Prima la musica, poi le parole

Does everybody out there know about House of Opera? I came across it last year. It's a very very dangerous place. Non-commercially released tapes, CDs, videos and DVDs of operas, recitals and some masterclasses. Everything and everybody is to be found here somewhere. The selection is unbelievable. I don't want to turn into an advertisement though. There are some drawbacks: sound and picture quality vary (sometimes the recordings are done for TV, but sometimes they're just filmed from the audience); there are generally no subtitles; and it's rather overwhelming trying to browse through the site. Everything is well organised, essentially, but there's so much of it that I've found the only way to cope is to search someone or something in particular, rather than trying to wade through everything.

Amazingly, all I've got from them so far is 4 Lucia Popp DVDs- Così, Arabella, Die Fledermaus and a documentary about her. Three of them are perfectly watchable. Così, which I finally watched the night before last, is rather different. The sound is OK but it's filmed at such a distance that I found it rather difficult going. Really it was only a small step up from sitting and doing nothing but listen to the whole opera, all the way through, for which I've never had the attention span. My devotion to Lucia meant I wasn't about to give up, and there was the odd closeup, albeit a little fuzzy. So I watched the whole three hours; it was a little surreal. I remembered enough of the plot from my DVD of Cecilia's Zürich Così to follow most of it; but Dorabella (Anne Murray) and Fiordiligi (Lucia) were so similarly costumed that I often had to wait until one of them sang and then look to see whose mouth was moving in order to tell them apart. They, and Liliana Nichiteanu (who's also in the one with Cecilia, this time as Dorabella) as Despina, held my attention rather well considering the circumstances- but that's because they're sopranos/mezzos. They left me with even less energy left to give much thought to the boys. So I shan't even try to comment.

Lucia was excellent as usual although I have heard her sounding even better- but this might be due as much to the substandard recording as to anything else. Anne Murray was very good too- I enjoyed her 'Smanie implacabile' especially- but when she was sharing the stage with Fiordiligi, well, my eyes and ears where elsewhere. Liliana was well-suited to her part I thought, although her Despina was nowhere near as hilarious as her Dorabella is. Lucia's 'Per pieta' got an enormous ovation. The production itself was fine. As far as I could make the characters were in semi-Victorian costume, and when Ferrando and Guglielmo were dressed up, I think they were in Greek traditionally costume. This, however, is a guess based solely on a Tintin book where Thompson and Thomson dress up this way. The cleverest bit of it, I thought, were the first few scenes, where everybody was naturally, but frequently, swapping places- so that one character would start to sing to another, before realising his/her lover was the other one. It all fit in rather nicely with what was to come; unfortunately the rest of the production wasn't quite as clever. Enjoyable enough though: I have no doubt that those who were actually there must have enjoyed it immensely. Unfortunately, filmed in the way it has been, the transition to the TV screen is not wonderfully successful. Where's Brian Large when you need him?

CD du jour: Lucia Popp: Die schönsten deutschen Kinder- und Wiegenlieder. For the Germanically challenged: children's songs and lullabies. It's a little (or very) silly perhaps but very cute too. And Lucia being Lucia, it's also a fabulous CD. She's in magnificent voice, but there's nothing over the top: they're just little songs, and she does them appropriately. It's great fun and very pretty. We had the cassette tape of this when I was very very little, and some of the songs are among my very first 'operatic' memories.

A quick note. I've just learnt from Frontseat, which is an arts-current affairs type show that the incredibly important NZ singing competition Song Quest, whose sponsors Mobil dropped the competition this year after 48 years of ownership, has been picked up by Lexus. The Song Quest is one of the major reasons why the world has Kiri Te Kanawa, and I think that alone makes it absolutely vital. It has also launched careers of various magnitudes for all sorts of wonderful singers. So thank you Lexus! And aren't we glad that unlike what used to be Australia's Sun Aria competition, it hasn't been picked up by a fast food chain!

They showed a little series of Song Quest moments (Jonathan Lemalu, Anna Leese, Martin Snell, Malvina Major, Kiri). Gorgeous. But now the host is arguing with people about arts sponsorship so I'm going to watch some Così. Here's to the contestants of the next Song Quest!

