for Capitol Records!), <a href="http://www.collup.com/olive/olive.html">Olive Middleton</a>, Tryphosa Bates-Batchellor (whose unique work can be sampled on the magical collection entitled <em><a href="http://www.homophonecd.com/Muse_Surmounted.htm">The Muse Surmounted</a></em>, 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 <em>The Golden Treasury of Song </em>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 <a href="http://www.collup.com/marilyn/mlv1.html#marilynyt">these clips on her website</a> and see if you aren't on the floor yourself.<br /><br />My favorite Mari Lyn moments are her unforgettable scat rendition of "Summertime," her southern belle impersonation in the program entitled <em>The South Anti-Bellum Era</em> [sic], her narration and dramatic rendering of <a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/marilyntraviataletter.mp3">Violetta's letter scene</a> from <em>Traviata</em>, and the entire program entitled <em>Hosanna by Ebentide</em>, 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 <em>Art of the Coloratura</em> episode? Below find her rendition of "Sweet Hour of Prayer" (along with a vital, life-altering sermonette):</div><p align="center"><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/NFBBlLqJK0E"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><br /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/NFBBlLqJK0E" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object></p><div align="left">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:<br /><br />―the deranged passion of Natalia de Andrade's <a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/NataliadeAndradeVoiloSapete.mp3">Santuzza</a> as well as<br />―her cascades of laughter in the <a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/06JemarchesurtouslescheminsManon.wma"><em>Manon</em> Gavotte</a>.<br />―Congress-Woman Malinda Parker Jackson cautioning against the destruction wrought by "<a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/13CousinMosquitoNo.1.wma">Cousin Mosquito</a>"<br />―Mrs. Miller duetting with herself in the country fave "<a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/14ThereGoesMyEverything.wma">There Goes My Everything</a>."<br />―The Shaggs, quite possibly the idiot savants of music, and probably the <a href="http://www.shaggs.com/meet_the_shaggs.html">most tragic of the figures</a> celebrated here, in their own composition "<a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/01PhilosophyoftheWorld.wma">Philosophy of the World</a>".</div><br /><div align="left"></div><div align="left">In admiration and gratitude to these artists, I conclude my traversal of the underside of singing. </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-1163713202089392137?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-85476823107935670732007-09-07T21:33:00.000-07:002007-09-08T17:42:41.219-07:00Another great one passes<a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/pavarotti-738205.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/pavarotti-738203.jpg" border="0" /></a>Of course the title of this entry speaks of the most famous singer of all to have died in recent months.<br /><div></div><br /><div>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!)</div><div></div><br /><div>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 "<strong>vincerò</strong>" 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.)</div><div></div><br /><div>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.</div><div></div><br /><div>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.</div><div></div><br /><div>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).</div><div></div><div></div><div><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/pavarotti-duca-709581.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/pavarotti-duca-709579.jpg" border="0" /></a>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.</div><br /><div></div><div>I have two reminiscences of Pavarotti. The first was the single time I heard him sing live. <em>Ballo</em> 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 <em>Gioconda</em> 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 <em>Ballo</em> 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.</div><br /><div></div><div>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 <em>I due Foscari</em>, 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.</div><br /><div></div><div>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 <em>Bohème</em> with Cotrubaş, the Met <em>Bohème</em> with Scotto that was the first Live from the Met telecast, the infamous San Francisco <em>Gioconda</em> with Scotto, as well as their valedictory joint appearance in the Chicago<em> Ballo</em>, in addition to some of his choicest studio recordings).</div><br /><div></div><div>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.</div><br /><div>The same is true here. Please listen to this live recording of <em><a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/09Osoavefanciulla.wma">O soave fanciulla</a></em> 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.</div><br /><div>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.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-8547682310793567073?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-37243556498825031562007-09-04T21:04:00.000-07:002007-09-04T21:55:43.877-07:00Rose Ader: Liù piange<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/rose-ader-manon-764111.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/rose-ader-manon-764106.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>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 <a href="http://www.mrichter.com/">site on singers and singing</a>, which changes every week, has published a <a href="http://www.roseader.info/">special page on her life and artistry</a>.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Suor Angelica</span> 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.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/rose-ader-as-mimi-782765.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/rose-ader-as-mimi-782762.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>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 "<a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/Unbeldi.mp3">Un bel dì</a>" that simply must be heard.