Finally a day off! It's been a brutal week with me catching the 4th flu of the year (I really have got to get out of Riverside, CA before too long. I had gone 3 yrs without a flu before I moved up here last December. This place is really bad for me!), but still having to go back to work the first day after the fever finally broke. It seemed the whole town of Redlands knew the Thai resto I've been working at finally had a bartender in residence again after 4 days, and we were absolutely swamped for 3 straight days. I'm telling you, people start drinking martinis and other hard core cocktails at lunch time here!
Anyhow, I somehow survived, but was quite something of a post-halloween zombie this morning until I stumbled onto this awesome audio upload of the Alcina broadcast from the Paris Opera in 2004. It stars Luba Orgonasova (Alcina), Vesselina Kasarova (Ruggiero), Vivica Genaux (Bradamante), Patrizia Ciofi (Morgana), Toby Spence (Oronto), and Luca Pisaroni (Melisso)!
That was VK's first foray into the Handelian repertoire, I think, and a marvelous treat to start a day off with!
Showing posts with label Vivica Genaux. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vivica Genaux. Show all posts
Sunday, November 6, 2016
Monday, January 7, 2013
2013 isn't 'next year' anymore!
Hey, the year changed on us! Do you still catch yourself writing down 2012 when you have to write down a date on a sheet of paper or when you type one onto a form?
2012 sure was an eventful year. Yours truly moved to yet another apartment with another roommate (a real keeper, if you ask me), got a bicycle and ditched the cane - which means I'm speedier if not all that much more stable, I suppose.
I'm afraid I didn't go to enough concerts and performance arts events last year. Not because there wasn't any good show, mind you! Hopefully I'll manage to show up at the various concert halls and theaters more this year. The San Diego Opera is putting on five very different shows this season starting with Donizetti's operatic romantic comedy that is La fille du regiment (Daughter of the Regiment) on January 26th. It features L'Ubica Vargicova and Stephen Costello as Marie and Tonio. Even more irresistible for mezzophiliac me are the two supporting ladies in the cast: Ewa Podles as the Marguise and Carol Vaness as the Duchess.
It's winter here in America's Finest City, however, which means that the days are cold (or even cold) enough for long cycling rides in the eastern mountains. So when it isn't raining and the job isn't demanding too many daylight hours I am to be found huffing and puffing up the gorgeous roads east of town, preferably going up Mt Palomar by South Grade Road (S-6) and coming down East Grade (S-7) for a nice view of Lake Henshaw, or along the many mountain highways between the Poway and Julian... or in the mountains south of Alpine.
A lot of climbing... But that's how it goes, my friends. No pain, no view! The last time I went riding around the Great Western Loop (the big mountainous loop formed by Dehesa Rd, Japatul Rd, Lyons Valley Rd and Jamul Dr) I put the camera's video feature to good use and made the above video. Bonus points if you can identify the soundtracks!
Anyhow, thanks for stopping by. Hope 2013 has started well your way and keeps getting even better!
2012 sure was an eventful year. Yours truly moved to yet another apartment with another roommate (a real keeper, if you ask me), got a bicycle and ditched the cane - which means I'm speedier if not all that much more stable, I suppose.
I'm afraid I didn't go to enough concerts and performance arts events last year. Not because there wasn't any good show, mind you! Hopefully I'll manage to show up at the various concert halls and theaters more this year. The San Diego Opera is putting on five very different shows this season starting with Donizetti's operatic romantic comedy that is La fille du regiment (Daughter of the Regiment) on January 26th. It features L'Ubica Vargicova and Stephen Costello as Marie and Tonio. Even more irresistible for mezzophiliac me are the two supporting ladies in the cast: Ewa Podles as the Marguise and Carol Vaness as the Duchess.
It's winter here in America's Finest City, however, which means that the days are cold (or even cold) enough for long cycling rides in the eastern mountains. So when it isn't raining and the job isn't demanding too many daylight hours I am to be found huffing and puffing up the gorgeous roads east of town, preferably going up Mt Palomar by South Grade Road (S-6) and coming down East Grade (S-7) for a nice view of Lake Henshaw, or along the many mountain highways between the Poway and Julian... or in the mountains south of Alpine.
