That's the Leonora of Verdi's La Forza del destino, as sung at English National Opera by a phenomenal new American soprano on the block. I've already written a little about Tamara Wilson, London debutante of the year, but not about the visit she so freely agreed to make to my Opera in Depth course at the Frontline Club. One of my students, Robin Weiss, took both the class pictures.
Well, maybe I was daft not to ask if I could record it, because there was so much in those two hours that neither I nor the students had heard about before. As when I steered the 'Brunch with Brünnhildes' Sue Bullock and Catherine Foster, we heard all about the practicalities of singing, the slog of staying on form and making sure you're not sick for the performances, in which case you don't get a penny for all that preparation, what it's like for a woman in opera if the monthly occurrence messes up or changes the voice, and how it can; plus plenty about the technique, the perfect placement and keeping the voice even-toned and well connected throughout the range in spite of the two passaggios in the female voice where the breaks can occur; who was so good at it, like Sutherland, the queen of technicians, who rarely moved the position of her head in performance and how far you can compromise that when a director asks so much of you.
It was also fascinating to learn of the way Tamara approaches text - most singers only 'do' a literal translation from the original, but she adds one in which what's really being meaningfully expressed can be scribbled on with all kinds of profanities, if helpful (viz Donna Anna's underlying fury in her reaction to her would-be rapist). And she cried, or at least shed tears, all the way through the Verdi - how on earth could she manage that without it affecting the voice? One way is to focus on revisiting a childhood scene (if, presumably, happy) - that brings tears of the right sort. Though she found it difficult recently when her grandfather died.
Which, of course, Calixto Bieito did, and Tamara (pictured above as Leonora by Clive Barda for ENO) seemed genuinely happy about what he'd put her through. The artists all arrived at the first rehearsal expecting to sing things through, but in they went to the production straight away, going through each scene over a number of days. Some adjustments would have to be made - Gwyn Hughes Jones, for instance, wasn't happy about his placement on a ramp at one point - but the results seem to have been harmonious. And having lived in terror of Bieito's reputation, our soprano found that he was a 'real pussycat' face to face.
How different all this, then, from when she stepped in for an indisposed Latonia Moore as Aida at the Met. Just one walk around the stage for entrances and exits and positions - nothing too complicated - and then the performances. Great Violeta Urmana, the Amneris, was a help, but you can't always depend upon it. The kindness of colleagues usually saves the day, though. Tamara's best pal in the business is Christine Goerke, only now making a breakthrough with roles like Brünnhilde, Elektra and the Dyer's Wife, and partly through Goerke she knows she won't even be thinking about those pinnacles for another 10 years at least. We can wait. I was surprised to learn she made her own first breakthrough with roles like Konstanze in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and Norma is now a comfortable sing.
Which is why I suppose the bit of coloratura in the Empress's Awakening Scene of Die Frau ohne Schatten comes easily to her. Having reviewed the live Frankfurt CD set for BBC Music Magazine - the review is in the January issue along with a whopping piece on Stravinsky - I asked in advance if she'd mind if we played the whole 'Judgment of Solomon' scene in the class; as with everything else, she was easy and gracious about it and pointed out details in the sequence that helped us understand what she was doing technically. It was only a couple of weeks before the ENO opening that I heard this phenomenal and dramatically expressive voice for the first time, and wondered why we hadn't come across her before. Now we have, and there are talks afoot for more at ENO, though I wouldn't be surprised if the Royal Opera leaps in with role offers that are usually so hard to fill well.
Our five weeks on Forza inevitably filled up with a range of great recordings and performances. Dusolina Giannini and Callas give the best and most expressive interpretations of Leonora's arias, with a special spotlight for another American soprano, this time one who didn't last too well, Susan Dunn, singing 'Pace, pace, mio dio' with a youthful gleam and such ardour on her one and only arias disc. When we came to the big duets and arias for Alvaro and Carlo, we were spoilt for choice: Carreras and Bruson on CD, De Luca and Martinelli for the last duet, Carreras and Cappuccilli on a 1978 DVD from La Scala which only showed, too, what happens when you do nothing with the tricky non-conflicting Leonore-Padre Guardiano duet, even given two of the greatest singers ever (Caballé and Ghiaurov). The scene-stealers, though, were Domingo and Milnes in a Met concert with James Levine so perfectly attuned to them. Here they are, albeit in much poorer picture quality than on my Met DVD, singing 'Solenne in quest'ora'.
That's star quality for you. It still seems that the cornucopia of Forza remains most easily realisable in concert. I still wait for a staging that convinces throughout. Anyway, we've put it uneasily to bed now. On next term to Boris Godunov in six weeks with Enescu's Oedipe and Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest in the remaining four. If you'd like to come along, do contact me at david.nice@usa.net.
