Gwyneth Jones

She is named Jones, so she must be from Wales. Bryn Terfel's real name is Jones, too. He once said in an interview that if you walk into a pub in Wales and shout out, "Mr. Jones," all the men will turn around.



This is perfect. You can see that her German training, from Zurich, is excellent. My own live experiences of her were never quite as wonderful as this.

"Abscheulicher! Wo eilst du hin?" from Fidelio, Beethoven's tribute to married love.

Ten who didn't make the cut

These are ten excellent singers who didn't make the list of 14 for one reason or another. In the previous list all, with the exception of Cecilia, emphasize opera over all other styles of performance. Cecilia has invented an entirely different style of career from anyone we've seen before. She pretty much does whatever she wants and attracts audiences by virtue of her powerful musical personality. It was appropriate that Limelight chose her face for the cover.

• Roberto Alagna is really strictly an opera singer and never ventures out into other repertoire (this means other classical repertoire). He is that rare thing, a French tenor very much immersed in the Italian style. His career is enjoying a resurgence because he appears to be exactly what Peter Gelb is looking for as his leading man for French operas such as Carmen and Romeo et Juliette. He looks good in closeups but falls out of the top group because he occasionally sings out of tune.

• It is hard to understand why the tenor Marcello Giordani isn't more famous. After all, he is a true Italian tenor. We've seen him in Simon Boccanegra, Turandot, La damnation de Faust and Ernani where he has brought us fine performances, but our heart has not skipped any beats. His voice and his style are first class, but he misses only the divine inspiration. Perhaps he should try the Bjoerling trick where he pretends to be about to lose it, adding the element of danger.

• I'm quite fond of the dramatic soprano Maria Guleghina who is famous for performing the impossible roles of Turandot, Abigaille, and Lady Macbeth. Someone has to do it, and she manages this extremely heavy repertoire without showing any vocal stress. For me she delivers where others fail, but her style of heavy soprano is not in favor now.

• The coloratura mezzo Vivica Genaux is gorgeous and charming, has wonderful technique, looks good on the stage, but has no madness.  If one simply is not mad, where is one to find it?

• Matthias Goerne is a marvelous German baritone who has made his name in Lieder.  If he wishes to rise any further, he would need to excel in some opera repertoire.  I fall in and out of love with him.  Perhaps this is as far as he will rise.

• Susan Graham is wonderful but similarly lacking in madness. 

• Véronique Gens is a French soprano of the very French lyrical sort.  This can absolutely not be viewed as a criticism, but French singers are always at a disadvantage. 

• Lyric soprano Christine Schaefer is not lacking in madness.  I will make the wild guess that she is exactly where she wishes to be, admired for her creativity and musicianship and not for her ability to seem just like everyone else.  She has the most wide ranging career of any singer active today.

• Baritone Erwin Schrott is continuing to rise.  It is too soon to predict how far he will go.

• Dramatic soprano Nina Stemme has only just begun her rise.  Her Walküre Brünnhilde was marvelous, and there is no reason she will not become the outstanding Wagnerian of her generation.  She approaches Wagner from a new direction, a direction for our times, and will make him her own.
  

There are probably a lot of people who could go into a list like this, people whom we love to hear, but do not love quite enough.

It will be July soon

Judi

I am currently reading Judi Dench's memoir And Furthermore. She advises that the way to learn to speak Shakespeare properly is to listen to John Gielgud and Frank Sinatra. "Sinatra presents you the entire arc. He never lingers too long on one thing. You appreciate the essence of the whole. You're led through a song with Sinatra. There's a beginning, a middle and end."

Judi Dench's career has included quite a lot of singing. A few examples are

She appeared in Sondheim's A Little Night Music
She sang Sally Bowles in Cabaret.
She sang "Plaisir d'amour" in Hay Fever
For my money she was the best singer in the movie Nine.
She sings the title music "This is a Fine Romance" in the TV series A Fine Romance.


I promise to love Sondheim if he's always done with Judi.

Compliment: Judi tells of rehearsing A Little Night Music with Stephen Sondheim watching. Afterward she asked him for a note--a suggestion or criticism. He replied, "It's yours now."

Another Interview

Here is another interview with Jonas Kaufmann.  He's everywhere.

New York, London, Munich, Paris, Rome.