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/rose-ader-2-745526.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/rose-ader-2-745524.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>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:<br /><br />"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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Turandot</span>]! Liù weeps and in writing the music I think of you, my poor and sweet and good Rose! Affectionately, your Giacomo."<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/rose-ader-and-puccini-706766.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/rose-ader-and-puccini-706762.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />As the <a href="http://www.musicautographs.com/">seller</a> 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Clearly she deserves better than that!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/rose-ader-788803.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/rose-ader-788799.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-3724355649882503156?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-43934903681521910052007-09-04T19:05:00.000-07:002007-09-04T20:42:33.788-07:00The great unknown<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/QUARTTHAIS-796746.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/QUARTTHAIS-796743.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>For some time now I have been putting off my post on the greatest singer you've never heard of.<br /><br />Now it is her turn in the spotlight.<br /><br />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 <a href="http://www.wyastone.co.uk/nrl/pvoce/7812b.html">link</a> and cursor down to "Come my beloved" which you can play on Real Audio.)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/quartararo-792803.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/quartararo-792797.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />After hearing these duets, I was eager, not to say desperate, for more. A further search yielded a <a href="http://www.guildmusic.com/hist%20index.htm">recording on Guild</a> 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).<br /><br />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):<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">*****</div>“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.<br /><br />“Quartararo made four 78 sides for RCA Victor in 1947 - Handel’s Care selve, ‘La mamma morta’ from Giordano’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Andrea Chénier</span>, 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.”<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/QUARTSF-771601.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/QUARTSF-771598.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>*****<br /></div>“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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Otello</span>. 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.”<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">*****<br /></div>“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.”<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">******<br /></div>“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.”<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">******<br /><div style="text-align: left;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/QUARTCOUNTESS-731778.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/QUARTCOUNTESS-731773.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>“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.”</div></div><div style="text-align: center;">******<br /></div>“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.<br /><br />[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.”<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/QUARTMIC-751968.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/QUARTMIC-751965.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>“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.”<br /><br />“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.”<br /><div style="text-align: center;">******<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/QUART3-709441.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/QUART3-709439.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><div style="text-align: left;">I would love to give seven or eight examples of Quartararo’s artistry, but I will limit myself here to a single one: Her “<a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/03Tacealanotte...DitaleamorIltrovato.wma">Tacea la notte</a>” from <span style="font-style: italic;">Trovatore</span>. 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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Otello</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Ballo</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Falstaff</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Aida</span>, 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.<br /><br />Which is to say among the greatest singers that ever lived.<br /></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-4393490368152191005?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-67299855071825774762007-09-04T09:01:00.003-07:002007-09-04T10:17:52.413-07:00She WAS a great singer, after all<div align="center"><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/bampton-glam-701479.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/bampton-glam-701475.jpg" border="0" /></a> <div align="left">I followed my own advice from my last posting and sought out some more Rose Bampton. In fact, that very afternoon, I went to <a href="http://www.academy-records.com/">Academy Records</a> and chanced upon a live recording of her Marschallin. It's from the Teatro Colon, October 8, 1947, with Erich Kleiber conducting.</div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">The sound sucks. But it's an interesting performance.</div><br /><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/elsa-cavelti-762106.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/elsa-cavelti-762094.jpg" border="0" /></a> Elsa does Carmen</div><div align="center"> </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Elsa Cavelti is the Octavian. She's a Swiss mezzo, not terribly well-known, most celebrated for her 1951 recording of <em>Das Lied von der Erde</em> 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.