#21 amazeballs

The Eighth Wonder of The World:

Qual guerriero in campo armato (BROSCHI)


Qual guerriero in campo armato
Pien di forza e di valore
Nel mio core innamorato
Sdegno e amor fanno battaglia.

Il timor del dubbio evento
Il dolore ed il cimento
L'alma mia confonde ed abbaglia.


Vivica GENAUX, goddess of coloratura


(apparently, this video/recording has reached legendary status, thanks to one admirer at Amazon.com)

#20 open up your voice and soar for ever more!

 

Recently I acquired Verismo Arias, the latest offering from Herr Kaufmann. The handsome German tenor - who recently made a sensational debut beside Angela Gheorghiu in a concertized Adriana Lecouvreur - sang excerpts from what I would call ball-breakers: very very heavy material that would have made Joseph Calleja cry.

Light lyric tenor jokes aside, the album is quite an experience. There are familiar extracts from Adriana, Andrea Chénier, La Gioconda & Cavalleria rusticana. There is a very sweet little song, Ombra di nube, which I have heard before only sung by sopranos, one of them the legendary Claudia Muzio. Of course Vesti la giubba is there also, along with Lamento di Federico from L'Arlesiana (which I totally adore from a purely musical basis). The conductor is Antonio Pappano, who had Kaufmann for his (might I say slightly controversial) 2009 Madama Butterfly with Gheorghiu. The orchestra is the greatest in this world, by which I mean the Santa Cecilia Academy Orchestra of course.

I hesitate to call this release a complete success. Unlike Kaufmann's previous releases this oeuvre is an experiment of sort, a baby duck dipping its feet into the waters. As wonderful his instrument is, and as large his resources are, there is something wanting. I particularly find it almost offensive that Kaufmann elected to leave out the crying after Ridi del duol che t'avvelena il cor in the Pag arioso: apart from it's written in the score ('piangendo'), it also marks out an important point which Canio, well, lost his mind. There is also an awkward top B near the end of Lamento di Federico. Ombra di nube is gorgeous, but suffers from an over-coperto-ing of the middle voice.

On the other hand, Kaufmann might be the only spinto voice capable of surviving these ball-breakers since Domingo, but then again Domingo is almost like a freak of nature. The rest are either too routine/full of bad habits (Giordani, Álvarez), too light (Calleja, Jovanovich, Beczala), or plain destroyed (Villazón). Maybe like Cunegonde, it is ignoble to complain. And ''surviving'' is perhaps too harsh a word: there are certainly moments of extreme beauty like the I Lituani rarity, the Vicino a te duet, the opening mamma! of Mamma, quel vino, and the Amor ti vieta. At the end of the day, one must accept that Kaufmann is no Corelli or not even a del Monaco, but certainly in a class of his own.

By the way, the cover is stifling hot! That jacket is to kill for!

#19 addio, tigre

Shirley Verrett, amazing mezzo-soprano (who defied wisdom and laid siege to the likes of Tosca, Norma and Desdemona), the Azucena and Orpheus for the ages, passed away yesterday.

What a woman. What a lady. What an artist.

#18 crazy in love

Am right now listening to Birgit Nilsson's Salome, in that set with Gerhard Stolze, Garce Hoffmann & God himself, Georg Solti. Apparently there had been some advising me that the penultimate section of the finale (the murmurs Ah! ich habe deinen Mund geküsst, Jochanaan) is NEVER to be listened to after dark.

 

I tried. God, I tried.

#17 an era endeth

Sutherland went away yesterday. Fare well, Stupenda.

#16 silver age

O wär' ich schon (Marzelline) - Fidelio (van BEETHOVEN)

O wär ich schon mit dir vereint  

Und dürfte Mann dich nennen!  

Ein Mädchen darf ja, was es meint,

Zur Hälfte nur bekennen.  

Doch wenn ich nicht erröten muss, 

Ob einem warmen Herzenskuss, 

Wenn nichts uns stört auf Erden - 

Die Hoffnung schon erfüllt die Brust, 

Mit unaussprechlich süsser Lust,  

Wie glücklich will ich werden! 

In Ruhe stiller Häuslichkeit  

Erwach ich jeden Morgen,  

Wir grüssen uns mit Zärtlichkeit, 

Der Fleiss verscheucht die Sorgen 

Und ist die Arbeit abgetan, 

Dann schleicht die holde Nacht heran, 

Dann ruhn wir von Beschwerden. 

Die Hoffnung schon erfüllt die Brust, 

Mit unaussprechlich süsser Lust, 

Wie glücklich will ich werden!

The Very Best of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, EMI 2003

#15 libertà, finalmente mia!

Exams are like the Ring Cycle: it never seems to end. Fortunately, today marks the end of my fourth block examinations. After three grueling weeks of hammering things like names of various testosterone preparations, why old men leak a lot but never spray, and the wonderful things you can grow from vaginal discharge, I am finally free!

On the other hand, it also marks the first day of the study leave. The finals are looming, and I... I never know what to do for these things. I have very short attention span (more reason to love Bellini-esque melodies!) so it's almost impossible to stay attached to the desk and read tomes heavier than my head. At the end of the day I just hope I do well enough to satisfy powers that be.          

Speaking of which, I have been watching both seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race back-to-back, watching beautiful people doing beautiful stuff. The tension's worthy of an atonal opera, and if only these people were the costumiers of the recent-est Met mega-flop, maybe it wouldn't have been so bad.

My favorite contestant for first season is Shannel. She has such energy in every performance that it's impossible to look away. She had a dramatic run too: losing her wig during lip-syncing, costumes that burn into your mind, and proposing herself for elimination. I don't know why but I understand that: there comes a time when other people's judgement just sounds like bullshit. And those eyes! The only thing that scares me more is Jessye Norman's mouth!

The second season is like dripping in drrrrama sauce! But my fave is easily Pandora Boxx. She's such a pleasant girl, but she really draws you in, kinda like a Liù with a very well-acted death scene. And funny, too! Her Carol Channing kills! I don't know if she was booted out due to ageism or anything, but she looks like 21 going on to 16!

Oh God. I am really easily depressed right now. But no matter, because recently I have purchased one of Leontyne Price' greatest works, the legendary Blue Album (Leontyne Price). It was aural Eden: the cover was extremely classy & timeless (unlike Gheorghiu's Verdi Heroines, where the green cover just look like bile splashed on her face), and the singing was... Lordy. And she actually changed the whole timbre of her (well, heroic) voice for Sogno di Doretta aria! It was amazing! And well, after Moffo, her Tu che di gel sei cinta was as close to perfection as you can get. As for the Verdi excerpts, they were testament to why she was the Verdi soprano of the 20th century. Clever, also, putting Aïda excerpts as the first three tracks. You can have the 1997 remastered version here, where they took the Il Trovatore scena from another 1959 recording.

And of course, a drop of greatness from an ocean of art:

Off now to study, love.