'Cute' is probably not the first word that springs to mind in thinking about Brünnhilde. But on the video The Art of Singing: Golden Voices of the Century, Kirsten Flagstad's 'Hojotoho' is just that: adorably cute. The video is a collection of opera singers on film, from Caruso, Ponselle and Tetrazzini through to Joan Sutherland, Maria Callas, and, probably the most recent, Jon Vickers. Some clips are more interesting than others; quite a few are lipsynched; but as a whole it's fascinating and a lot of fun.

You can see Rosa Ponselle's 1936 MGM screentests for Carmen, singing 'Les tringles des sistres tintaient' and the Habanera; Luisa Tetrazzini late in life singing along to a Caruso recording; Renata Tebaldi and Jussi Björling in the final scene of Act I of La Bohème; Boris Christoff's definitive and very scarily made-up Boris Gudunov; and the list goes on.

But to get back to Kirsten. Hers is probably my favourite bit of the whole video. Her performance was obviously part of some variety show type thing- she's introduced by a very very youthful looking Bob Hope, who doesn't crack a single joke. Maybe the producers thought she'd scare everyone if she went into full warcry mode, or maybe she just wanted to have fun- in any case, she certainly seems to be having the best time in the world with her aria, grinning away and waving her spear. She's adorable- and the voice, naturally, is gorgeous. I've never really felt the urge to introduce myself to Wagner, outside the odd aria ('Dich teure Halle' most notably) that turns up on a recital disc. I don't particularly feel that urge now either- but if I had no choice but to do the Wagner thing, I'd definitely want Kirsten to be there.

CD du jour: The Sorceress: Kiri Te Kanawa. Our public library has the video this but I have yet to see it. I have the CD though. It's a collection of Handel arias from various operas which I gather they put together to make a sort of one-soprano show type opera. I'm not sure. But Kiri does Handel supremely well. I really should get that video out some day.

Bel Canto

It may be hard to believe, but two days ago I bought my first ever Renée Fleming CD- Bel Canto. It gets even more incredible: listening to this CD was the first time I'd heard Renée sing a complete aria. I read Helena Matheopolous' Diva and Manuela Hoelterhoff's Cinderella and Friends and loved Renée in her appearances there; I thought she was gorgeous on a Maria Callas documentary that was on a couple of months ago; and I've listened to snippets of singing on Amazon, at Borders when I was in New York, and on Operadio before the connection turned bad. But Bel Canto was my very first time listening to Renée properly: and as everyone else already knows- she was fabulous.

There are something like 92 reviews of this CD on Amazon and though I only read the first handful, some sort of controversy seems to have gone on. Bel canto isn't her usual repertoire, and while some people say either she's as good as this as at everything else, or that she's just fine, if not the next big thing to happen to the genre, there are some who say she's shockingly bad. I disagree entirely. None of the little 30 second bits of Renée I heard ever did anything too dramatic for me, but I just love this CD I've bought.

Renée does two arias each from Bellini, Rossini and Donizetti. 'Ah non credea mirarti' and all that goes with it, from La Sonnambula is something I already know very well. In the last Mobil Song Quest, New Zealand's biggest opera contest, which has produced winners such as Kiri Te Kanawa, Jonathan Lemalu and Anna Leese, the 3rd placegetter, Ana James, sang it magnificently. Yes, Anna won, and deservedly so: but Ana's performance was one of the most stunning of the night (six finalist and two arias each). And I've watched the video of the Song Quest about a million times, so Amina's aria was very familiar. But you learn something new every day, and from the CD's liner notes I learnt this: the highly ornamented 'Ah non giunge uman pensiero' is the result of another hand. Bellini wrote a relatively simple aria, to be ornamented only when it's repeated, in the way we're used to or by the singer. So Renée uses a different lot of ornaments which apparently are associated with Jenny Lind. Can't really beat that, can you? And it works wonderfully well. The changes took me by surprise at first but they're very pretty.

The rest of the CD is equally fantastic. The aria from Donizetti's Maria Padilla is one of my new favourites. And if you have access to the CD, listen to the excerpt from Rossini's Armida(every composer in the world ever seems to have set Armida at some point). I don't have the technical vocabulary to describe what happens here, so it needs to be listened to. It's as if the aria starts to do the typical Rossini thing, and then where you expect it to go down, it keeps going up instead, which not only sounds gorgeous but also fits the text so perfectly it's almost onomatopoeic.

