Come back the five and dime, Renee Fleming, Renee Fleming.

Renee Fleming has jumped ship.

I don't know what to think. I love Renee. She's the undisputed queen of American opera, possibly the most beloved working operatic soprano in the world right now. Her rendition of Rusalka's song to the moon is enough to make you want to claw your ears off so that no further sub-optimal sounds can spoil the memory of it. So when I heard that she was making a pop album, I was wary.

It's not bad. Her voice is nicely suited to the lower registers... slightly breathy, supple, and a little chocolate-y. She managed to take the steel out of the sound without mucking it up, which is a very hard thing to do. Other singers have tried and failed spectacularly... see Jessye Norman and Sylvia McNair's attempts as evidence. But the songs... meh. I just don't care for them. They're a titch trite, whereas Renee's voice is anything but. I like her relaxed approach, though. It's a bit Sade-esque. Perhaps she'd be more successful if she chose different literature, such as samba or bossnova, which might compliment her voice a bit better. But then she'd always be nipping at the heels of Sade, who in turn nips at the heels of Astrid Gilberto, etc etc.

Renee did a jazz recording once, so this isn't a new thing for her to venture outside opera. That wasn't so great either, as she just sounded a little too metered and controlled. It had nothing to do with her voice, which was again warm and luscious. Maybe it was the instrumentation, or perhaps it was a rhythmic thing... too controlled, not relaxed/swingy enough. If she got some coaching and learned how to make the meters of jazz/swing work for her, then perhaps she could pull off an Ella-Fitzerald-without-the-scat-singing kind of thing. (White people should never scat. I've never seen it work, not once.)

So all in all it's a good effort. It's just not special, and that makes me sad because Renee's voice truly IS special.

She doesn't sing in green.

Here's a little more diva Thursdays loveliness for ya... and yes, I know it's Saturday.

Agnes Baltsa is a fabulously gifted Greek mezzo-soprano whose career took off in the 1980s with superlative performances as Carmen. The photo above shows Baltsa in the role at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. She's noted for her fiery performances, with reviewers describing her as "so defiant that she was almost certain to die a violent death".

Also known for her fantastic interpretation of Mozart and Bellini roles (Cosi fan Tutte, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, La Cenerentola, and L'Italiana in Algeri, specifically). Currently she's performing recitals of Greek songs in Vienna, Athens, Linz, and Graz (April to December 2009), and is scheduled to play Klytaemnestra in Strauss' Elektra in Zurich in January and February 2010.

My friend David met her once, at a Pittsburgh Opera performance of Carmen where he was s supernumerary ("extra"). He also met Dame Joan Sutherland during that show (she was in the audience, while Baltsa was playing the title role). During the performance, La Baltsa was overheard dressing down the costume designer with a classic diva smackdown: "Green? I'm not wearing that dress. I don't sing in green." Maestro Tito Capobianco apparently conceded... the dress was rebuilt in another color.

What a beautiful voice. Enjoy the clip from Carmen below, featuring the Habanera aria that is so closely identified with Bizet's masterpiece.

Diva Thursdays: Judy Garland

I haven't done "Diva Thursdays" in a while, and thought it would be good to update it. If any popular music artist can be considered a "diva", it would be Judy Garland. She's still a gay icon, even these many years after her death. There's a popular myth that her death in 1969 helped fuel the Stonewall riots, though this has been widely disputed by those involved in the civil disobedience.

Garland's commitment to a song, her natural interpretation, her very personal approach to a song's lyrics, and her ability to bring audiences into the most intimate of emotions are stunning to this day. She was a fearless artist, not because she was fearless in her life but because she was unafraid to show vulnerability in the most public of settings. No one will ever do it quite the way Judy did it.

Enjoy this. It's an old, corny song... "Cottage For Sale"... recorded in 1963 in one of the TV specials. It's not an especially beautiful song, but Garland, as usual, turned the most banal of songs into the most beautiful of moments.

Diva Thursdays: Astrud Gilberto

This is my first non-classical diva, so I admit that I'm using this term very loosely this week. Check out this seriously awesome clip of Astrud Gilberto singing "The Girl From Ipanema", with Stan Getz. It's from a 1964 movie called "Get Yourself A College Girl", which was inexplicably ignored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when it came time to present the 1964 Academy Awards. Here are the things I love about this clip:

1. The obvious lip synching to her own recording.

2. The fashions... especially those of the audience of women "of a certain age".

3. The fact that she was reading a menu and immediately broke out into song. Very Rodgers and Hammerstein.

4. The "singer face" that Ms. Gilberto gave throughout the clip. Completely blank, focusing on the music. Very consistent with singers whose careers are primarily recording-focused.

