# Round One: Hamlet Mad Scene. Dessay, Sutherland



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I wish someone would explain to me why this scene varies so much in length. I wanted to use June Anderson's version but it was over 15 minutes in length. The Sutherland video is from a year past the Art of the Prima Donna, but she sounds the same to me. I love this colorized version that I found of her black and white version. She looks so slim and pretty here..


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Though the Dessay is longer, the video omits the recitative, which Sutherland sings, but then she makes further cuts in the scene after that. 

I should just say that I watched both videos rather than just listened. Had I just been listening I would probably have gone for Sutherland, who is in stunning vocal form here. The voice is beautiful, her coloratura is spectacular and her high notes breathtaking. She also acts out the scene well and moves well, but she does adopt some stock operatic gestures. She isn’t a natural actress, where Dessay is riveting. Admittedly it’s a modern interpretation, taking in what we know about mental health and self harm, but I found it absolutely compelling. Vocally too she’s no slouch even if she doesn’t quite command Sutherland’s beauty of tone. I’m giving Dessay the palm.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Tsaraslondon said:


> Though the Dessay is longer, the video omits the recitative, which Sutherland sings, but then she makes further cuts in the scene after that.
> 
> I should just say that I watched both videos rather than just listened. Had I just been listening I would probably have gone for Sutherland, who is in stunning vocal form here. The voice is beautiful, her coloratura is spectacular and her high notes breathtaking. She also acts out the scene well and moves well, but she does adopt some stock operatic gestures. She isn’t a natural actress, where Dessay is riveting. Admittedly it’s a modern interpretation, taking in what we know about mental health and self harm, but I found it absolutely compelling. Vocally too she’s no slouch even if she doesn’t quite command Sutherland’s beauty of tone. I’m giving Dessay the palm.


This aria is almost unique in that all of my singers sing different versions. The times vary considerably. I think Sutherland and Callas sing similar versions. Dessay's voice didn't last very long but she was amazing as an actress. She had incredible high notes early on but they may have contributed to her vocal crisis.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

I tend to agree with Tsaraslondon that had I not watched and just listened my vote might have been different -- not sure, but I couldn't get my mind off of the scene that Sutherland created of a happy party going princess who didn't seem a bit mentally damaged at all like poor Dessay who really nailed the mental condition to a "T".
Both voices were at their superb best but Natalie gets my vote. Her acting was as convincing as her singing.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

It's impossible to choose. Both singers do their best vocally. Dessay is a big actress, of course. And I heard her live, even twice, in recitals. 
And Sutherland... Who can dislike Sutherland? She shows a theater unaware about Stanislavsky. She moves so beautiful, with cold face of Hitchcock blonde, worn in that incredible gown, like Marlene Dietrich in homerically funny film about Catherine the Great. And how she faints in the end! Marvelous. Am I the only one who enjoyed it?


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

ColdGenius said:


> It's impossible to choose. Both singers do their best vocally. Dessay is a big actress, of course. And I heard her live, even twice, in recitals.
> And Sutherland... Who can dislike Sutherland? She shows a theater unaware about Stanislavsky. She moves so beautiful, with cold face of Hitchcock blonde, worn in that incredible gown, like Marlene Dietrich in homerically funny film about Catherine the Great. And how she faints in the end! Marvelous. Am I the only one who enjoyed it?


No, I think quite a few of us enjoyed it. I just preferred Dessay for the reasons stated above.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

ColdGenius said:


> It's impossible to choose. Both singers do their best vocally. Dessay is a big actress, of course. And I heard her live, even twice, in recitals.
> And Sutherland... Who can dislike Sutherland? She shows a theater unaware about Stanislavsky. She moves so beautiful, with cold face of Hitchcock blonde, worn in that incredible gown, like Marlene Dietrich in homerically funny film about Catherine the Great. And how she faints in the end! Marvelous. Am I the only one who enjoyed it?


Beautifully put!! I'm sending you a hug.They are both great but different. Of course in a theater you would have heard that startling size of Sutherland's voice, which really sets her's and Callas's voice apart in coloratura singing.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Sutherland’s version is from American TV (Voice of Firestone or Bell Telephone Hour?) and thus trimmed here and there to suit whatever time allowance they had or thought the public could accept. She is in great voice and sings with her usual beauty and usual expressions. Her post-sinus operation voice was evident by 1961.

