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Legendary Voices
Note by Nigel Douglas |
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| The singers whom I have written about in 'Legendary Voices Volume I' are all artists who, for one reason or another, are particular favourites of mine.
Some of them I heard in the flesh, some were known to me personally, others I only know from recordings, but all of them hold a special place in my affections.
In the book I try to draw portraits of them as people; this disc presents them in their most essential guise - as singers.
Björling's 'Cielo e mar' is an astonishingly assured performance for a tenor of only 26, but by that early age he was already launched on an international career. The poetry of the aria is beautifully expressed by the 'diminuendi' with which he tapers off the phrases, and its passion by the expansive breathing and the brilliant upper register. To me, though, the most characteristic element of Björling's singing is that hint of Nordic melancholy in the voice, which sets him apart from his Mediterranean colleagues, and endows the voice with a beauty all of its own. When he sings in his native Swedish he is perhaps most marvellously himself, and the carefree swagger of the Beggar Student's couplets, high D flat and all, provides an invigorating example of how to tackle operetta. Caruso's 'Quando nascesti tu' is the kind of performance which makes me feel that, however great certain other singers may have been, Caruso somehow went beyond them. The magnificence of the actual sound and the technical mastery with which the instrument was employed are matched by the vividness of personality with which he used to invest every note and every word that he sang. The London De Luca had some formidable baritone colleagues to compete with - Ruffo, Amato, Sammarco, Stracciari to name but a few - but, as he himself used to remark with a chuckle, 'With them around I had to learn to sing'. Through all the shifting moods of Rigoletto's great scena - sarcasm, fury, heart-break, servility - de Luca never ceases to sing, and to sing beautifully. Whether fulminating or cajoling, for de Luca the 'canto' had to remain 'bello'. On 2 February 1935 the 39 year-old Flagstad, who had spent most of the previous 20 years singing in provincial Scandinavian houses, often in operettas and musicals, established herself in a single performance of Die Walküre Gobbi was one of the great singing actors of his generation. Although he had to wait until after the Second World War for international recognition his Italian career had started in 1937, and the L'Arlesiana aria dates from his very first recording session, five years later. Two of his greatest virtues, however, are already in evidence - his vivid use of text, and his subtle variations of vocal colour. The result is a typical Gobbi performance, vibrant with theatrical atmosphere. Kipnis' 'In diesen heil'gen Hallen' occupies a special place in my affections, as it was the first operatic record that I ever bought; and I was lucky enough to have hit upon one of the most consummate artists of his day in one of his most celebrated roles. Kipnis was a rarity amongst Russian basses in that he won international renown as a Lieder singer, and the chilling sense of drama which he achieves with the Schubert song stands in total contrast to the beneficent serenity of the Mozart aria. By most of Lehmann's admirers, I think, the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, Leonore in Fidelio and Sieglinde in Die Walküre Despite one highly successful season at Covent Garden in 1924 Piccaver was something of a prophet without honour in his native Britain. He was for 27 years, however, one of the absolute favourites of the Vienna public, for whom he could do no wrong. His secret lay in the apparently effortless smoothness of his 'legato' and in the velvety, almost baritonal quality of his voice, and I remember one old lady in Vienna telling me, with a dreamy look in her eye, 'it was like a great warm cloak that you could wrap around yourself'. Turiddu was one of the most dramatic roles in his repertoire, and when he was partnered by the tempestuous Maria Jeritza the drama was not always confined to the on-stage performance. Ponselle made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera as a totally inexperienced 21 year-old in the daunting role of Leonora in La forza del destino, opposite Caruso at the peak of his powers, and was unanimously hailed as the most gifted soprano in living memory. The Tosca aria, recorded two months later, tells us why. The sumptuous vocal quality, the majestic flow of the tone and the awesome maturity of the phrasing make it hard to believe that just a few months earlier she had still been working in vaudeville - though her matchless rendering of 'Kiss me again' leaves us in little doubt that it must have been vaudeville singing with a difference! Schipa's voice was one of a totally individual beauty, quite unlike that of any other Italian tenor. If one were to compare it with a musical instrument, to me that instrument would be the oboe; it is slightly reedy in quality, pleading in tone, more delicately poised on the breath than beefier voices, and thus more miraculous as the tenuous line spins on and on. Schipa was a master stylist whose career spanned no less than 52 years before the public, and this recording of 'Ah! Non credevi tu' admirably exemplifies his strangely haunting appeal. Tetrazzini comes across the years as one of the most engaging of all the great 'old timers'. Short and spherical, she pumped out her dazzling bursts of coloratura with a gusty abandon which typified her whole attitude to life. Her memoirs, which need to be taken not with a pinch of salt but with about a ton of it, tell wondrous tales of her falling into the hands of bandits, being loaded with diamonds by South American Presidents, having young men threaten to kill themselves if she will not let them kiss her, and so on. After earning more money than any Italian singer except Caruso she ended in poverty - but never in despair. Nowadays numerous British sopranos are in demand the world over, but in the inter-war years Turner was the only one to grace such prestigious houses as La Scala or the Teatro Colon. Principally remembered today for her phenomenal Turandot Wunderlich's death just before his 36th birthday, following a fall on a stone staircase, robbed the world of the most blazing talent amongst my own generation of singers. Like Tauber before him he appeared to be a man made of music, and whether he was singing Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Viennese Operetta or a tragic role such as that of the doom-laden Lenski it all seemed to come welling up from somewhere inside him. A man of restless energy and manifold enthusiasms, luckily for us he packed a remarkable number of recordings into his tragically short career. |
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