# Single Round:Vorrei spiegarvi by Mozart: Dame Price, Battle



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

See info below


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I was not satisfied with the contestants for the second round of Le Prophete, so I moved on. Sorry.
This is one of the most beautiful arias by Mozart in my opinion. I could do a second round with Judith Blegen and Sumi Jo if you feel strongly about it.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

I spent almost a year listening to Margaret Price’s Mozart album. The _tessitura _of this aria is a bit high for her rich voice, but she goes ahead anyway. However, the lower range is not strong, par for the course with sopranos of her generation. Her husband at the time James Lockhart, who set out to be her Svengali for a short while, conducts. I love her sound and she sings everything beautifully - the highest note, though, could’ve been left off, but it’s just a bit tentative, She has the fluidity to handle the divisions with no problems.

I also spent months listening to one of Kathleen Battle's albums, but it was Handel, not Mozart. Nevertheless, it’s another one of her gorgeous renditions - she could do no wrong during a certain period of her recording career, to my ears. Now I also notice the weak low notes. She also has a tendency to underline the text. The highest note is a bit tight, but whose isn’t? You should hear mine (better not).
I know some feel antipathy for Battle because of her backstage antics, but I also know some who thanked God they lived long enough to hear her sing.

I can’t possibly decide tonight. I may decide tomorrow because, as Scarlett says, “tomorrow…is another day!”


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

MAS said:


> I spent almost a year listening to Margaret Price’s Mozart album. The _tessitura _of this aria is a bit high for her rich voice, but she goes ahead anyway. However, the lower range is not strong, par for the course with sopranos of her generation. Her husband at the time James Lockhart, who set out to be her Svengali for a short while, conducts. I love her sound and she sings everything beautifully - the highest note, though, could’ve been left off, but it’s just a bit tentative,
> 
> I also spent months listening to one of Kathleen Battle's albums, but it was Handel, not Mozart. Nevertheless, it’s another one of her gorgeous renditions - she could do no wrong during a certain period of her recording career, to my ears. Now I also notice the weak low notes. She also has a tendency to underline the text. The highest note is a bit tight, but whose isn’t? You should hear mine (better not).
> I know some feel antipathy for Battle because of her backstage antics, but I also know some who thanked God they lived long enough to hear her sing.
> ...


I'm with you on the difficulty of deciding this. I wish Sutherland had recorded this around the time of The Art of the Prima Donna. She recorded it twice: the first time very early and in an awful recording and the second time too late in her career to do it justice. Mozart leaves the voice naked onstage as it were. Early Callas could have handled the issues you raised with our present singers, but I don't think Callas had the right type of voice for Mozart. She recorded a few Mozart arias, but I don't think they suited her like her Bellini and Rossini arias did, even though she was of course technically perfect.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Seattleoperafan said:


> I'm with you on the difficulty of deciding this. I wish Sutherland had recorded this around the time of The Art of the Prima Donna. She recorded it twice: the first time very early and in an awful recording and the second time too late in her career to do it justice. Mozart leaves the voice naked onstage as it were. Early Callas could have handled the issues you raised with our present singers, but I don't think Callas had the right type of voice for Mozart. She recorded a few Mozart arias, but I don't think they suited her like her Bellini and Rossini arias did, even though she was of course technically perfect.


Callas was definitely not a Mozartian as we got used to: strictly even voices with pure tone spinning beautiful phrases _ad infinitum. _The best ones add drama without distorting the line and the lucky few can also color their phrases with appropriate hues. Callas once remarked that Mozart was often sung “on tiptoe,” an accusation that can probably be proven by listening to some singers’ aria albums. Though Callas claimed Mozart should be sung with “the same frankness as Verdi or Puccini” (if I remember rightly), one doesn’t one to go bruising Mozart’s delicate music with Verismo accents or Verdi’s blood and thunder!