</div><div align="left">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 <em>Zauberflöte.</em> Her repertoire included Wellgunde, Yniold, Sophie in <em>Werther</em>: 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.</div><div align="left">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.</div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">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.</div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">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.</div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">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.</div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">For now, here is her <a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/10Dagehterhin.wma">monologue</a> from the first act of <em>Rosenkavalier</em>. 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. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="center"><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/bampton-luxurious-765402.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/bampton-luxurious-765399.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-6729985507182577476?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-29247765009135730432007-08-31T09:00:00.000-07:002007-08-31T10:24:30.751-07:00Rose is a rose is a rose<a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/bampton-3-767764.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/bampton-3-767761.jpg" border="0" /></a>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 <a href="http://www.metoperafamily.org/operanews/news/pressrelease.aspx?id=1447">marvelous obituary</a> by Paul Driscoll on the Met's site, but I might add a few comments.<br /><div><div></div><br /><div>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 <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Christa-Ludwig-Recital-Robert-Schumann/dp/B00005I9SV/ref=sr_1_1/202-3229806-1172651?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1188576861&sr=8-1">studio</a> or the live performance, either <a href="http://www.tower.com/details/details.cfm?wapi=106219733">complete</a> or <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Christa-Ludwig-Salzburg-Festival-Highlights/dp/B0000260QI/ref=sr_1_2/202-3229806-1172651?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1188576861&sr=8-2">excerpted</a>.)</div><div></div><br /><div>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.</div><div></div><br /><div>From Bampton's Met debut as Laura in <em>Gioconda </em>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 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Fidelio-Herbert-Janssen/dp/B000003EX3/ref=sr_1_3/104-1962563-4237545?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1188577529&sr=8-3"><em>Fidelio</em> </a>and there is a live recording of her <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gluck-Alceste-Christoph-Willibald/dp/B0000267P9/ref=sr_1_1/202-3229806-1172651?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1188577706&sr=8-1">Alceste</a> 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 <a href="http://www.preiserrecords.at/album.php?ean=717281903714">Daphne</a> with Erich Kleiber. I was delighted to find just now that there is also a recently released <a href="http://www.preiserrecords.at/album.php?ean=717281896757">Lebendige Vergangenheit issue</a> on Preiser records. This issue includes some of the recordings that I have on my <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rose-Bampton-Sings-Verdi-Wagner/dp/B000003LKE/ref=sr_1_11/104-1962563-4237545?ie=UTF8&s=music&amp;qid=1188578323&sr=1-11">VAI recording of Verdi and Wagner</a> which is apparently no longer available. </div><div></div><br /><div>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.</div><div></div><br /><div>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 <em>Walküre </em>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."</div><div></div><br /><div>Of the recordings that I have heard, the one that best illustrates Bampton's greater sense of emotional freedom is her <a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/11MildundleiseTristanundIsolde.wma">Liebestod</a> from <em>Tristan</em> 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.</div><div></div><div></div><br /><div>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.</div><div></div><br /><div>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...)</div></div><br /><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/rose-bampton-704325.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/rose-bampton-704321.jpg" border="0" /></a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-2924776500913573043?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-55704756807020289142007-08-23T05:00:00.000-07:002007-08-23T06:02:00.749-07:00Greatest record cover EVER?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 <a href="http://www.kickball.com/">kickball</a>.) I already knew Cristina Deutekom from the Solti <em>Magic Flute</em> 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.<br /><br />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'.<br /><br />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 <em>Ernani</em> 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.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/yma-sumac-775801.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/yma-sumac-775797.jpg" border="0" /></a> 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.<br /><br /><p>So clearly, she summoned up passionate feelings in admirers and detractors alike.</p><p>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?</p><p></p><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/pilar-elegance-781955.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/pilar-elegance-781951.jpg" border="0" /> <p align="center"> </a>A?</p><p align="center">or</p><p align="center"></p><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/deutekom-disaster-718444.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/deutekom-disaster-718440.jpg" border="0" /> <p align="center"></a></p><p align="center">B?</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-5570475680702028914?