I hardly think I need to name the CD du jour after all this. So I shan't.

I've been reading and reading

I've been reading and reading and in fact nobody else seems to mention that Strauss can be difficult to listen to. Maybe I am just uncultured and ignorant. True, it's not scary like I imagine Philip Glass is, but I still found it a bit of a challenge. Perhaps that's just me. I do think it's beautiful, I just also think it takes a bit of an effort to appreciate that fact properly.

Everybody out there: leave a comment and tell me what you think of Richard Strauss.

Rosenkavalier

Tonight I watched Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier on video. Lucia Popp (Sophie), Brigitte Fassbaender (Octavian) and Gwyneth Jones (The Marschallin) in 1979. Doing so is something I've had to talk myself into. More from reading about it than listening to it, I know that Strauss is a challenge to your average listener, which is what I unquestionably am. I was prepared for a very long three hours. Actually it went quite quickly.

I didn't by any means have a Richard Strauss induced musical epiphany. In fact, having half-watched an Arabella earlier this year, the music was more or less as I expected; it was just that that expectation added to my preconceptions had me prepared for difficulties. It was difficult, to an extent. You can't sit back and absorb the sound without thinking; and there's no division really between recitative and aria, it's all just one long line. The only 'hit' is 'Mir ist die Ehre widerfahren' which, thanks to a Lucia Popp greatest hits double CD, I know and absolutely love. But every now and then I stopped and thought properly about what I was hearing, which, more often than not, was one, two or three absolutely gorgeous female voices making wonderful sounds. And there's nothing wrong with that.

In any case, the challenge of sitting through three hours with only the one 'oh I know that one' moment to hold on to was made much less daunting by the three women heading up the cast. I'm really not sure whom I should rave about first. Perhaps the fairest approach is to do it in order of appearance.

The very first words of the opera are Octavian's. Brigitte Fassbaender. I have her in two different forms as Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus (by that other Strauss..) and nothing else. So this was nice, since Orlofsky doesn't really afford too many opportunities to show off- and Brigitte deserves to show off.

Gwyneth Jones was quite simply a ravishing Marschallin. I don't much like that word, but I can't think of another. She didn't just sound beautiful, she looked it: so it was doubly easy to understand Octavian's entrancement. But I might lose what little credibility I have by focusing on appearance over voice.

But Lucia Popp was the star. I wouldn't mind listening exclusively to Richard Strauss for the rest of my life if she sang it. Her Sophie was heavenly and just adorable. All three women were excellent, but Lucia was the only one who made me melt the way I do with Mozart. 'Mir ist die Ehre widerfahren' (The Presentation of the Rose) was stunning, as it should be. It's an amazing scene. Not only is the singing gorgeous, but the orchestra really seems to lift it out as a moment separate from everything else that happens before and after in the opera. There are brief hints of the same music (at least I think there are) in other places, but never, not even when Sophie and Octavian are finally together, does everything reach that same sense of magic and romance. I might even go so far as to say it sounds silver, but perhaps that's only because I've always known it was associated with a silver rose.

As usual I've left out the men. But Strauss, like me, loved sopranos, so this time I'm not even going to try to amend the situation. Der Rosenkavalier belongs to its women.

The production, by the way was a very pretty and very traditional one. Which I liked: I'm easily won over by lavish sets and beautiful dresses, and it's nice sometimes not to be obliged to think about the action on any deeper level. The uncertainty as to whether Sophie's and Octavian's romance will last was conveyed, definitely, but it wasn't overdone, and there didn't seem to be any particular effort to make the audience find any deep&meaningful message about life. And I particularly liked Sophie's little handkerchief. She held on to it throughout the opera, only to drop it as she finally left, arm in arm with her beloved Octavian; and then one of the little servant boys picked it up and ran after her. I'm only guessing, and I don't want to get to symbolic, but I imagine that the handkerchief was Sophie's maidenhood, which she held on to despite Baron von Ochs' unwelcome attentions and finally lost when she was united with Octavian. Then again maybe I'm reading too much into it.

Anyway, this post seems to be lasting longer than the opera did, so I'll come to an end. I haven't seen any other Rosenkavaliers and honestly I'm not very likely to, but even so I recommend this one highly.