Nevertheless, “Tutte le torture,” from *Il Ratto Del Seraglio *( *Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail*) shows what she means. It’s probably the only Mozart aria in which the unevenness in her voice doesn’t pose too much of a problem. She just sings the crap out of it, with boldness and frankness.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

MAS said:


> Callas was definitely not a Mozartian as we got used to: strictly even voices with pure tone spinning beautiful phrases _ad infinitum. _The best ones add drama without distorting the line and the lucky few can also color their phrases with appropriate hues. Callas once remarked that Mozart was often sung “on tiptoe,” an accusation that can probably be proven by listening to some singers’ aria albums. Though Callas claimed Mozart should be sung with “the same frankness as Verdi or Puccini” (if I remember rightly), one doesn’t one to go bruising Mozart’s delicate music with Verismo accents or Verdi’s blood and thunder!
> 
> Nevertheless, “Tutte le torture,” from *Il Ratto Del Seraglio *( *Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail*) shows what she means. It’s probably the only Mozart aria in which the unevenness in her voice doesn’t pose too much of a problem. She just sings the crap out of it, with boldness and frankness.


I have listened to that one a bit and she pulls it off really well. I agree. The other ones not so much. It doesn't really sound like typical Callas renditions though.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Seattleoperafan said:


> I have listened to that one a bit and she pulls it off really well. I agree. The other ones not so much. It doesn't really sound like typical Callas renditions though.


Well unfortunately most of the Callas Mozqrt we have is from too late in her career, and I admit that I can find the Countess's and Anna's arias on that late recital a bit of a trial. Elvira's _Mi tradi _is better, as it lies lower (and the recitative teems with drama) but I still wish she'd recorded it a few years earlier.

Aside from her two performances of _Tutte le torture _we also have a _Non mi dir,_ which she recorded twice in 1953 as a test recording for EMI. These performances were never intended for release, and Callas sounds noticeably more relaxed in the second take, but I think her performance very fine. She is a warmer Anna than many and reminds us that this is an _appea_l to Ottavio. Technically it holds no problems for her at all and she sails through it as if it's the easiest thing in the world, the coloratura cleanly articulated and with a perfect legato. Mozart, for the most part, may not have appealed to her dramatic instincts, but I think in her early career she could have been a fine Mozartian. How I wish her 1952 Constanze had been recorded!

Sorry to pull us all off track. Well actually that wasn't me. I just followed the trend. Now down to the matter at hand. I'll post my impressions below.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

I've actually heard both these ladies live, both in concert rather than in opera. Price sang a mixed song recital with piano and Battle was the soloist in an all Bach programme, one of the pieces she sang was the florid showpiece _Jauchzet Gott_. Both of them were wonderful, by the way, but if I had to choose a preferred _type _of voice, it would be the richer sound of Margaret Price.

There are some impossibly high notes in this piece and neither lady is entirely happy up there, but Battle's voice does sound more right for the piece and I prefer the slightly more propulsive tempo. Price was a Countess, an Anna and a Fiordiligi, whereas Battle was a Susanna, a Zerlina or a Despina, so they are not singers you would usually compare, but _in this aria _I'm going for Battle.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

This is an odd piece of music, isn't it? Beautiful but meandering; I never have a sense of where I am in it and where I'm being taken, or a confidence that Mozart is too sure about that himself. Those incredibly high notes are a bit bizarre too, and must have been included with some freakish singer in mind. Oh well... With that off my chest, I prefer, if just marginally, Battle in this, mainly because Price's effort in those high moments is slightly more distracting. I wonder if there's a recording by someone who's actually comfortable way up there.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> Beautiful but meandering


Meandering but _never gets lost in flights of ecstasy _—that's the beauty.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Not being a Mozartian opera devotee, I am not familiar with how this aria should be sung, but I am familiar with my gut feelings and the one that immediately struck me as the perfect sound was Battle.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> This is an odd piece of music, isn't it? Beautiful but meandering; I never have a sense of where I am in it and where I'm being taken, or a confidence that Mozart is too sure about that himself. Those incredibly high notes are a bit bizarre too, and must have been included with some freakish singer in mind. Oh well... With that off my chest, I prefer, if just marginally, Battle in this, mainly because Price's effort in those high moments is slightly more distracting. I wonder if there's a recording by someone who's actually comfortable way up there.