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-4289795737892951032007-08-21T06:58:00.001-07:002007-08-21T07:28:52.495-07:00The things I learned so well in my youth<a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/dustyairport-774812.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/dustyairport-774806.jpg" border="0" /></a> <div>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 <em>Simply Dusty...</em> 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.</div><div> </div><div>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 <em>has</em> to be the definitive one, and as I mentioned to Shaun, it was played at Dusty's own funeral.</div><div> </div><div>So the day after tomorrow at the <a href="http://www.kensalgreencemetery.com/crematorium/index.html">West London Crematorium at Kensal Green</a>, they will play three excerpts from <em>Traviata</em>, Marguerite's favorite opera (perhaps because of Marguerite Gauthier!) and Dusty's performance of "<a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/26GoinBack.wma">Goin' Back</a>" [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.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-428979573789295103?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-25750324127325855732007-08-20T21:51:00.000-07:002007-08-20T22:57:05.318-07:00Softly and gently, dearly ransomed soul<a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/elgar-790927.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/elgar-790922.jpg" border="0" /></a>I have just spent the past week up at <a href="http://www.bard.edu/bmf/">Bard</a>, rehearsing and performing in the 80-voice chorus that just performed Elgar’s <em><a href="http://www.elgar.org/3geront.htm">Dream of Gerontius</a></em>. 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 <em><a href="http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue08/reviews/joanofarc/text.htm">The Passion of Joan of Arc</a></em>?<br /><br /><br /><p><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/passion-falconetti-771004.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/passion-falconetti-771002.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />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!!</p><p><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/clara-butt-742443.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/clara-butt-742435.jpg" border="0" /> </p><p align="center"></a><strong>Clara Butt<br /></strong><br /></p><p align="left">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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />There were two other performers this afternoon who were truly exceptional. <a href="http://www.janeirwin.co.uk/">Jane Irwin</a> 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 <em>Dialogues des Carmélites</em> 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.<br /><br /></p><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/carolyn-betty-743657.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/carolyn-betty-743654.jpg" border="0" /></a>The other singer who knocked my socks off is named Carolyn Betty. She sang Mary Magdalene’s solo in <em>The Kingdom</em>, 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Marguerite also volunteered for years for the <a href="http://www.tht.org.uk/">Terrence Higgins Trust</a>, 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.<br /><br />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 <a href="http://www.granscena.org/">La Gran Scena</a>, she came to my performance at the <a href="http://www.thebloomsbury.com/">Bloomsbury Theatre</a> and from that moment on we became dear friends.<br /><br />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 <em>Weihnachts-Oratorium</em> 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.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/marguerite-and-finn-1-778090.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/marguerite-and-finn-1-778079.jpg" border="0" /></a>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.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Gundlach-Van-Doren-Athens_edited-704126.JPG"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/Gundlach-Van-Doren-Athens_edited-703739.JPG" border="0" /></a>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.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-2575032412732585573?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-82785673513871389582007-08-10T08:40:00.000-07:002007-08-10T19:54:10.200-07:00Not really hidden, but treasures nonetheless<div align="left">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.<br /><br />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.<br /></div><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/vallin-724670.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/vallin-724645.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />First, <strong>Ninon Vallin</strong>, 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 <em>Louise</em> and <em>Werther</em> 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 "<a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/11ScnedumiroirThas.wma">Dis-moi que je suis belle</a>", the Mirror Aria from <em>Thaïs</em>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/friedel-beckmann_edited-788018.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/friedel-beckmann_edited-788014.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Another singer who has made an enormous impression on me, but is not nearly as well-known as Vallin, is <strong>Friedel Beckmann</strong>. 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 <em>Tannhäuser</em>, Sieglinde and Giorgetta in <em>Il tabarro</em> (!). (Again, shades of Christa Ludwig, with whom she shares a certain plangent vocal quality, though Ludwig sang the Färberin, Leonore in <em>Fidelio</em>, the Marschallin, and a few Ariadnes, none of the soprano roles that Beckmann did.)<br /><br />I simply adore this singer. Her most famous recording is probably a complete <em>Matthäus-Passion</em> 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 <em>Matthew Passion</em>, 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, "<a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/07DieKraftversagtDerWiderspenstigenZ.wma">Die Kraft versagt</a>" from Hermann Goetz's <em>Die Wiederspenstigen Zähmung</em> (The Taming of the Shrew).<br /><br /><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/liane_edited-730556.