CD du jour is Great Opera Divas: Lucia Popp. Two CDs of uninterrupted bliss. Strauss (Richard and Johann), Wagner, Mozart, Dvorak, Puccini and dozens more, everyone's here and there's not one single moment in all of it that I could find fault in. In fact I can't even nominate a favourite moment either: it's all fabulous.

I've been debating for a while whether or not to recommend this little toy, but I think that really I should- so tonight I shall. Some out there no doubt know about it already, others perhaps don't. If you go to www.operadio.com and sign up (it's free) you can listen, via either the website or a downloadable player, to a 10 channel internet opera radio station. Sounds rather too wonderful to be true, doesn't it? Well, it is true. But there are some warnings I think need to be out there about Operadio.

It's a fabulous thing. When it's working, you can choose from Performance, Bel Canto, Oratorio, Archive, Romantic, Orchestral, Bach, Baroque, Interviews and Broadway. You can get the artist and CD information for every song you hear. Cecilia, Renée, Kiri, Maria, Angela, they're all here- everyone is, at some point.
But. There are some problems. For one, the website never seems to be updated, even though the playlists are.

When I was using the downloadable player (because until I starting using XP, the onsite one refused to work) there would be days, even weeks, when I couldn't connect. The advertisements (for Operadio) referred to video channels and something called 'linkshows' which I could never find any mention or sign of anywhere. The ads- but this has changed now I think- were significantly louder than the music: you'd turn the volume up for Edita Gruberova singing Norma then be deafened two minutes later by the woman promoting the station. Track information scrolled underneath, but sometimes referred to the wrong track, or disappeared altogether.

Things are much better, I've found, with the on-site player; but perhaps they've improved the other one as well now. Connection problems happen of course but they're a given with internet radio, and they're nowhere near as common. And sometimes the quality goes suddenly downhill, to an unlistenable extent.

So I've decided, in the end, that I do recommend Operadio. Perhaps not as 24 hour a day background music- the problems can be a little offputting. But as I'm typing this, the Bel Canto channel is playing Anna Moffo singing 'Ah tardai troppo'. So I really can't complain too much. Some singers (unfortunately not my Anna- this is the first time she's turned up)do seem to be a little over-represented. This isn't necessarily a bad thing- the crowd who turn up again and again are mostly the sorts of people you'd like to hear a lot of anyway. Only one more thing: the interview channel. I haven't been there in the last few weeks, but it does seem like they play the same 3 or 4 interviews endlessly. However, the site does mention new names in the station description now, but still it's possible that once you've heard all these, you'll want to stay away from the station for a while.

But if you get the chance to hear the Kyra Vayne interview there, stop and listen. The woman is unbelievable. Her last name should be spelt V-a-i-n. She was a Russian/English opera singer, reportedly fabulously talented, who made some recordings and then through various accidents of fate missed out on the sort of career she deserved. Then her recordings were discovered and re-released and she made up for her earlier bad luck in later life, recording again in her 80s. She's entertaining enough, and endearing in her own way- but she's also definitely one of her own biggest fans. No doubt she was very good; no doubt she didn't deserve to miss out on a career the way she did: but her own conviction of this fact can be a little hard to take. Her autobiography, A Voice Reborn, might be worth a look. I have it sitting somewhere. But one shouldn't be too unfair (or speak ill of the dead) so I'll make my disclaimer now: I've never once, not even for a moment, heard this woman sing. Perhaps I'll fall in love and forgive everything if I ever do.

CD du jour is an Elisabeth Schwarzkopf one released by Testament (I think). I don't know what it's called and I can't recall what's on it. I don't own it yet: but tomorrow when I finish my third and final exam for the semester, I'm walking straight into town and buying it as a reward.

Unfortunately, as I predicted, I

Unfortunately, as I predicted, I ended up choosing to miss Matthew Leese's concert with the Otago Camerata tonight. I have no doubt it was fabulous: I hope there's a Dunedin/Otago person reading this who saw it and wants to leave a comment telling me about what I missed. (Susie, this is your cue..)