I’d think Cyndia Seidel or Ingeborg Hallstein would fit the bill. Seiden’s transfer had a lot of digital glare, which affects the high notes. Edda Moser used to relish the high notes, but her hard driven vocalism can sometimes be bothersome (she’d probably have been a great dramatic soprano given the right voice). Another would be Laura Claycomb, but I don’t know if she recorded it.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Here’s Seiden, in the least glare-y transfer, but the highs still have some. I think that Aloysia Weber’s for whom Mozart wrote this, had a freakish facility in those highest reaches - is that a G?


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

MAS said:


> I’d think Cyndia Seidel or Ingeborg Hallstein would fit the bill. Seiden’s transfer had a lot of digital glare, which affects the high notes. Edda Moser used to relish the high notes, but her hard driven vocalism can sometimes be bothersome (she’d probably have been a great dramatic soprano given the right voice). Another would be Laura Claycomb, but I don’t know if she recorded it.


There are quite a few versions by farely well known singers on youtube ( No, I haven't listened to them). Sills, Dessay, Gruberova, Reri Grist, Ingeborg Hallstein, Streich, and Devielhe, Petibon, Damrau and Oropesa amongst singers still active today, not to mention a host of sopranos I've never heard of.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MAS said:


> Here’s Seiden, in the least glare-y transfer, but the highs still have some. I think that Aloysia Weber’s for whom Mozart wrote this, had a freakish facility in those highest reaches - is that a G?


I like what she does with this. The high notes sound musical, and the dynamic variation keeps it from seeming to meander.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Tsaraslondon said:


> There are quite a few versions by farely well known singers on youtube ( No, I haven't listened to them). Sills, Dessay, Gruberova, Reri Grist, Ingeborg Hallstein, Streich, and Devielhe, Petibon, Damrau and Oropesa amongst singers still active today, not to mention a host of sopranos I've never heard of.


Are we good with these two or do you guys want another round?I thought both of these were very listenable. I didn't see so many when I looked. Not so familiar with some of these others. If someone could come up with 2 more I'll do it. I bet Dessay could hit those notes if she sang it


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Seattleoperafan said:


> Are we good with these two or do you guys want another round?I thought both of these were very listenable. I didn't see so many when I looked. Not so familiar with some of these others. If someone could come up with 2 more I'll do it. I bet Dessay could hit those notes if she sang it


I think most of the others are inferior to those we’ve heard, though I bet the early Gruberova, Hoch, and Blegen might be worth a listen. Sills is uncharacteristically coarse. I don’t know the Damrau, Grist, Petibon, and would be surprised if Oropesa would be suited to the piece.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

Seattleoperafan said:


> I was not satisfied with the contestants for the second round of Le Prophete, so I moved on. Sorry.
> This is one of the most beautiful arias by Mozart in my opinion. I could do a second round with Judith Blegen and Sumi Jo if you feel strongly about it.


And Patricia Petibon?


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

My point was that there are plenty to choose from. I hadn't realised it was such a popular concert piece. Given its high tessitura that surprises me, or maybe that's its attraction? 

I'd be interested in hearing some of the others and it might be interesting to add at least one of the current crop to the mix. I heard Sabine Devielhe once live, in the same production of *La Fille du Régiment *that was such a success with Dessay and Florez. I thought she was terrific, but that could have had as much to do with her acting as her singing. That said, she didn't adopt any of Sutherland's high flying derivatives, so I don't know how she'd do in the higher reaches of the aria.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Tsaraslondon said:


> My point was that there are plenty to choose from. I hadn't realised it was such a popular concert piece. Given its high tessitura that surprises me, or maybe that's its attraction?
> 
> I'd be interested in hearing some of the others and it might be interesting to add at least one of the current crop to the mix. I heard Sabine Devielhe once live, in the same production of *La Fille du Régiment *that was such a success with Dessay and Florez. I thought she was terrific, but that could have had as much to do with her acting as her singing. That said, she didn't adopt any of Sutherland's high flying derivatives, so I don't know how she'd do in the higher reaches of the aria.


By the way, I listened to Devieilh's studio version from her _Weber Sisters _album and I thought it rather good. She's a little weak at the botto register, but that's not really an issue here, and the high notes are floated beautifully. Incidentally, though the voice sounds quite small in this recording, I can attest to the fact that there was no problem hearing her in the house when I saw her as Marie in *La Fille du Régiment*.


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