My tour of the Staatsoper - a post to follow, gave me an opportunity to photograph one of the set pieces I did like, though not in it's full, staged glory:
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau & The Deep Voice Principle Note: Suitable baritones who fit the subject of this project were substantially more difficult to find than singers of previous voice types. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau fit the bill perfectly because of his experience in a variety of operatic repertoire and in art song, but few others did. I have written at length about Fischer-Dieskau and then addressed this problem itself. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau In order to study Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau I used assorted recordings of art songs along with three recordings of longer works. The assorted recordings of art song were of pieces I had in my own collection as well as the seminal Erlkönig. I used a video recording of Winterreise in 1979 with Alfred Brendel at the piano, a recording of Rigoletto under the direction of Rafael Kubelik in 1964, and an opera film of Le nozze di Figaro under Karl Böhm in 1...
A fellow voice major here at Lawrence caused me to recall an interesting trend in vocal classification among singers over the past century. Theoretically, beyond Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, (the rare) Alto, Baritone, and Bass, voice types are governed by fächer a term hailing from Germany that describes a group of different fach (s) that further divide these voice types. Note that there are other terms that are used in countries that don't speak German, but by far fach is the most common word used to describe the idea. Rather than list fächer here, as that isn't the point of this article, I will direct you to look them up here on Wikipedia (note this list is not entirely accurate, as there are some omissions (such as absence of the leggiero tenor) and the terms are not clearly defined even among experts). All the great singers that opera lovers enjoy thinking about and listening to should technically be able to be classified by these fächer . However, save for a few except...
George London & Giorgio Tozzi George London For my study of bass-baritone George London I listened to two Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts: a 1959 performance of Don Giovanni , and a 1973 production of Der fliegende Holländer , both under the baton of Karl Böhm and with London in the title role. Incidentally, the latter also featured Giorgio Tozzi as Daland. I will deal with this in a separate section as it features both artists and focus here on Don Giovanni along snippets of Boris Gonduov . The Metropolitan Opera’s MetOnDemand service describes this performance of Don Giovanni as follows: “When George London stepped on stage as the legendary lover Don Giovanni, audiences gasped. Handsome and effortlessly charismatic, he promised to fulfill every woman’s desire. No wonder the beautiful Lisa Della Casa (Elvira) didn’t want to...
Comments
Post a Comment