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Vocal recitals.

68107 Views 339 Replies 27 Participants Last post by  Tsaraslondon, 
Tsaraslondon
We don't seem to have anywhere on the site to discuss vocal recitals, so I thought I'd start one.

I'm returning to this box set at the moment.


This 5 disc set brings together most, though not all, of the recordings Dame Janet Baker made for Decca, Argo and Philips during the 1960s and 1970s. Though contracted to EMI (and Warner have a pretty exhaustive ten disc box set of her work for that label, called The Great Recordings), she made a few recordings for Decca/Argo (including her famous recording of Dido and Aeneas) in the early 60s, and then a tranche of recitals for Philips in the 1970s. The range of material here is not quite as wide as that on the aforementioned Warner, but takes us from 17th century arie through to Britten.

Disc 1 is a selection of what most vocal students would know as Arie Antiche (called here Arie Amorose), (in somewhat souped- up arrangements) by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields under Sir Neville Marriner. Whilst the arrangements can sound somewhat anachronistic today, Baker's wonderfully varied singing is not and each little song emerges as a little gem. The disc is rounded off with a couple of arias from La Calisto recorded shortly after her great success in the role of Diana/Jove at Glyndebourne.

Some of Baker's greatest early successes were in Handel and Disc 2 is mostly taken up by a superb 1972 Handel recital she made with the English Chamber Orchestra under Raymond Leppard. How brilliantly she charts the changing emotions in the cantata Lucrezia and also in the arioso-like Where shall I fly from Hercules,but each track displays the specificity of her art, the way she can express the despair in an aria like Scherza infida and the joy in Dopo notte. The disc is rounded off by a 1966 recording of Bach's Vergnügte Ruh and her incomparable When I am laid in earth from her 1961 recording of Dido and Aeneas.

Disc 3 has excerpts from a 1973 Mozart/Haydn recital and a 1976 Beethoven/Schubert disc, both made with Raymond Leppard, with the addition of arias from her complete recordings of la Clemenza di Tito and Cosí fan tutte under Sir Colin Davis. The two Haydn cantatas (one with piano and one with orchestra) are very welcome, but we do miss her stunning performance of Sesto's two big arias from La Clemenza di Tito, and her gently intimate performance of Mozart's Abendempfindung. Fortunately these have been included in a superb selection taken from the same two recitals on the Pentatone label, which includes all the missing Mozart and Schubert items. This disc also includes her recording of Beethoven's Ah perfido!, a little smaller in scale than some, but beautifully judged none the less. It doesn't have Callas's ferocity, it is true, but it is much more comfortably vocalised.

Disc 4 is of music by Rameau (excerpts from her 1965 recording of Hippolyte et Aricie, which well display her impassioned Phèdre), Gluck (arias for Orfeo and Alceste taken from her 1975 Gluck recital) and Berlioz (1979 performances of Cléopâtre and Herminie and Béatrice's big scene from Davis's complete 1977 recording of Béatrice et Bénédict). The biggest loss here is of the majority of the Gluck recital, which included many rare items, though the complete reictal was at one time available on one of Philips's budget labels. Baker is without doubt one of the greatest Berlioz exponents of all time, and the two scènes lyriques are especially welcome, the range of expression in both fully exploited.

Disc 5 is of late nineteenth and twentieth century French song and Benjamin Britten; the whole of a disc of French song made with the Melos Ensmble in 1966, excerpts from the composers own recordings of The Rape of Lucretia and Owen Wingraveand Phaedra, which was composed specifically for her. The Melos disc includes Ravel's Chansons Madécasses and Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé, Chausson's Chanson perpétuelle and Delage's Quatre poèmes hindous and is a fine example of Baker's felicity in French chanson. The Britten excerpts remind us of her sympathetic portrayal of Lucretia and her unpleasant Kate in Owen Wingrave. The Britten cantata is a great example of her controlled intensity.

Remarkable throughout is the care and concentration of her interpretations. Nothing is glossed over, nothing taken for granted, and she was one of those artists who could bring the frisson of live performance into the studio. Nor do I think she ever made a bad record. One of my all time favourite singers.
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Tsaraslondon


I first saw DiDonato as Dejanira in Luc Bondy's superbly staged production of Hercules, and it's a performance I will never forget. Predictably then, it is the items from that orotorio that are the most vividly characterised, but the whole disc is worth hearing. DiDonato doesn't have a particularly distinctive voice, but she uses it with great skill and, at this time in her career at least, Handel was the perfect composer for her.