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/liane_edited-730554.jpg" border="0" /> <p align="left"></a><br />I also promised a snippet from <strong>Liane</strong>, 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 "<a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/09Magnifique.wma">C'est Magnifique</a>" and the second an odd little novelty song called "<a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/01HalloweristdortanderTr.wma">Hallo, wer ist dort an der Tür</a>". It's as saucy and suggestive as the Porter is sophisticated and classy.<br /></p><p align="center"><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/io6rf7dEZGo"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><br /><br /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/io6rf7dEZGo" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><br /></p><div align="left">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.<br /><br /></div><a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/granforte-735500.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/granforte-735498.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />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 <strong>Apollo Granforte</strong> as Scarpia. I must post something of his performance here, and I have chosen the "<a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/11Tresbirri...unacarrozza.wma">Te Deum</a>", 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.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-8278567351387138958?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-83432954382612242922007-08-08T11:44:00.000-07:002007-08-08T12:37:22.773-07:00And now for someone completely obscure...<a href="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/luise-szabo_edited-730135.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.danielgundlach.com/blog/uploaded_images/luise-szabo_edited-730130.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><div>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.</div><br /><div>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 <em>Tosca</em> 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.</div><br /><div>Here's what the liner notes, such as they are, reveal about her:</div><br /><div>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.</div><br /><div>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.</div><br /><div>Listen here to her account of "<a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/17DerHlleRachekochtinmeinemHerzenDie.wma">Der Hölle Rache</a>" 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!)</div><br /><div>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.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-8343295438261224292?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-7290454308474881492007-08-01T07:27:00.000-07:002007-08-01T08:06:34.500-07:00Justifying her reputation...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.<br /><br /><p align="center"><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nuZamvbba_Y"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nuZamvbba_Y" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object></p>And, as a curio, a concert performance in 2004 of the Letter Duet from <em>Nozze di Figaro</em> 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!<br /><br /><p align="center"><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zgfdv72iZE4"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zgfdv72iZE4" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object></p><p align="left">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 <em>Vier letzte Lieder</em> are decidedly strange, but not awful. But this song, "<a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/06Verfhrung.wma">Verführung</a>", with which I was completely unfamiliar, is quite stunningly done. And it's worth listening to just to hear an unknown Strauss <em>Orchesterlied</em>.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-729045430847488149?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-89319049733945757912007-08-01T07:12:00.000-07:002007-08-01T07:48:39.118-07:00And making another surprise reappearance...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!<br /><br /><param value="http://www.youtube.com/v/g2awn7sn-8o" name="movie"></param><param value="transparent" name="wmode"></param><div align="center"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/g2awn7sn-8o" width="425" height="350" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent"></embed></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-8931904973394575791?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460888957471069897.post-20468831877640940562007-08-01T06:43:00.001-07:002007-08-01T07:06:42.119-07:00She's BAAA-AAACK!Who? Why, Ileana Cotrubas, who else?!?!<br /><br />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 <em>Traviata.</em><br /><br />Here is a review from the <em>New York Times</em> (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:<br /><br />“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.”<br /><br />Well, judge for yourselves.<br /><p align="center"><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/H8S7sGqGmqA"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/H8S7sGqGmqA" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object></p>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.<br /><p align="center"><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/lsbSnFG7JRA"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lsbSnFG7JRA" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object></p>Yet she was and is demanding because her standards are SO high. As evidence, I submit her recording of the “<a href="http://countergundlach.googlepages.com/11Etincarnatusest.wma">Et incarnatus est</a>” from the Mozart <em>C Minor Mass</em>. 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.<br /><br />Finally, I found this quote from an interview in which she rages against <em>Regietheater</em>. I espouse this viewpoint myself, so of course I quote it here:<br /><br />“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.”<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5460888957471069897-2046883187764094056?l=www.danielgundlach.com%2Fblog%2Findex.html' alt='' /></div>Counterlebenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761487774113366638noreply@blogger.com3