A lot of climbing... But that's how it goes, my friends. No pain, no view! The last time I went riding around the Great Western Loop (the big mountainous loop formed by Dehesa Rd, Japatul Rd, Lyons Valley Rd and Jamul Dr) I put the camera's video feature to good use and made the above video. Bonus points if you can identify the soundtracks!
Anyhow, thanks for stopping by. Hope 2013 has started well your way and keeps getting even better!
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Feeling Baroque...
I resisted music from the Baroque period for the longest time mostly because;
1. I wasn't familiar with it since none of the instruments I play existed back then
2. I had pretty boring experience with Baroque operas before... Pretty arias one after another to the point where, by the end of the hour I couldn't tell one song from another... They all sounded the same!
But then... they weren't performed by singers like Vesselina Kasarova or Vivica Genaux or Juliette Galstian or Dorothea Röschmann back then. Now that I've heard these gals rock up the old tunes, my built-in stereo is playing arias from that period almost as often as it does the bel canto stuff now.
Not all that emotionally explorative, I think (at least nothing in the caliber of what Handel would have done musically), but still very catchy and beautiful, isn't it? I'm willing to bet that you can take the A section and turn it into a big pop music hit today (providing a good English adaptation of the lyrics).
Really, people who think that classical music is for the dull and the aged really don't know what the heck they're missing. I wonder how many recognize the good use of classical music they hear everyday without noticing. Just in the past week I've heard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries (in the GoToMyPC.com ads), Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's 4th Symphony 'Italian' (tv ads for the series Harper's Island), and the famous flower duet from Delibes' Lakmé (through out ABC's Nightline show about the Vineyard housing/golf course development in Las Vegas, NV) while watching my television at night. Keep an ear out for classical music when you watch the tv or are at the cinema. You might be surprised where the thing would pop up at you!
1. I wasn't familiar with it since none of the instruments I play existed back then
2. I had pretty boring experience with Baroque operas before... Pretty arias one after another to the point where, by the end of the hour I couldn't tell one song from another... They all sounded the same!
But then... they weren't performed by singers like Vesselina Kasarova or Vivica Genaux or Juliette Galstian or Dorothea Röschmann back then. Now that I've heard these gals rock up the old tunes, my built-in stereo is playing arias from that period almost as often as it does the bel canto stuff now.
“Ombra fedele anch'io... As a faithful shadow I’ll be,From the 1730 opera Idaspe by Riccardo Broschi, this aria of Dario is written for the composer's famous soprano castrato brother, Carlo Broschi, also known as Farinelli. It is a simple song of longing (the Lethe is a mythical river of forgetfulness in Hades. Supposedly those who wade/drink in it would experience permanent and complete amnesia) that follows the classic Baroque A-B-A' da capo form (you hear theme A, then theme B, then a return to theme A with increasingly complex ornamentation)...
sul margine di lette.... and even to the bank of the Lethe
seguir vo' l'idol mio che tanto addoro... I’ll follow you, my adored idol.
Che bella pace e questa che a consolar.. What serene peace consoles me
se resta il mio martoro.... and eases my torment.”
Not all that emotionally explorative, I think (at least nothing in the caliber of what Handel would have done musically), but still very catchy and beautiful, isn't it? I'm willing to bet that you can take the A section and turn it into a big pop music hit today (providing a good English adaptation of the lyrics).
Really, people who think that classical music is for the dull and the aged really don't know what the heck they're missing. I wonder how many recognize the good use of classical music they hear everyday without noticing. Just in the past week I've heard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries (in the GoToMyPC.com ads), Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's 4th Symphony 'Italian' (tv ads for the series Harper's Island), and the famous flower duet from Delibes' Lakmé (through out ABC's Nightline show about the Vineyard housing/golf course development in Las Vegas, NV) while watching my television at night. Keep an ear out for classical music when you watch the tv or are at the cinema. You might be surprised where the thing would pop up at you!
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Great Singing is Alive and Well... If You Look for It
Why do I admire opera singers so much? Well... they are very good at what they do. You'd think that it doesn't take much skill to sing something in tune, but... can you sing what the two virtuoso mezzo soprani in the clip below sing? Live? Un-microphoned? While acting?