5. The marimba player. Very Buddy Holly. Makes you want to do unspeakable things to him so that you can watch him cry.

This song, by the way, is perfect for those times when you can't get a song out of your head. No matter what the song is, sing "The Girl From Ipanema" and it'll be gone. Try it.

Diva Thursdays: Monserrat Caballe

Born in 1933 in Barcelona, this legendary Spanish soprano is known for her amazing interpretations of the bel canto literature, particularly Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti. Like my friend Margaret says... "Big girl, big voice." But in contrast to that axiom, Ms. Caballe showed amazing ability to control her enormous instrument to create stunningly intimacy as well. Like Pavarotti, she has performed with popular music stars in the past (including, most notably, Queen's Freddie Mercury in his final public performance), and continues to perform well into her 70s.

In this clip, Caballe sings "Lasciami, non t'ascolto" from Rossini's Tancrediwith previous Thursday diva, mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne. You'll notice that when the score requires very close and precise timing, Horne and Caballe maintain physical contact throughout. It's a great trick. I don't know what physically touching your duet partner does, but it really makes it easier to stay together.

Diva Thursdays: Marylin Horne

Marilyn Horne. Dame Joan "La Stupenda" Sutherland. The deliciously restrained duet ("Mira, o Norma") from Bellini's Norma.

Perfection.

Diva Thursdays: Leontyne Price

Mary Violet Leontyne Price (born February 10, 1927) is an American opera singer (soprano). She was best known for her Verdi roles, above all the title role of Aida. An African American born in the segregated South, she rose to international fame in the 1950s and 60s, and became the first black "superstar" at the once-segregated Metropolitan Opera. For almost 40 years, she was one of America's most beloved and widely recorded sopranos.

Price was a leading interpreter of the lirico spinto (Italian for "pushed lyric", or middleweight) roles of Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini, as well as of roles in several operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Her voice ranged from A flat below Middle C to the E above High C. (She said she sang high Fs "in the shower.") The voice is noted for its brilliant upper register, the smoky huskiness in the middle and lower registers, its smooth "legato" phrasing, and wide dynamic range. She herself called her singing "soul in opera."

She is a quotable woman whose many bon mots have entered opera lore. Once, when discussing whether she would sing in Atlanta as Minnie, the cowgirl lead in Puccini's La Fanciulla del West, the Met's general manager Rudolf Bing warned her she wouldn't be able to stay in the same segregated hotel with the company. She looked at him and said, "Don't worry, Mr. Bing, I'm sure you can find a place for me and the horse."

After her retirement from the opera stage in 1985, she gave recitals for another dozen years. Among her many honors are the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1965), the Kennedy Center Honors (1980), the National Medal of Arts (1985), numerous honorary degrees, and nineteen Grammy Awards, including a special Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989, more than any other classical singer. In 2005, American talk show host Oprah Winfrey honored Price and 24 other influential African-American women at a Legends Ball. (Wikipedia)

In the clip below, Ms. Price performs the aria "O patria mia" from Verdi's opera Aida (the real opera, not that bastardized, fluffy Elton John version). Her control of the upper register is utterly secure, as evidenced by her facial expression conveying utmost confidence. It's as though she were thinking, "I'm gonna hit a high note here in a second and you bitches are gonna love it." The thunderous ovation at the conclusion of the aria is what all opera singers crave, and what Ms. Price demanded through sheer force of performance. Stunning.

A little more Diva Thursday.

It's so difficult to pick just one recording to represent Jessye Norman's art. Since I had to do Diva Thursdays a little early yesterday due to the snow, I thought I'd add one more clip. This is Miss Norman performing Beim schlafengehen, from Richard Strauss' Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs). Although Strauss wrote the songs for a slightly different voice type (Kirsten Flagstad), I just prefer the lush quality of Norman's interpretation.

A little more about Vier letzte Lieder from Jason Sundram:

A year before his death in 1948, Richard Strauss composed the magnificent Four Last Songs, expressing a calm acceptance of the inevitability of his own death. The songs meditate on life, death, and the transition into “the magic circle of the night.”

