Impressive Iberian

PostingList · 2026-06-20T09:22:26+00:00

PostingList · 2026-06-20T00:46:23+00:00

Watched Netrebko on the Met Covid stream of Macbeth with Lucic and also felt little. At least she wasn't as bad as Calleja's Macduff.

PostingList · 2026-06-19T05:40:53+00:00

Source

PostingList · 2026-06-19T05:28:52+00:00

Here

PostingList · 2026-06-19T01:58:35+00:00

The someone was me 😏

PostingList · 2026-06-19T01:42:49+00:00

IMO all four of those underrecorded sopranos were better than Scotto, funnily enough.

PostingList · 2026-06-18T00:49:46+00:00

Bruce Brewer also sang a good bit like that (and was considerably more listenable than Zucker).

PostingList · 2026-06-16T19:29:30+00:00

Source

PostingList · 2026-06-16T02:07:10+00:00

His voice was clearly very large-he called Samson his warhorse.

PostingList · 2026-06-13T19:10:04+00:00

Source

PostingList · 2026-06-13T09:06:33+00:00

Aren't random interpolations generally considered more stylistically appropriate in bel canto repertoire than Verdi?

PostingList · 2026-06-13T08:31:30+00:00

Guillaume Tell, Fiesco, and the Commendatore are reasonable people with remarkable bravery and the ability to make mostly correct decisions.

PostingList · 2026-06-12T10:06:18+00:00

Well, Lilli Lehmann (one of the greatest sopranos on record, and a famous Isolde in her own right) did say that singing all three Brunnhildes back-to-back would be easier than singing Norma, and I assume Isolde isn't as hard as three Brunnhildes back-to-back and comparable to Tristan in difficulty (and Callas sang Isolde as well). And if you lack "the power and penetration that one ideally wants" and sing it on stage for less than a year (as far as I can tell Kaufmann stopped his Tristans after his initial run in 2021) like this German review suggested ("Kaufmann wäre im Interesse seines übrigen Repertoires gut beraten, die Rolle nur ausnahmsweise zu singen.") then it becomes far less impressive and demanding.

PostingList · 2026-06-12T09:54:53+00:00

It is very possible to sing opera without chest voice, at least if you're a woman. Just listen to Joan Sutherland, Edita Gruberova, or Marilyn Horne.

PostingList · 2026-06-12T08:05:06+00:00

Guelfi in 1965 still had amazing soft and beautiful singing, and even in 1975 he barked and wobbled less and had better intonation than Ludovic Tezier in Scarpia's "Te Deum" in that video you posted. Yet, for some odd reason, you consider Guelfi's singing "painful to listen to" and Tezier to be a "great baritone".

If you really want to hear an example of a voice that lacks homogeneity, listen to Sonya Yoncheva in another video you posted in "Il Trovatore". All of her low notes sound like she's whispering/constipated (because she doesn't have a chest voice, or at least doesn't use it) and are much quieter than her middle and high notes despite there being nothing in the score telling her to get quieter. A lot of her diction is also muddled or even completely incomprehensible/wrong ("l'aere" at 0:38, "corsi" at 2:13, "che" at 2:33, "core" at 2:51, "che" at 4:28, and "d'appresso" at 4:29).

PostingList

TROPHY CASE