#81 analyse this: cinta beralih arah (aishah)

Aishah is one of the quintessential singers of 90's Malaysian music scene: a mezzo-soprano with a particularly striking timbre and above all, technique to modulate her basic sound to respond to the song and the lyrics. I won't go into how she started out and everything, but I do suspect an early collaboration with the music producer Paul Moss had an effect on her musicianship.

We'll see how she went through (ha!) this song, Cinta beralih arah, which translated means "A love which changes its direction". To what? To Godly love, which is depicted as always in these 'redemption' songs as the higher, more pure love.

She opens the song with a very haunting mezzavoce. She justifies it by the thin instrumentation and the lyrics (Sendiri dalam sepi malam ke pagi - she's sleepless, but it was a quite and serene sleeplessness, not the madness of Lucia). Even when the instrumentation gets thicker with the bass entrance she maintained the mezzavoce but she crescendoes within two phrases as she's angry with her lover, who sees her "jewels and diamonds" as pieces of glass. Here she demonstrates an interesting quality when she opens up her timbre: instead of spreading it narrows, it buzzes more (Marilyn Horne would've called it 'more oboe-like'). And I do know that Aishah and her producers/composers are very aware of this peculiarity of her voice about and above D - most of her songs climaxes just above this point, and above it the notes are more decorative than functional.

What I'm going for is an idea of personal passagio - which remains a personal contention for every classical singers but should not have been an issue for a pop singer. It is an issue of knowing where the voice is more and most attractive, and most functional for a song. In this sense I consider Aishah to be better than most her contemporaries. Is she naturally better, or did she learn through mistakes? Make no point, nobody cared at that point in her career, only that she knows it and her songs always show the best part of her.

Rant over. If you notice, the similar phrases are sung full voice the second time. Why? Even though the voice is produced (er, manipulated) to be in equal mix with the instruments, the instrumentation below the phrases in the reiteration is thicker, with bass moving about and the middle voices more robust. Now I do realise that live, a pop singer may instinctively increase the timbre when accompanied by a full combo. But most of these songs are sung to a playback (which accounts for the manner it is produced), so Aishah either had the instinct to make sure her voice was heard even against a playback, or had access to the master score and saw all those bass figures and harmonies; or was she told to do so by a smart producer? But again as above, nobody cares as she sounds so wonderful and so good that you'd like to imagine it to be effortless (which is not, half the time!).

I do notice little details in the chorus, but most it sung full voice. I do love when she sings about keyakinan diri (or as I would call it 'confidence!') in steady full voice at the end of the chorus when the nature of the music and the instinct would've called for a decrescendo.

Now I would have loved a vocal coda, a few words of serenity in her love to God (goodbye, foolish lover!) but as it was, the song ends with an extended instrumental one. One could not have everything. Still, this song is the second track listed in Aishah's Memori Hit album. That must accounts for something.  

#80 in praise of: kathleen battle

Kathy used to be so hot, as in, legitimately hot.

Oy. People always have "but" when describing Kathleen Battle. "She had a beautiful voice, but..." "Sure she had great coloratura, but..." "She's really great with fans, but..." Fact is many, many, many people hate Kathleen Battle. But that was not her downfall: in fact, it was her decision to sing Zerbinetta.


The voice itself is one of the most beautiful timbres ever produced in USA. It is small, but in its early years it had a piercing quality, and in the notes above the staff sounded as if it could extend itself upwards forever. She excelled especially in oratorio music and Mozart. In fact, I suspect that if she were to remain an exclusively concert-recital artist in the vein of Marian Anderson she would still have a wonderful, fulfilling career as of 2010's. In fact she's still doing jazz performances and the rare recitals.


Of course when talking of Battle we also have to talk about her face - or faces. Another issue was the cloying quality of her middle and upper-middle voice which crept in during the early 80's. She probably felt these contortions helped her intonation, and undoubtedly the cloying sweetness in her voice was a tremndous advantage in crossover rep - it made her voice sounds like a cross between a clarinet and a theremin - but it began to drag her voice down. Her first Zerbinetta's in Covent Garden still had the child-like purity and pearl-like sparkle in the upper voice - a wonderful chest-middle which sounds exactly like her speaking voice was a bonus - but all that disappeared by the time she brought her Zerbinetta to the Met.


Then of course there was the high notes. She could produce them at will, but high D's and Eb's seems to be the limit. By the time of the Met Zerbinetta's the high E has became harsh, scream-like. The quality also changed, earlier they had a laser-like brightness which became velvety and marshmallow-y: no doubt very beautiful sounds all but did not count much projection-wise.


Fortunately she had one of those voices which do as well in crossover music as they do in classical-opera. She became a great proponent of spirituals, and her jazz work is not to be sneezed at, especially her beloved "Creole Love Song", with her in a slinky red dress undulating sinously among her combo members.


