Reply With QuoteBrains and looks. Not to forget talent. The whole package. Love.Originally Posted by Hoffmann
She can master German in a month?
Maybe she's in the wrong business!
Brains and looks. Not to forget talent. The whole package. Love.
"J'ai dit qu'il ne suffisait pas d'entendre la musique, mais qu'il fallait encore la voir" (Stravinsky)
Very tempting!The Russian-Austrian soprano tells Das Opernglas, that she has set aside the whole of April to master the German language, in readiness for her Wagner debut as Lohengrin’s Elsa in May.
Christian Thielemann will conduct the production in Dresden.
Booked your flights yet Luiz?
"J'ai dit qu'il ne suffisait pas d'entendre la musique, mais qu'il fallait encore la voir" (Stravinsky)
Interesting cast -- Piotr Beczala is singing Lohengrin, with Evelyn Herlitzius and Tomász Konieczny as the baddies Ortrud and Telramund.
Evelyn Herlitzius is a terrifying Ortrud. The rather acidulated tone of her voice suits that kind of role very well.
Natalie
Triple word score for "acidulated."
Since I’m sure some Enquiring Minds here at OL will want to know what’s in the rest of the interview, here’s a summary:The Russian-Austrian soprano tells Das Opernglas, that she has set aside the whole of April to master the German language, in readiness for her Wagner debut as Lohengrin’s Elsa in May.
Christian Thielemann will conduct the production in Dresden.
Booked your flights yet Luiz?
In her discussion with Ralf Thiedemann, La Bellissima talks about the way in which her voice has recently developed, some major roles currently in her repertoire, and a few others she’ll soon be adding to it.
Her voice
- The rapid transformation her soprano has undergone in the past several months is something she characterizes as “very rare,” and says she can’t precisely explain why her voice has changed so much. Now she is able to completely open up her middle and lower registers – both were always there, she notes, but not to this extent. She herself was almost shocked by how quickly everything happened. All she had to do was work on integrating the sound and making sure the registers were evenly blended. Now all she needs is the right breath support and can really “let go.”
- This may alarm some of the gentlemen, but she says she is really happy with every extra kilo she adds to her shapely figure because she knows it will help her to produce that sound. Of course, there is more to it than that; there is also a lot of technique and hard work involved. She says one can only interpret the roles she now sings when one has the right technique. The muscles also need to be trained, and with a repertoire that really demands everything from her, she needs to have the right support to protect her voice.
Leonora (Il Trovatore)
- She’s happy that she’s had the opportunity to sing this role in its entirety, complete with cabalettas following her two big arias, though the part is very taxing. Not only is it very long, but it has a tessitura that often reaches down into the mezzo range. She asserts that one can only sing Leonora when one is in peak condition physically and at the height of one’s vocal capabilities, not before and not after. In fact, she believes every soprano who sings this part probably has a “window” of only a few years in which to perform the role.
Anna Bolena
- She loves this role, but says it demands everything from her. If one sings this character, it’s very much an all-or-nothing proposition. When she finished a series of performances, she was exhausted vocally, physically, and emotionally. Her latest appearances as Henry VIII’s doomed Queen took place a year ago in Vienna and Zürich, and she says things went much better then than when she first undertook the part. Even so, she was nearly worn out by the end of the series, to the point that she almost lost her voice in the last performances – something that otherwise absolutely never happens to her.
- She points out that Anna Bolena is not a pure bel canto coloratura role, but requires a great amount of dramatic, expressive singing, all of it in an uncomfortable range. If one doesn’t make any transpositions, but sings the part as Donizetti wrote it, some of Anne’s music reaches lower than that of the mezzo role of Jane Seymour. To produce these notes with the appropriate dramatic expression is something she finds far more difficult than singing a role like Lady Macbeth. But she adds that all of this belongs to her experience as an artist and that all of her appearances as Anne were absolutely magnificent experiences for her.
Manon Lescaut
- While she says she will undoubtedly undertake this role again, she must exercise great care and not sing it too often. This sort of part can destroy the voice; in fact, she says Puccini is always dangerous. In principle, his music is very easy to sing; one opens one’s mouth and lets go. But his roles are actually rather unhealthy, something she’s sorry to say because she really loves this music with her whole heart. She observes that any singer who would perform nothing but Puccini for a year or two would ruin his or her voice, so it’s always important to vary appearances in Puccini’s operas with roles by other composers – for example, Verdi, whose music always keeps her voice in excellent condition.
Aida
- This is the next Verdi heroine she will add to her roster of leading ladies, and she finds it to be another great challenge. She says she’s often listened to this opera and could never really understand why a soprano should want to sing the Ethiopian Princess. The role has so many difficult places, the intonation isn’t easy, and much of the part is written in the passaggio. If one doesn’t have perfect mastery here, the voice will immediately sound untidy. Among the countless recordings of the work she’s listened to, she’s found only one or two sopranos who really sang Aida well. She says she’s looking forward to taking on the part even though it will mean an enormous amount of work – or perhaps the role interests her for exactly this reason.
Elsa
- Mme. Netrebko is also looking forward very much to her role debut as the Lohengrin heroine next month in Dresden, noting that she loves Wagner and could listen to his music for hours. Unfortunately, she won’t be able to sing a great deal of Wagner in her career, but she’ll make the first attempt with this role and see how it feels to her. She senses that Elsa will be good for both her voice and her technique; the part has beautiful melodic lines and in the second octave demands quite a lot, which she likes very much. She finds that Ortrud is really this opera’s greatest attraction with powerful scenes (actually the sort of role she seeks), but says she will be able to shape Elsa as a strong character.