My order: London, Rome, New York, Paris, Munich.

Ranking the Simulcasts 2010-11

It was the biggest season ever for HD. I count 11 operas. Can that be right? They were: Rheingold, Boris Godunov, Don Pasquale, Don Carlo, La Fanciulla del West, Nixon in China, Iphigénie en Tauride, Lucia di Lammermoor, Le Comte Ory, Capriccio, Il Trovatore, and Die Walküre.

The Metropolitan Opera is still the place for Verdi with magnificent performances of both Don Carlo and Il Trovatore. It helps to make up for the terrible Simon Boccanegra last season. Also in the masterpiece category was René Pape's Boris Godunov. I am also happy that Susan Graham's Iphigénie en Tauride is preserved for posterity.

Just about everything else falls into the enjoyable if not exactly masterpieces category.

It is hard to evaluate the in progress Ring operas. The giant machine dominates the performances; in the case of Rheingold the domination was complete. It upstages everything and everyone. The idea is that we get a different set for each scene without stagehands coming in and moving things. Instead we get gremlins skulking around behind the set in black outfits trying to prevent catastrophe. (Is this comment cheating? They are far more obvious in the house than on the movie screen.)

And that is the problem, isn't it? We are always on the verge of catastrophe. I predicted the other day that before the end of the run someone would be killed. It wouldn't take much. The performers are all distracted by the lurking machine, though less so in Die Walküre.

I understand that when asked about the machine, Jonas Kaufmann replied that he liked the acoustic. It is a giant reflective surface that can benefit the singer's effect in the house. I guess that's a good thing.

I'm supposed to be rating the simulcasts. Rheingold came closest to bombing.

Il Trovatore in HD

I made it to the rerun of Il Trovatore in HD last night, and it turned out to be a rerun of Il Trovatore in San Francisco in 2009. The sets and costumes and even some of the cast were the same, except this was the first cast instead of the stand-ins.

And what a cast it was:

Manrico: Marcelo Alvarez
Leonora: Sondra Radvanovsky
Azucena: Dolora Zajick
Count di Luna: Dmitri Hvorostovsky

Conductor:  Marco Armiliato
Production: David McVicar

I agree with Renée Fleming, the hostess--to assemble such a cast is an event. There was quite a bit of excellent information in the interviews. All the performers liked the rotating set by Charles Edwards because it allowed the action to flow without stopping for set changes. All the interviewees agreed that their character is crazy.

The plot was explained by Dolora Zajick. Azucena tries to get Manrico to kill di Luna to avenge her mother's death, and when he won't, she arranges for di Luna to kill Manrico. This makes her happy. I see it now. Opera plots are so sick.

Each singer was more wonderful than the last. Sondra Radvanovsky just gets better and better. Zajick owns her role. Marcelo is the most insane troubadour I've ever seen.

But my award has to go to the incredible singing of Dmitri Hvorostovsky. It doesn't get better than this.
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bachtrack

I recommend this website called bachtrack if, like me, you enjoy attending musical performances in other cities around the world.  I wrote a review for them here of the Metropolitan Opera performance of Ariadne auf Naxos that I attended last week.   At this time I don't know if anything will come of this.

I blog for fun and often like to say outrageous things.  I don't know if this is compatible with writing for other people.  It cramps my style.

Footnote

I have reached an age where if things sound different, it could always be my ears.  That wouldn't make them sound louder, would it?

Blogging

I came east to see Gauguin at the National Gallery of Art and to see Joyce DiDonato in Ariadne auf Naxos, which I have reviewed somewhere else.  I will post a link once it is up.  I didn't hope for getting to see Jonas.

Joyce was over the top.  I have seen this opera a number of times but have never seen a mezzo have so much fun with the composer character.  Isn't that why we go?  For fun?  

I have been struck on this short trip by how often I am hearing bright, loud especially female voices.  In San Francisco the singers sound pretty much the same way they always have, but in these last three opera performances the voices begin all to sound alike, especially with Deborah Voigt, Violetta Urmana, Joyce DiDonato, Patricia Racette.

Initially I thought someone might be training them to sing that way.  Or perhaps the producers selected them for this quality.

Or perhaps the amplification systems emphasized these particular overtones.  Whatever the reason, it isn't to my taste.