The tradition of the lied, a poem set to music and sung, began with Schubert and was continued by Schumann. In the compositions of Strauss, Mahler and Wolf, the lied, originally for voice and piano, was gradually expanded to include the possibility of orchestral accompaniment. Strauss wrote lieder for his wife Pauline, a noted soprano, and often accompanied her on the piano. It is likely that he had her voice in his head when he composed the Four Last Songs for soprano and orchestra. Although not the first to write lieder for voice and orchestra, Strauss’ work creates a unique sense of intimacy through its evocative orchestration. The use of orchestra, rather than piano, is indicative of both Strauss’ orchestral skill (his treatise on orchestration is a definitive work), and his conception of these works as chamber music on a symphonic scale. In Beim Schlafengehen, an extended violin solo is sweetly evocative of “the unguarded spirit [wanting] to float on free wings.”

Beim Schlafengehen (Hesse)

Now that I feel the tiredness of
the day,
my deep longing shall
welcome the starlit night
as a weary child does.
Hands, cease your toiling,
head, forget about thinking,
for all my senses now
are longing to sink themselves
in slumber.
And the unguarded spirit
wants to float on free wings, so that
in the magic circle of the night
it may live deeply and a thousandfold.

This is one of my favorite pieces of music of any genre, from any period.

Enjoy.

Diva Thursdays: Jessye Norman

Time for a diva with some multicultural flava.

Let me introduce your ass to Miss Jessye Norman, honey.

Miss Norman was the singer whose recordings introduced me to the operas of Richard Wagner. Although I've since enjoyed the work of the more traditional Wagnerian sopranos such as Birgit Nilsson and Astrid Varnay, I still come back to La Norman when what I want is to have a cocktail, turn the volume as far up as it'll go (without causing an explosion), and envelop myself in swirling, floating, tumbling Wagnerian fabulousness.

Born in 1945 in Augusta, Georgia, Miss Norman was trained at Howard University, the Peabody Conservatory (Baltimore), and the University of Michigan. She went on to establish a solid career in the European opera houses before her career took off in the United States. A large woman, she was given the moniker "Just Enormous" (as a simultaneously snarky and loving play on her first and last name). Despite the occasional comment about her weight, she proceeded to carve out a career for herself that crossed several operatic genres and voice types. I, for one, love the fact that she didn't limit herself to a specific fach, but just referred to herself as "soprano" and sang whatever fit nicely into her voice.

I had the opportunity to meet Jessye Norman in Columbus in 1994. She had just completed a delightful recital during which one of the local yokels in the fourth row decided she was taking too much time between songs, that he had had enough of it, and that the answer was the stand up, throw his program at her, and walk out. My friend Margaret Mack, being the fabulously quirky soprano that she is, stood right up and walked over to the man's now-empty seat and sat down next to his wife. (The seat was better than the one Margaret had been given.) The wife was, naturally, mortified. La Norman vowed afterward never to return to Columbus, which she didn't. But that night when I met her, she was gracious and friendly. She also had a speaking voice that would have told me immediately that she was a trained singer, whether I had been a voice pathologist or not.

Norman lives in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, in a secluded estate named "The White Gates" which she purchased from Allan Funt, the creator and host of the television show "Candid Camera".

Check out the clip, below. It's La Norman singing the aria known as Liebestod (translation: love-death), from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. (Wagner referred to the area as the Verklarung, or the transfiguration). In this aria, which is arguably one of the most beloved and overwhelming moments in all of opera, Norman (as Isolde) laments the death of her lover, Tristan. She sings of love, longing, transformation, and at the last note of the aria, collapses next to Tristan's body and dies of overwhelming grief.

A horrifically difficult aria from a technical standpoint, it occurs at the very end of act III after which the soprano has been duking it out with Wagner's masterpiece for hours on end. Mastery of this aria, in the context of the opera as a whole, is a milestone for any dramatic soprano's career.

The final lyrics:

Soll ich atmen,
Soll ich lauschen?
Soll ich schlürfen
untertauchen?
Süß in Düften
mich verhauchen?
In dem wogenden Schwall
in dem tönenden Schall
in des Welt-Atems wehendem All
ertrinken
versinken
unbewußt
höchste Lust!

Translation:

Shall I breathe,
Shall I listen?
Shall I drink,
immerse?
Sweetly in fragrances
melt away?
In the billowing torrent,
in the resonating sound,
in the wafting Universe of the World-Breath ---
drown,
be engulfed ---
unconscious ---
supreme delight!

Indeed.