I really enjoyed re-visiting this disc this morning.
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Tsaraslondon


An enterprising collection of mostly off the beaten track bel canto arias, with arias by Pacini, Mercadante and Carafa joining some not so well known arias by Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti. Not all of it is great music and I found the januty opening Pacini aria, in which the heroine berates her lover for not being there to witness her dying breath, absolutely hilarious. I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intention. Still, things improve greatly after that and Pacini redeems himself somewhat in the final fourteen minute extract from his opera, Saffo.

In all DiDonato is technically proficient and dramatically involved, but I did occasionally find myself wondering what the likes of Callas and Caballé might have made of this material. She doesn't have the personality of the former or the vocal beauty of the latter. In the arias I did know, from I Capuleti e i Montecchi and Maria Stuarda, she did not erase memories of Janet Baker. Nonetheless an enjoyable disc.
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Tsaraslondon
5


This 2 disc set brings together all Domingo's early recitals for RCA, Romantic Arias, recorded in 1968 and Domingo sings Caruso and La Voce d'Oro, both recorded in 1971. The first recital is the most wide ranging, with Domingo singing in Italian, German, French and Russian and featuring arias by Handel, Mozart, Donizetti, Halévy, Verdi, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Puccini and Mascagni. I had it on LP and I remember being impressed both by the beauty of the voice and his ability to sing both Mozart and Mascagni with such success. One might not expect it of such a voice, but his mastery of the florid sections of Ottavio's Il mio tesoro is exemplary, not only singing the longest run cleanly and in one breath, but also managing to phrase onwards into the restatement of Il mio tesoro.

The other two recitals are of arias we would more usually expect to hear from a tenor active in Italian repertoire. This issue is well documented too, with texts and translations and details of the recording dates and locations. RCA also add a couple of rare Leoncavallo arias, which were included as fill-ups on the Santi recording of Pagliacci.

Domingo doesn't seem to get much love these days, but you'd go a long way to hear a young tenor half as good these days.






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Tsaraslondon


Twenty years after The Young Domingo recitals I was listening to a couple of days ago, Domingo is, if anything, in firmer, freer voice and he is better at projecting character. This in an enterprising selection, with excerpts from Handel's Giulio Cesare and Ezio, Spontini's La Vestale (but why not in French?), Bellini's Norma, Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini, Verdi's Attila, Wagner's Rienzi, Puccini's Tosca and Mascagni's Nerome. It is notable that he now takes Sesto's Svegliatevi nel core at a much faster tempo than he did in 1968, but his runs are if anything even more fluid. Nor does he need to resort to aspirates to negotiate the notes.

All in all a very satisfying recital.
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Tsaraslondon


Recorded five years ago now, this was the young Danish/French sopano's first recital and very fine it is too. I'm not sure all these roles would have suited her on stage at that time, but the French version of Strauss's Salome is surprisingly successful and she has in fact now sung the role to great acclaim at the Aix-en-Provence festival last year.

The programme is an interesting one, starting with two arias where the character adresses a mirror (Marguerite from Gounod's Faust and Thaïs) then the same characters as envisaged by different composers. So we have arias for Manon by Puccini and Massenet, Juliette by Steibelt (a premiere recording) and Gounod (also a premiere recording of the whole scene), Rossini's Rosina and Mozart's Countess Almaviva, and finally the Salomes of Massenet and Strauss. The most successful items vocally, I think, are Margeurite's Jewel Song, the two Juliettes, Massenet's Manon, her two Rosinas, both the sparky Rossini and the more mature, disillusioned Countess, and the two Salomes. Though the voice is a light soprano, the lower register is suprisingly rich (I can't be sure, but I think she sings Rosina's Una voce poco fa in the original mezzo key), but she doesn't really have the fullness of tone required for Puccini's Manon or for Thaïs. On the other hand, there is nothing bland about any of her portrayals and she uses words and music imaginatively to create character. Not surprisingly, her French is excellent, but she sings Italian very well too.

A very promising debut recital and it is good to see that Dreisig appears to be taking her career slowly. Her most recent recital of Mozart arias would suggest that the voice is becoming richer and fuller.
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Tsaraslondon


Recorded in 1996 when Fleming's international career was really taking off, this is, I think, one of her most successful recital discs. I prefer the programming here to a series of short opera arias; thus, after the Countess's two arias from Le Nozze di Figaro, we get the whole of Tatiana's Letter Scene (in Russian) from Eugene Onegin with Larissa Dyadkova as Filipyevna, Rusalka's Song to the Moon (in Czech), the whole of the Willow Song and Ave Maria from Otello with Diadkova as Emilia, the whole scene which includes Britten's haunting Embroidery Aria with Jonathan Summers as Balstrode, and the Transformation Scene from Strauss's Daphne.