- She’s excited to have Christian Thielemann on the podium for these performances, adding that, at this point in her career, she is only concerned with having the best possible quality – not only in her singing, but in every aspect of music-making, with the best soloists, best orchestras, best conductors. (She mentions that she’s only marginally interested in directors and says it quickly gets on her nerves when a staging interferes with the music, such as when singers are expected to move all over the stage during an important musical phrase – “completely unnecessary.”)
- In addition to keeping her calendar clear this month to work on the role with her coaches, she will also have the rehearsals in Dresden, giving her nearly two months to prepare for her debut. She says much depends upon how many orchestral rehearsals will be scheduled; one can sing as much as one wishes in a rehearsal room, but it’s only in working with the orchestra that one really gets a role into one’s system. She observes that it isn’t merely the notes; one must be able to penetrate the content of a score and understand with one’s entire body what is really involved with a part. She says it could well be that in the end she’ll sing Elsa differently than perhaps what audiences are accustomed to. She finds it interesting to compare the numerous recordings of Lohengrin that are available and the manner in which the great Elsas of the past have interpreted the character. She tries to understand why they chose to do something in a particular way, and to hear how interpretive approaches have changed over time, from the earliest recordings to those made in the 1980s and up to recent releases. But in the end, she notes, interpretation is always concerned with what we have to say about a piece based on our own present-day viewpoint.
Norma
- Her next role debut will actually be as Adriana Lecouvreur, a part that isn’t quite as demanding as the others she’s recently added to her repertoire. After Adriana, she’ll sing her first Norma this coming September in the Royal Opera House’s season-opening production of Bellini’s opera. She admits that she really hadn’t planned on singing the Druid priestess as she somehow was never able to find an approach to this opera, but when Sir Tony Pappano asked her to sing the role, she couldn’t refuse him. She quotes herself: “Okay, Maestro, if you say it will work, I’ll do it – but only for you.”
Operetta
- In Dresden, she also sang the role of Sylva Varescu in a concert performance of Kálmán’s Die Czárdásfürstin. She says she had a lot of fun doing it, but the part involved a tremendous amount of work for her. She could imagine taking on the role in a staged production, even though it would be quite hard to really commit the entire part to memory and be able to properly articulate the text. She explains that she knows all of the texts in Russian since operettas are also very popular there, and she’d heard them since she was a child. But she says these works really must be sung in German; it simply sounds better that way. Operetta can be wonderful on the stage, but some changes need to be made to the text (I think she’s referring to the spoken dialogue) as most of the jokes are no longer particularly witty. From a visual standpoint, what counts most is that the production looks fabulous.
Trebs has withdrawn from Norma at ROH.
Good thing the tickets haven't gone on sale but I wonder how many people will have already booked flights?
"Every theatre is an insane asylum, but an opera theatre is the ward for the incurables."
FRANZ SCHALK, attributed, Losing the Plot in Opera: Myths and Secrets of the World's Great Operas
I have come upon an interesting website. It deals with posters of celebrities and has extensive product listings for Mme Netrebko. And since ONE of our merry band is an outspoken and unabashed fan of Lal Blissima (not a typo), and since the site offers many products imprinted with varied pics of Anna (some are a bit revealing), it struck me that "he" could get everything from posters to coffee mugs, and even special order things like a large poster for the ceiling over his bed, and maybe a set of boxers with a different Anna pic for each day of the week. And perhaps get Anna T shirts (for casual wear) and Anna ties, for more businesslike attire.
Last edited by Soave_Fanciulla; January 9th, 2018 at 08:25 AM.
I probably would not book a flight until I was sure of getting a ticket, and they would have been hot property,
Natalie
Interesting dilemma. Explaining her decision to withdraw, Netrebko says she agreed to sing Norma years ago, before she knew what direction her voice would take. But the same need to schedule well in advance makes finding her replacement problematic.
That's why this scheduling 4 years in advance is ridiculous. I wonder if Jonas withdrew from Troyens because he knew he couldn't sing it (he hasn't sung it anywhere else as far as I know.)
At the Met it often means that people sing roles 5 years past the time when they could have sung it well.
Natalie
*cough*cough*Deborah Voigt*cough*Brünnhilde*cough*cough*
In interviews, many singers have noted the problems caused by major opera houses' current scheduling practices. But der Jonas pulled out of Les Troyens due to illness -- he mentioned in one of his interviews that the ailment was so persistent that he began to wonder if his career was at an end.
Ahem. Not to mention Francesca Zambello's pushing her to withdraw from singing Isolde in WNO's T & I several years ago. I also saw her sing Ariadne with WNO - and I wasn't impressed.
Good for Netrebko that she sensed Norma wasn't going to work. If she's guilty of anything, it's probably good judgement. The voice is an organic and highly personal instrument after all, and, as such, considerably more vulnerable to aging and all sorts of other outside forces. It can get pretty ugly really fast when singers try to soldier on. Think of Scotto singing the Met's opening night Norma in 1981. The key sentence, I think, from the NYT review (see below) is: The focal point, however, was Renata Scotto's Norma, a part that does not seem on reflection to be one she needed to add to her repertory.
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/23/ar...t-opening.html
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