The first singer is Vivica Genaux, the young American from Alaska who can make rapid fire coloratura sound like a walk in the park. Everyone with working legs can run... but not many can run the way Olympic runners can. The same goes with opera singing. This is extreme agility at its most jaw-dropping. This performance is actually a studio recording (so she didn't do the whole thing in one go (though you can find live clips of her doing this beast of a song on Youtube.... and her live efforts are nearly as clean as this!). I use this clip to drive home that the obnoxiousness of the thing is actually written in the score (though the notes on the score are a lot tamer than the cadenza you actually hear toward the end since it is imperative that she ornaments every time the A phrase is repeated). 'Qual guerriero', being a bravura aria, doesn't really require much interpretation, but Genaux still contrasts the fast and slow sections very well to keep this thing from being one dimensional. Pretty awesome, ay?
The second singer is Vesselina Kasarova, the Bulgarian singer who doesn't just cope with Mozart's demand for naked vocal perfection, but also has the knack for making every note she sings tell a story. This is from a live staged performance. The final aria of Farnace doesn't require the vocal speed that the music Genaux sings does, but the vocal lines are so long (try singing along and see that you don't pass out before the 2nd phrase!) and exposed. It requires virtuosity of a different sort... If you make any mistake (smudging or missing a note... or any unsteadiness or blotchiness in the legato line at all), everyone can hear it. And the tessitura isn't very stable (much of the aria lies very low for a mezzo soprano, but she has to keep foraying upward and is never allowed to get comfy in any part of her range). Somehow, though, Kasarova manages to not just sing the notes but to also projects so much character in her vocal coloring that I listen to this and forget that I'm hearing a woman pretending to be a man who is turning his life around for the good. Instead, it is Farnace himself airing his own repentance... It is just that, his normal mode of expression is in song.
And do you know what the coolest thing is? As big a star as these two low-voiced women are, they are as nice and down to earth as can be off the stage. Their colleagues love them to death... and so do their fans.... simply because they've earned it.
If you enjoy these clips, Genaux recorded the aria on her 'Arias for Farinelli' CD, and Kasarova's full performance as Farnace is available on the Orfeo Label CD of Mozart's Mitridate from the Salzburg Festival 1997.
The first singer is Vivica Genaux, the young American from Alaska who can make rapid fire coloratura sound like a walk in the park. Everyone with working legs can run... but not many can run the way Olympic runners can. The same goes with opera singing. This is extreme agility at its most jaw-dropping. This performance is actually a studio recording (so she didn't do the whole thing in one go (though you can find live clips of her doing this beast of a song on Youtube.... and her live efforts are nearly as clean as this!). I use this clip to drive home that the obnoxiousness of the thing is actually written in the score (though the notes on the score are a lot tamer than the cadenza you actually hear toward the end since it is imperative that she ornaments every time the A phrase is repeated). 'Qual guerriero', being a bravura aria, doesn't really require much interpretation, but Genaux still contrasts the fast and slow sections very well to keep this thing from being one dimensional. Pretty awesome, ay?
The second singer is Vesselina Kasarova, the Bulgarian singer who doesn't just cope with Mozart's demand for naked vocal perfection, but also has the knack for making every note she sings tell a story. This is from a live staged performance. The final aria of Farnace doesn't require the vocal speed that the music Genaux sings does, but the vocal lines are so long (try singing along and see that you don't pass out before the 2nd phrase!) and exposed. It requires virtuosity of a different sort... If you make any mistake (smudging or missing a note... or any unsteadiness or blotchiness in the legato line at all), everyone can hear it. And the tessitura isn't very stable (much of the aria lies very low for a mezzo soprano, but she has to keep foraying upward and is never allowed to get comfy in any part of her range). Somehow, though, Kasarova manages to not just sing the notes but to also projects so much character in her vocal coloring that I listen to this and forget that I'm hearing a woman pretending to be a man who is turning his life around for the good. Instead, it is Farnace himself airing his own repentance... It is just that, his normal mode of expression is in song.
And do you know what the coolest thing is? As big a star as these two low-voiced women are, they are as nice and down to earth as can be off the stage. Their colleagues love them to death... and so do their fans.... simply because they've earned it.
If you enjoy these clips, Genaux recorded the aria on her 'Arias for Farinelli' CD, and Kasarova's full performance as Farnace is available on the Orfeo Label CD of Mozart's Mitridate from the Salzburg Festival 1997.
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