All this is music to which Fleming was eminently suited and, at this time in her career, she indulges in none of the sliding mannersims that crept into her singing in later years. A great recital, which I reviewed in greater detail on
my blog.
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Tsaraslondon


Recorded in 1998, this is another highly successful recital by Renée Fleming. I do have one or two minor quibbles and my impressions are much the same as they were when I revieved the album for my blog, but there is no doubting the quality of the voice or the singing.
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Tsaraslondon


The extended excerpts from Der Rosenkavalier make one wonder why Decca never recorded the whole opera with the same cast and conductor as here. On this evidence I think I'd prefer it to the Solti, if not to Karajan I.

I've always found Fleming at her very best in Strauss and Mozart, and so it proves here. The voice is in prime condition and she is perfectly cast as the Marschallin, Arabella and the Countess Madeleine. The presence of Susan Graham and Barbara Bonney certainly adds lustre to the disc, as do the Vienna Phil and Christoph Eschenbach. This is undoubtedly one of Fleming's very best records.
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Tsaraslondon


Now here's a surprise. Given that this recital was recorded in 2003, by which time Fleming had started induging in all those swoopy slides and interpretive moues that I find so irritating, you'd think a disc of Handel arias might be a bit of a disaster. Not a bit of it. I actually think this is one of her very best recitals. Whether it be the presence of a HIP band (the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment) or that of HIP specialist, Harry Bicket, Fleming has shed all those annoying mannerisms and given us a stunning example of fine Handel singing. Technically the music holds no terrors for her at all, and the voice itself is absolutely gorgeous, evenly produced throughout its extensive range, rich down below and gloriously gleaming and free on high.

Most of the arias are well known, but Fleming easily survives comparison with singers more regularly associated with Handel. Her approach is also quite dramatic and she isn't afraid of using chest voice for dramatic effect in some of the recitatives. I thoroughly enjoyed this recital and recommend it wholeheartedly.
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Tsaraslondon


For my money this is not quite the total success of Fleming's Handel recital that I was listening to before. The programme, which pays homage to divas of yesteryear is certainly interesting and varied, taking in operas, some of them quite rare, by Cilea, Smetana, Tchaikovsky, Puccini, Korngold, Gounod, Strauss, Rimsky-Korsakov, Verdi, Massenet and Janáček. She is most at home and really in her element in the Strauss and Korngold sections. The Russian and Czech items are also excellent and so too is the aria from Massenet's rarely heard Cléopâtre. I am slightly less convinced by the aria from Gounod's Mireille, but she certainly executes its coloratura demands with ease. I just detected a slight hardness in her upper register here, something I have never heard before.

For me the least successful items were the Italian ones, which also, perhaps not coincidentally, are also the most well known. Tosca's Vissi d'arte is drawn out interminably and loses all sense of pathos and I also think she made some questionable interpretive choices in Leonora's Tacea la notte and Di tale amor from Il Trovatore.

I'd call this recital aout 75% worth hearing then.
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Tsaraslondon
4


Disc one, which is made up, mostly, of the Gedda's earliest recordings, hence we have excerpts from his splendid Dimitri on the 1952 Dobrowen recording of Boris Godunov (with Eugenia Zareska) and the whole of his first recital for EMI, recorded in 1953. A further excerpt from Boris Godunov from a 1969 recital is included, along with an aria from Rimsky-Korsakov’s May Night which shows the voice virtually unchanged in seventeen years, though the style is possibly a little more assertive.

The 1953 recital is a real treasure-trove of delights, opening with a version of Lensky’s Act II aria, which is so beautiful that it bears comparison with Sobinov. He sings it as an inner monologue, the pianissimo reprise spun out in mastery fashion. Also wonderful are his honeyed performance of Du pauvre seul ami fidèle from Auber’s La Muette de Portici and the glorious mezza voce legato of Nadir’s Je crois entendre encore. The other French items are just as desirable. He is perhaps a little too diffident in Cielo e mar from Ponchielli’s La Gioconda and one really wants a more robust voice here, On the other hand, I rather liked his sad, restrained performance of Federico’s Lament from Cilea’s L’Arlesiana. Some may prefer a more overtly passionate rendering in the manner of Corelli, but personally I find Gedda’s vocal restraint quite refreshing and not in the least bit unemotional. This first disc ends with a joyfully ebullient version of Mes amis, écoutez l’histoire from Adam’s Le postillon de Lonjumeau, sung in Swedish and recorded live in 1952.