Stop press: reports of bad things ahead for ENO have been confirmed; more anon. Disaster lurks if the inexperienced management doesn't listen to reason. And all this started with such a piece of stupidity from the Arts Council that it makes my blood boil just to think about it. Can it be possible that one of the very best of years for the company, artistically - one fine MD setting the seal on his achievements, another weighing in with electrifying performances - could be followed by the worst, potentially from next September on?
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Each time I read about your classes I so wish I was there. I envy your students.
I wish you could be there too - the select blogpals would so enrich the course. And I'm very lucky indeed with the generous and loyal crowd I have. Without the substantial core of 20-30 I wouldn't have made the transition from the City Lit - and I'm so glad I did it.
Willym said exactly what I always think, too. Not to mention seeing you in your sartorial splendor there. (You remind me that I have a pair of pants in about that shade in my closet, but I've not been bold enough to wear them, and now they don't fit!)
But, on to the substance. I know only the barest bit of what it takes to sing, and what a gift to get even a glimpse of the insights Ms. Wilson shared in your class. I'm reminded by this of attending the Met production of Lulu recently (which was mesmerizing from first note to last). I had the wonderful luck to be seated right behind Tony Arnold, a tremendously talented soprano of experimental music. I try not to act like a star-struck Zelig in such moments, but I didn't quite succeed. At intermission, I asked her how singers sang atonal works, and she said, "tonally." That is (and I won't get this quite right), one technique is to find a mental ground note and sing against that, varying the ground note as a new one is required to hear the notes sung tonally. She also said that Lucy Dhegrae was a fabulous teacher with a huge trove of techniques for teaching how to sing atonal and other difficult works. The first thing I thought on getting that information was how much I'd like, as an observer, to attend one of her classes, something I'll ask about when I see her next.
Hope my 'pants' weren't de trop...I really treasure a pair of electric blue moleskins, now holey, which Cordings of Piccadily have not been supplying for years so I had to make do with cords in that colour instead. I never understood why Alexander McCall Smith was so relentlessly negative about raspberry coloured cords, deemed the height of mannered untrustworthiness in one of his Scotland Street characters. My first emancipation at university was to invest in a very cheap pair of blackberry cords. Oh, those days.
Yes, that makes sense about singing atonally tonally, so to speak. I always envy performers who get the kind of chance to get under the skin of the music as most listeners never will. Still, it must remain expressive, which is why so many people love Lulu so much. I can sing you most of the tone rows, so clearly they've gone in. Anyway several tend to start diatonically.
In Lady Chatterley's Lover, the gamekeeper Mellors regretted that men could not show their sexuality by wearing red trousers. But now they can !
What sort of sexuality, though? Red and raspberry colours aren't a gay thing necessarily.
Sorry this has all come down to trousers...
David: This really fascinated me, too: "the way Tamara approaches text - most singers only 'do' a literal translation from the original, but she adds one in which what's really being meaningfully expressed can be scribbled on with all kinds of profanities, if helpful (viz Donna Anna's underlying fury in her reaction to her would-be rapist)." I'd love to hear more about that.
That's why I wish I'd recorded it - something memorable like 'you f**cking bastard, you tried to rape me and killed my dad, I'm going to get you by the balls'. Or some such. Psychological subtext, often. A literal translation will often not give the real emotional feeling behind the words. I just listened to her in Wagner's Die Feen, a chunk of Act 2, without a libretto, and it was so clear what her character and others meant and felt at any given moment. Remember I've only encountered this early work once, in concert, and real meaning, with fire from the orchestra, makes such a difference, covering up essential weaknesses.
That in Die Feen the meaning came through without recourse to a libretto, is quite a testament to her powers of expression.
The conductor, Sebastian Weigle, should also take credit. That's quite some Strauss performance, and I hardly knew any of the singers. Another good 'un which I've just reviewed is an Arabella, also without big names, live from the Dutch National Opera - another terrific conductor there in Marc Albrecht.
The real emotional feeling (as in the case of Donna Anna) is indeed ( as you seem to suggest David) in the music, not in the words. Indeed the plot is the skeleton - the flesh of the drama is in the music. One should listen to the music, and I am rather against sur titles, especially at the ENO when one can certainly get enough of the plot from the English words. Also, some argue that Don Giovanni succeeded in seducing/raping Donna Anna, on the grounds that after the events of that night he lost interest in her - the usual behaviour of a serial seducer.
I'm tired of the 'success with Donna Anna' line: in the last two productions I've seen, both poor, DG and DA emerge in a state of post-coital contentment totally at odds with the energy of the music. The 19th century over-idealised Anna; the 20th and 21st traduce her, on no evidence from Mozart or Tirso de Molina. It's a male construct that she was 'gagging for it', a deduction from the 'hysterical' way she behaves thereafter. The girl's been attacked and lost her father, after all. The only production I've seen which treats the first scene as it deserves has been by a woman, Deborah Warner, at Glyndebourne. The 'epilogue' is brilliantly done there, too, persuading a sceptical group of students that the action SHOULD go on beyond Giovanni's consignment to hell.
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