Diva Thursdays: Renee Fleming

American full-lyric soprano Renee Fleming is arguably the prima donna of the American operatic stage today. Unlike some other singers whose fame is based on demanding behaviors, obesity, or paparazzo-encouraging bacchanals, Ms. Fleming's celebrity rests securely on one simple thing... the utter beauty of her voice. I know, I know. Not too exciting... we'd much rather see her showing us her taco while exiting a cab in midtown. But isn't it refreshing to see someone who is famous for something that is actually related to her talents and profession?


Born in Indiana, Pennsylvania to two singing teachers, she grew up in Rochester, New York (where my grandmother lived for many years).

Fleming's first major break came in 1988 when she sang the Countess in Mozart's La Nozze di Figaro at the Houston Grand Opera, a role she has sung many times since to resounding success. She debuted in 1989 with the NYC Opera and Royal Opera, Covent Garden (London), followed by her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1991.


In addition to the standard operatic repertoire, she performs new music, Broadway show tunes, and other popular genres. Fleming has originated the roles of Rosina, Mme de Tourvel, and Blanche DuBois in, respectively, the world premières of John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles at the Met, Conrad Susa's Dangerous Liaisons with the San Francisco Opers, and Andre Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire (also in San Francisco).


I have friends who have nit-picky thoughts about all the "scooping" that La Fleming does when she sings, but I have to say... with a voice that beautiful, I really don't care about the scooping. If I want crystalline bell-like tones that leave me cold, I'll listen to Sylvia McNair's Gershwin album (I'm not linking to it because I don't want to encourage that sort of thing).


Enjoy this performance of Rusalka's Song to the Moon from Antonin Dvorak's Rusalka. It's one of the arias that is intimately associated with Fleming, and here we see why. Lovely...

Diva Thursdays: Dame Joan Sutherland

Austrialian-born Dame Joan Sutherland (b. 1926 in Sydney) has been referred to as La Stupenda, or the stupendous one, since her breakthrough performance at La Fenice (Venice) in 1960. One of her signature recordings, The Art of the Prima Donna, is still studied by singers-in-training today. She remains one of the all-time great coloratura sopranos in the history of recorded opera. Believe me, opera audiences are a savvy bunch with very specific ideas about what the human singing voice should sound like. It's a tough room. But when La Stupenda sang, attention was paid.


Coloratura sopranos are a special and somewhat strange lot. Known primarily for easy virtuosity in the upper register, the coloratura soprano can perform blazingly fast melismata without breaking much of a sweat. Sutherland started her career following the footsteps of her idol, Kirsten Flagstad, hoping to become a dramatic Wagnerian soprano... an unusual starting point for the woman whose work became synonymous with the mid-20th century revival of bel canto opera. It's a lesson for all singers... don't let anyone tell you what your voice type is. Discover it for yourself. When it's right, you'll know it.


The clip below shows La Stupenda on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. She was at her finest... singing Ardon gli-incensi from the opera with which she is most often associated, Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. The camera angles used here tend to downplay Sutherland's enormous jaw, which seemed to become increasingly prominent as she aged.


My voice teacher, Sunny van Eaton, used to offer her students a dubious award called the "Dame Joan Sutherland Mushmouth Award", ostensibly a light-hearted jab at La Stupenda for her less-than-clear articulation. But frankly, with a voice like that, I just don't care.


La Stupenda is still with us as of this posting. Aged 81 years, she retired from singing in 1990. She lives in Montreux, Switzerland, on the shore of Lake Geneva.

Diva Thursdays: La Divina

Gay men use the word "diva" too loosely these days. There really should be more stringent standards for that word.

Greek-born soprano Maria Callas (1923-1977) , known as La Divina, endured tribulations that would have broken most of the contemporary dance-club "divas" in half.

From the bel canto literature of Bellini and Donizetti to the dramatic operas of Verdi to the extravagant masterworks of Wagner, Callas did it all. And she did it with style, even after being dumped by Aristotle Onassis in 1968 so that he could marry Jacqueline Kennedy. (Rumor has it that they continued their relationship through a clandestine affair, but my delicate nature will not allow me to comment further.)

Check out this video of La Divina singing the immortal aria "Casta diva" from Bellini's opera Norma. Never mind the aging opera chorus behind her... they get lost at their first entrance (probably because they were mesmerized by Callas' artistry). I love how Callas' tuning is slightly sharp... helps her carry over the orchestra. Her facial expression throughout the aria shows her fantastic dramatic ability... a mastery of operatic acting that continues to influence the opera singers of today.

If ever there was a Diva...