This was very slightly made up for by a nice Concert FM moment earlier this afternoon. Concert FM, non-New Zealand readers may be appalled to learn, is our one and only classical music radio station. One of the items this afternoon was an interview with the Fiordiligi and Despina from a touring production of Così fan tutte which opens tomorrow night in Rotorua. And to finish things up, the host played 'a taste of what you might encounter at Così', or something along those lines. Somehow I doubt that this New Zealand Così, excellent as it might be, will be offering anything quite on this level: Elisabeth Schwarzkopf singing Fiordiligi's 'Per pieta'. Just plain gorgeous. I love this woman more and more all the time. And the surprise was made all the better coming when it did, just as I was coming to the end of about five hours' solid exam revision. So thankyou very much, Elisabeth.

I watched A Room With A View today for the second time this week and so CD du jour is Kiri Te Kanawa's Verdi & Puccini Arias. Two of the tracks from this CD- 'O mio babbino caro' and 'Che il bel sogno di Doretta'- are used to excellent in effect in the movie. For once they're not just there as generic 'oh look it's Italy' music- they're relevant and appropriate and perfect. Added to that, Kiri's 'Doretta' isn't just one of the nicest versions of the aria I've heard, it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard Kiri do. I know, I know, she's always excellent. But this was something special. I have another recording she made of the same aria and to me there's something just not quite right about it; this one, though, well nigh reduced me to tears- both times.

Jonathan Lemalu is the biggest

Jonathan Lemalu is the biggest opera star to come out of New Zealand since Kiri Te Kanawa. And he's from Dunedin too. This is one rapidly rising star. He sang at Covent Garden with Barbara Bonney last year, he's booked solid for the next million or so years, and I heard (inside information and all that..) that at one point his schedule obliged him to turn down an invitation to appear with Cecilia Bartoli. So there. Anyway I've learnt (courtesy of Susie) that he's performing at Albert Hall on the 17th of July as part of the Proms. For those of us who shan't be lucky enough to be there, you can see the programme here- this page also includes an audio link so no-one need miss out entirely. And just for good measure, Jonathan Lemalu's official site can be found here.

CD du jour is a very cheap, very 'greatest hits'-type Naxos Recording called O mio babbino caro: Famous Soprano Arias from Italian Opera. The title made me cringe too. All they've done is pulled the soprano hits out of their Puccini, Verdi, Bellini etc. recordings and put them on one CD, but it's actually a very nice CD. No particularly big names, excepting Ewa Podles, but all good singers. The thing is, as cliché as these arias have become, there's a reason that's the case: they're fabulously good. No rarities, nothing obscure- the sorts of arias people hear and say 'Oh that's the song from that ad..' but let's not be snobbish: this is some darn good opera.

One of the productions in this year's Salzburg Festival (which took place in April) was a Cosi fan Tutte with a female cast to die for- or possibly even to kill for. All I can say is, I would go to great lengths to see any one of these three women perform anything. And here they are, all together, and singing Cosi.
Fiordiligi: Cecilia Bartoli
Dorabella: Magdalena Kozena
Despina: Barbara Bonney

I don't know if that makes anyone else squeal at the computer the way I did when I saw those names together about fifteen minutes ago. But really, isn't that just a ridiculously good cast? Thoman Allen was in there somewhere too I seem to remember: my memory of it was clouded by those girls' names.
Now, if you want to see some pictures of this, I'd suggest Magdalena Kozena's official site. Go to Photo Gallery and then performance and it's the first gallery on that page. There's only one photo which includes Barbara but that's probably all to the good: let's just say she's looking rather scary, in a Frau Farbissiner (from Austin Powers) kind of way.
And for reviews (although they're all in French, German and Italian, pretty much) an excellent place is The Opera Critic. It's a website I vaguely remember stumbling across once, and I did so again today. It's somewhat frighteningly full of reviews, links, schedules, etc. Actually in a way it's overly full- I'd say I'm likely to go back only with something specific in mind. Wandering through aimlessly might get a bit overwhelming. But's a very very impressive site and, as it turns out, is based in Auckland.

Cd du jour has no link at all to all this Cosi stuff, it's been decided since last night. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf: Operetta Arias. I haven't heard a whole lot of Elisabeth but I've loved her for a while on account of the excellent 'Self-Portrait' DVD available: Elisabeth talking about her life while we see all sorts of wonderful clips. This CD is just stunningly beautiful though, and sacrilege though it might be, I have to say I probably prefer it to Barbara Bonney's recent CD Im Chambre séparée, with which it shares many of its arias.