It's a loss, a great loss. Who'd predict where Kathy could have gone? When she was fired by the Met she was singing Marie's and Adina's, perhaps she could have went on to Amina. There were talks of Lulu. She was one of the great Handelians of her day, as proved when her Carnegie Hall Semele, with colleagues like Marilyn Horne and ... became a great turning point for Handelian singing in the US. She would have been great in early music like Vivaldi and the Neapolitan school. I shudder to think how her "In furore iustissimae irae" would've sound like. Her French arias album was a gem, as well as her belcanto album. She certainly had the personality for the great operetta parts, like Hanna Glawari, Rosalinde et al. She was also not afraid to venture out, singing Spanish and Catalan lullabies and made-up nonsense Greek. Finally, she would have been great in Broadway, where the size of her voice won't be a factor.


Perhaps I have a bias towards her, because she was my first diva, and like the first fuck you never forget your first diva. I am ashamed to admit I first fell in love with Battle not in opera, not in lieder, but first after hearing her singing the theme from "House of Flying Daggers". Sue me for tackiness, but I have to say that song - or rather, her singing of that song - inspired my great love affair with classical singing. So thank you, Kathy, for making me who I am today.

#79 in praise of: anna moffo

Happy Independence Day, Peninsular Malaysia (because Malaysia didn't achieve total independence until Malaysia Day and I'm bitter like that, heh)!

This is going to be the first in a series of few posts which will be unashamedly about diva-worship. Other opera fans who are claiming to be above such things can go fuck themselves.

The young Anna Moffo circa 1956-59,
before the rhinoplasty and (glorious) weaves

I'd like to start this series with Anna Moffo. Girl was gorgeous. Girl had voice - in spades, literally: she sang Elisabetta on stage. Girl had talent aplenty. So what the fuck happened? According to Herself, it was her first husband who drove her faculties to distraction and extreme fatigue, ultimately destroying one of the most beautiful (soprano) voices to come out of the land of Buffalo wings and french fries.

I first heard Anna Moffo from a YouTube video of her singing Marguerite's Jewel aria in what looked like a fluff-piece cabaret concert. Girl looked fierce, but had no trill to speak off (that impression was wonderfully changed later, of course). I noted though her voice sounded like sex personified. It had throb, it had sensuality, it sounded atrociously *female*. This is the kind of voice you can imagine hearing from her side of the bed after an all-night orgy.

Then I heard her singing a song from Showboat, Bill, as one of the songs from her Italian RAI television show. I don't know then, but I fell in love with her the moment I heard "I don't know" from her lips. I couldn't help it. There's something about the way she phrased this standard that made you believe even though she's probably fucking around this Bill fellow's back, she really did love him, at least when it all first started.

I sound like a crazy fan. I am. I now am the proud owner of several Anna Moffo recordings, including the greatest La rondine ever recorded, a daring take on Luisa Miller, a Madama Butterfly which made a powerful case for the lighter voice (Gheorghiu, I'm looking at you), a perfectly balanced Lucia di Lammermoor with Gorgeous Charlie (passport name: Carlo Bergonzi), even the shitty ones like the duse of crap, the Thaïs recording with the young José Carreras, and the tear jerker of the lot, L'Amore dei tre re.

Her recording which I love most was of course the Rondine. She made Magda sympathetic, which is of course really hard to do. I love the fact that she did not made the dream aria the centerpiece, but gave that place of honor to Ore dolci e divine. Her duets with Daniele Barioni were living gems. The wonderful Act 2 quartet did not turn saccharine, but kept the momentum going: happiness is effervescent, after all.

The second was her L'Amore dei tre re with Domingo and daddy a.k.a. Cesare Siepi. This was unfortunately for a sadder reason: to wonder how the fuck everything come to this. At least the Thaïs was a camp-fest. I couldn't help crying the first time I listened to Moffo's first phrase: "Ritorniamo", intoned in a hoarse middle voice. Return to what? It was a ruin of a voice, but what a magnificent ruin.

Maybe that was the problem. Moffo wasn't exactly a musical genius like Callas was, in the way she never made a phrase her own. Okay, I am probably too harsh; I've heard at least two phrases which had never been bettered by anyone else: "Tu sei con Dio ed io con mio dolor" from Madama Butterfly, and "Per non vederlo più!" from the live 1961 Met Turandot, in which everyone in the cast, even the chorus, was perfect.

But that was not the problem. The problem with Moffo was, once you get through the sheer gorgeousness of her timbre - and that was a great deal of fabulous you have to get over - she was at most an extremely competent singer who happened to have beautiful physical features, and fact is people are shallow like that. I do heard that she was a wonderful affecting actress on stage. I've seen her films: the Sonnambula, Madama Butterfly (which made her one of Italy's most beautiful women) and the Traviata. She indeed looked wonderful and had the operatic naturalism acting style down pat.

But all of this did not deny the amount of artistry she poured for the world. Maybe it's the bitter hag in me, wondering what-if's and what-could-have-been's. In an age where not only beautiful voices were plenty but there were also interesting "artistic" voices (Magda Olivero, anyone?), Moffo certainly held her own. And I'll certainly never forget her heart-aching rendition of Bill.