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Tsaraslondon
5


Disc 2 is also wide ranging, starting with music by Rousseau, Gluck (Gedda coping superbly with the high tessitura of Gluck’s tenor version of Orphée et Eurydice) and Mozart, before moving on to the German Romantic repertoire. Taken from a 1957 recital disc, Don Ottavio’s arias and Tamino’s Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön are much better than on the complete Klemperer recordings, with a lovely smile in the tone for Tamino’s aria. Belmonte’s Ich baue ganz, recorded in 1967 with the Bath Festival Orchestra under Sir Yehudi Menuhin and sung in impeccable English, is brilliantly done. Exciting performances of Huon’s arias from Oberon lead us into the German Romantics. Gedda only once sang Lohengrin on stage, but decided that Wagner wasn’t for him. His lyrical approach to In fernem Land and Mein lieber Schwann is very beautfiful nonetheless.

Best of all on this second disc is a magical performance of Magische Töne, sung in a ravishing mezza voce of ineffable sweetness, the long legato line beautifully and firmly held. This is great singing, no doubt about it.






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Tsaraslondon
7


Disc 3 is of French and Italian arias and duets. It starts with a superb performance of La gloire était ma seule idole from Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini, a role Gedda made very much his own and of course later recorded complete under Sir Colin Davis. Next comes a dramatic version of Un autre est son époux from Werther, the joyful Aubade from Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys, and the Raoul/Marguerite duet from Les Huguenots (with Mady Mesplé). Arnold’s Asil hérèditaire from Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, with its fabulously ringing top notes, leads us into the Italian bel canto items.

Mirella Freni joins him for duets from La Sonnambula, Lucia di Lammermoor and Don Pasquale whilst alone he sings Edgardo’s Tombe degli avi miei and Ernesto’s Cercherò lontana terra. The Bellini had me wishing he had been engaged for Callas’s studio recording of La Sonnambula rather than the ineffectual Monti. After all he had already sung Narciso in her recording of Il Turco in Italia.

Freni, who had yet to venture into more dramatic repertoire, blends well with Gedda in the duets, but back in 1966 she had yet to learn how to project personality in a recording. Her singing is lovely but a little anonymous. Both the solo items could be considered models of bel canto style but are also sung with appreciation of the dramatic situation, the recitatives vividly delivered.

To finish we have a clutch of encores, including Lara’s Granada and the lovely Berceuse from Godard’s Jocelyn, which give us a glimpse of Gedda’s prowess in lighter fare and remind us of that Gedda also recorded a lot of operetta.
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Tsaraslondon


This bargain two disc compilation from the EMI vaults is a great distillation of the art of Gedda. taking in opera, operetta and song.
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Tsaraslondon


Whatever one thinks of Angela Gheorghiu, and whatever she did before or after this recital, this is a fabulous disc. It was recorded over two sessions in 1998 and 1999, four years after her triumph as Violetta at Covent Garden in 1994. Here she gives us arias from I Vespri Siciliani, Don Carlo, Rigoletto, Aida, Il Trovatore, Un Ballo in Maschera, Simon Boccanegra, La Forza del Destino and Otello and only Gilda's Caro nome would seem less than a perfect fit.

On this showing, you would imagine that she would go on to become one of the great Verdi sopranos of her generation, but, as far as I can tell, she sang very few of these roles on stage. There are times I can hear that she has absorbed the lessons of Callas, though the voice itself is very different. Just occasionally it feels as if she is ghosting the phrasing of her predecessor, and it is well known that she is a great admirer of La Divina. Whether this is true or not, she is fully able to enter the sound world of each 'heroine' and her voice is in prime condition, rich and darkly plangent throughout its range.

She has the inestimable support of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi under Riccardo Challiy, reminding me that the best operatic recitals usually have a strong hand at the helm. A great disc.
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Tsaraslondon


It was Decca who first signed Gheorgiu up after her sensational debut as Violetta at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and here they pay tribute to her with a well filled disc of excerpts from the few recordings she made for the label before she left them.

There are two excerpts from that 1994 Covent Garden La Traviata, a reflective Ah, fors è lui, technically assured Sempre libera and an affecting Addio del passato. Solti’s conducting is, as always in Verdi, a bit rigid but it is easy to understand why Gheorghiu had such a success in the role.

Next chronologically are five arias from her first recital disc made in 1995; Wally’s Ebben? Ne andro lontana, Marguerite’s Jewel Song from Faust, Il est doux, il est bon from Massenet’s Hérodiade and Vive amour qui rêve from his Chérubin. The Wally piece is beautifully sung, though she doesn’t quite capture its aching loneliness and the Jewel Song sparkles lightly as it should. The Aubade from Chérubin is also lovely, and I am reminded that I first saw her in the secondary role of Nina in the production of the opera which the Royal Opera, Covent Garden mounted with Susan Graham in the title role. She made quite an impression too. Probably the best of all these selections is the aria from Hérodiade, which is both gorgeous and gorgeously sung.