Dessay is another thing altogether. Watching her is believing and she is no slouch vocally, though the voice is, of course, not comparable is size and beauty to Sutherland’s. But what she does with it is as virtuosic as her coeval’s but with more clarity of diction and tone and riveting stage demeanor - she relished acting challenges and would do outrageous things if it allowed her the chance to add another dimension to her performance. BTW she had two surgeries mid-career on her vocal cords to remove nodes. Dessay for me.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I'm going to differ emphatically with my esteemed colleagues and propose that this is, from a musical standpoint, an absolute wipe-out. Sutherland is not only at her extraordinary vocal peak here but delivers an interpretation sensitive to the text and more varied in inflection than I expected. 

Let's be honest and admit that we would never associate this music with the idea of insanity if the composer hadn't plunked it down in an opera called "Hamlet." It really is up to the singer to convey the sense of an erratic and distracted mind. I've watched Dessay's performance before and admired it as we all do, so I felt quite free to simply listen today. Really, there isn't much to listen for. The voice itself isn't a great one, and she doesn't do an awful lot with it. I felt precisely the same way when I heard her Lucia in a Met broadcast. A great theatrical artist, but not a singer for history.

Sutherland may not be much to watch, but this singing is definitely for history.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> I'm going to differ emphatically with my esteemed colleagues and propose that this is, from a musical standpoint, an absolute wipe-out. Sutherland is not only at her extraordinary vocal peak here but delivers an interpretation sensitive to the text and more varied in inflection than I expected.
> 
> Let's be honest and admit that we would never associate this music with the idea of insanity if the composer hadn't plunked it down in an opera called "Hamlet." It really is up to the singer to convey the sense of an erratic and distracted mind. I've watched Dessay's performance before and admired it as we all do, so I felt quite free to simply listen today. Really, there isn't much to listen for. The voice itself isn't a great one, and she doesn't do an awful lot with it. I felt precisely the same way when I heard her Lucia in a Met broadcast. A great theatrical artist, but not a singer for history.
> 
> Sutherland may not be much to watch, but this singing is definitely for history.


You're right of course, but I _did_ watch both videos and I just know which performance would have satisfied me more in the theatre, which, after all, is where opera should be. I did say Dessay puts something of a modern twist on the scene, but I don't object to that when it doesn't actually conflict with what she is singing - and I don't think it does. One of the great things about Shakespeare himself is that his plays will take any amount of modern interpretations. I remember a superb production of Henry V at the Globe in London, which starred and was staged by Mark Rylance. The setting could not have been more traditional, with the actors in Elizabethan dress and boys playing the female roles. The mechanicals even joked and ad libbed (in Shakespearean language) with the audience, particularly those standing in the pit, but Rylance's Henry was much less the warmonger than he is usually portrayed; a more thoughtful, troubled King, who reluctantly went to war. Not a word of the text was changed, but he found plenty in it that supported his interpretation, though I doubt very much it would have been what Elizabethan audiences would have expected.

We might argue over whether Thomas's lightweight music actually depicts insanity at all (does Donizetti's in all his various Mad Scenes?) but one assumes that he was attempting to convey madness and I admire the way Dessay conveys that, not just in the way that she acts the scene, but in the way she sings it too.

On the other hand, I should emphasise that I also agree with what you say about Sutherland too. Vocally she is fabulous here. Had I just been listening, she would have won hands down.


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## Shaafee Shameem (Aug 4, 2021)

I feel that Sutherland was better in French Romantic roles than the Italian ones. Her bright, crystalline timbre lends itself marvelously to French music whereas in her Italian roles, I prefer a darker tone. It also seems that she responded more to the language than Italian, since she is not only dazzling vocally here, but also conveys pathos wonderfully. I was surprised at the slight mushiness in her middle register already in 1961, but it doesn’t detract from her otherwise flawless rendition.


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## marlow (11 mo ago)

Of course we are here comparing one of the great voices of the century with a great singing actress. If you just look on opera as vocalism then of course Sutherland. If you want drama then of course it is Dessay, whose stage presence is electrifying and whose voice certainly doesn’t let us down. You pays your money and you takes your choice. So if an audio recording Sutherland. If watching, Dessay.


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