From the 1996 Lyon production of L’Elisir d’Amore we have Adina and Nemorino’s Chiedi all’aura lusinghietta, in which I find her, as I did in the theatre, just a mite too sophisticated.

There are so many good recordings of La Boheme that Chailly’s 1999 recording with Gheorghiu and Alagna is quite often forgotten, which is a pity as it’s actually very good indeed. From this set we have Gheorghiu’s touchingly sincere Si, mi chiamano Mimi through to the end of the act, and also her moving rendition of Donde lieta usci.

The items taken from her Verdi recital with Chailly all impress. She might not quite match the breezy insouciance of Callas or Sutherland in Elena’s Merce, dilette amiche, but she seems almost perfectly cast as Amelia in her Come in quet’ora bruna. Both Leonoras are beautifully sung too, and there is a dark loveliness to her tone, which reminds me, surprisingly perhaps, of Leontyne Price.

The disc finishes, fittingly enough, with the fifth take from her first album, a piece from Romanian composer George Grigoriu’s Muzika, slight in musical value, but charmingly delivered.
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Tsaraslondon
2


What a treasure trove this is, taking in early 78s from as early as 1942 through to 1964, when Gobbi would have been 51. No doubt there were singers of his generation with more lustrous intstruments, but I can think of none, save perhaps Giuseppe Taddei, who could so easily bring a character to life in sound alone. Walter Legge dubbed him 'the acting voice' and so it proves here, both in earlier recordings of individual arias and in excerpts from his many complete recordings, the vast majority of which I already own. I had also heard some of the 78s and early operatic recital before, but the items that were completely new to me were the songs, some with orchestra and a selection with Gerald Moore at the piano, taken from a 1964 set, called The Art of Tito Gobbi, which also included a selection of opera arias. It is an unusual collection of ancient and modern airs and Gobbi sings them with a Lieder singer's attention to detail and a wonderful range of tone colour.

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Viardots
Tsaraslondon said:


Whatever one thinks of Angela Gheorghiu, and whatever she did before or after this recital, this is a fabulous disc. It was recorded over two sessions in 1998 and 1999, four years after her triumph as Violetta at Covent Garden in 1994. Here she gives us arias from I Vespri Siciliani, Don Carlo, Rigoletto, Aida, Il Trovatore, Un Ballo in Maschera, Simon Boccanegra, La Forza del Destino and Otello and only Gilda's Caro nome would seem less than a perfect fit.

On this showing, you would imagine that she would go on to become one of the great Verdi sopranos of her generation, but, as far as I can tell, she sang very few of these roles on stage. There are times I can hear that she has absorbed the lessons of Callas, though the voice itself is very different. Just occasionally it feels as if she is ghosting the phrasing of her predecessor, and it is well known that she is a great admirer of La Divina. Whether this is true or not, she is fully able to enter the sound world of each 'heroine' and her voice is in prime condition, rich and darkly plangent throughout its range.

She has the inestimable suppory of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi under Riccardo Challiy, reminding me that the best operatic recitals usually have a strong hand at the helm. A great disc.
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Alan Blyth virtually praised this recital to the sky in the Gramophone when it was released. I did buy and hear it. She was in her vocal prime and made apparent, concerted effort to differentiate between the characters. Among the roles, at least Gilda, Maria in Boccanegra, the Trovatore Leonora and Desdemona are within her capabilities and she could have developed her career further with those roles in her stage repertoire.
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Tsaraslondon
Viardots said:
Alan Blyth virtually praised this recital to the sky in the Gramophone when it was released. I did buy and hear it. She was in her vocal prime and made apparent, concerted effort to differentiate between the characters. Among the roles, at least Gilda, Maria in Boccanegra, the Trovatore Leonora and Desdemona are within her capabilities and she could have developed her career further with those roles in her stage repertoire.
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I haven't heard all her recitals, but of those i've heard this is by far the best. I'm not sure I'd agree about her Gilda. I always hear a slight sophistication in her singing, which is at odds with the character. I felt the same about her Adina when I saw her in the role at Covent Garden.

Soon after this she started to believe her own publicity and she became more of a prima donna and less of an artist.
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Macbeth
Tsaraslondon said:
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If you don't mind me making a really silly remark, this cover looks totally like a meme of Pam from The Office (USA - please don't hate me) after her boss has made an inappropriate joke.
I can't help thinking it every time I see it!
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