# Round One: Duet. Aida Tomb Scene: Ponselle and Martinelli, Milanov and Bjorling



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Please read the notes below:


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I aspire to keep the contests varied so I am going to see if you like judging duets. I am starting with my favorite duet, The Nile Scene. 5 duos. The first two rounds are 2 only as the scene is long. All of the sopranos are excellent at piano singing, which is found throughout this beautiful scene. Many of you are normally not crazy about Milanov but here her singing is pure gold. A well known music critic said the Milanov/ Bjorling Aida was pure gold. There will be other contests mixed in. The final contest will pit Callas and her tenor against the other two winners and you must vote for a winner and a runner up.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

The Ponselle excerpt is a revelation, but of Martinelli for me. Also noted is the soprano's inability to float her _acuti_ - notable only in comparison with Milanov, who I found often risible in her late recordings. Not here, however. Milanov is less matronly in her video (a quality that Ponselle also shares - something in her timbre) than heretofore.

Milanov takes the cake: she is focused, controlled and quite beautiful in this contest, even compared to Ponselle.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

The second video is not available here in the UK.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Tsaraslondon said:


> The second video is not available here in the UK.


See if this works, buddy.
start at 2hr 14 min


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Seattleoperafan said:


> See if this works, buddy.
> start at 2hr 14 min


Yes It does, though I assumed rightly that this was from the complete recording and listened to it on Applemusic.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

I'm going to nail my colours to the mast and say that I've never much liked Milanov and personally I think she does sound matronly and staid. Sorry, MAS. Bjoerling, on the other hand, is terrific, and a welcome change to all those stentorian tenors who bawl their way to their deaths. The very sound of the voice is so beautiful too.

Martinelli's voice is nowhere near so beautiful, but he sings with great style and creates intensity without resorting to sobs and aspirates as so many do. I also find Ponselle far preferable to Milanov. _Vedi da morte l'angelo_ can sound clumsy, but not here.

Ponselle easily beats Milanov for me, but, of the two tenors I prefer Bjoerling. That said, I'm still going to go for the Ponselle/Martinelli recording, as I don't dislike Martinelli's performance.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I normally don't like Milanov so much, but here the aria plays to her strengths. So much soft singing is called for and she did such passages with delicious beauty and control. I love what Tsaras said about Bjorling.I can't better what he said. 
I just love the beautiful, rich, sad sound of Ponselle's voice. It is the most beautiful soprano voice to me, but other things trump beauty in this forum usually. Her interpretation is really good for someone in her early 20's. The piece is a bit high for her as it goes up to C6 but only Callas can bring such contralto richness to the low lying passages. I usually back up and listen to her singing the low lying passages a couple of times when listening to this in my car. This was the piece that made me a fan of Martinelli and i did a post some time ago seeing if I was the only person who really liked him. I was not. Bjorling's voice was a bit more beautiful but Martinelli sang with great style here. Even though Jussi's performance is a bit superior, Ponselle tips the scales in favor of her scene with Martinelli. Still, I greatly enjoy the other pairing as well. Years ago I had the recording of the whole opera with Milanov and Bjorling and it is wonderful. At the time it was the highest rated Aida according to the good source I used.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

What to do???
Would you be kind and trade me my Martinelli for your wonderul Bjorling instead?
Ponselle's voice was beyond gorgeous. I don't think I have ever heard her better and more appealing except for two things: I really felt the tempo was too slow and I also felt that the two of them together were a bad match vocally. Martinelli has never appealed to me much and I find his voice abrasive. Their blend was not smooth to my ears.
Bjorling, on the other hand, was totally exquisite and I think a Ponselle-Bjorling match would have been just perfect. 
Milanov did a fine job but nothing extraordinary, however their tempo was much more on par and their voices blended together much more cohesively.
So I'm left with a real quandary and I know I must vote, so I have to decide between Ponselle and Bjorling.
Because Ponselle's performance just blew me away I guess Martinelli ends up getting the prize too.
I can't wait now to see how others got out of this quandary.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

nina foresti said:


> What to do???
> Would you be kind and trade me my Martinelli for your wonderul Bjorling instead?
> Ponselle's voice was beyond gorgeous. I don't think I have ever heard her better and more appealing except for two things: I really felt the tempo was too slow and I also felt that the two of them together were a bad match vocally. Martinelli has never appealed to me much and I find his voice abrasive. Their blend was not smooth to my ears.
> Bjorling, on the other hand, was totally exquisite and I think a Ponselle-Bjorling match would have been just perfect.
> ...


Nina, this is exactly the challenge of duets. LOL! You must consider the artists as teams. Most bemoan the fact that Ponselle began her recording career just as Caruso ended his. In pop there have been cases like the one where they created a duet where Nat King Cole sang a duet with his daughter, Natalie, or Streisand and Elvis, but I suspect this will not work for opera, alas. Ponselle and Bjorling would be heaven! In the next pairings some will have to get past their prejudices to experience what they are really hearing instead of what they think they should be hearing. Just a teaser. BTW, I came close to including Caruso in this contest, but I wasn't that crazy about his soprano. He was fabulous, though!


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Tsaraslondon said:


> I'm going to nail my colours to the mast and say that I've never much liked Milanov and personally I think she does sound matronly and staid. Sorry, MAS. Bjoerling, on the other hand, is terrific, and a welcome change to all those stentorian tenors who bawl their way to their deaths. The very sound of the voice is so beautiful too.
> 
> Martinelli's voice is nowhere near so beautiful, but he sings with great style and creates intensity without resorting to sobs and aspirates as so many do. I also find Ponselle far preferable to Milanov. _Vedi da morte l'angelo_ can sound clumsy, but not here.
> 
> Ponselle easily beats Milanov for me, but, of the two tenors I prefer Bjoerling. That said, I'm still going to go for the Ponselle/Martinelli recording, as I don't dislike Martinelli's performance.


No worries - I don't normally go for Milanov, but in this case she bowled me over and her blend with Björling (though not a favorite, either), paired with her high _pianissimi_, conquered my preconceptions. I did like Martinelli's controlled utterances, but not Ponselle's.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Martinelli gets off to an annoying start with me by scooping into nearly every note of his opening lines. His voice sounds unsettled as well, the vibrato erratic as it often was. Fortunately he improves once the conversation is under way, and I'm more pleased with his heroic timbre, which often tends to grate on me. Ponselle sounds perfectly beautiful, if a little dispassionate compared with her partner. I mean, this scene _is_ a sort of liebestod.

I'm slightly less than excited by Bjorling, a favorite singer of mine, as Radames. His sweet lyric tenor and musical impeccableness - not a scoop in sight - evokes less a captain of the guard than an honor student at the Cairo military academy. In this case it's Milanov who provides a tiny tad more passion, but without quite the sheer gorgeousness of Ponselle's tone.

Actually, minor flaws aside, these are both fine performances we'd be ecstatic to encounter today. It's more or less a coin toss for me, so I think I'll shrug off the scoops and go for Martinelli-Ponselle. What might keep the coin in my pocket is the unfortunately cut version with Enrico Caruso and Johanna Gadski. Seattleoperfan posts it above, but there's something weird going on with the sound. Here's a better version (and for future reference, Tom Frøkjær is a reliable YouTube poster of vintage vocals):






Gadski isn't Ponselle's equal, though she's clearly no slouch, but Caruso combines the virtues of Martinelli and Bjorling for an ideal Radames.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Be thinking and after the winning round is finished next week I will do a poll to see if you guys enjoyed the duet format. You guys suggested it but I sense it is sometimes a struggle to judge. I have a number of other duet contests, including ones you suggested, but my feelings won't be hurt if you guys ( always implying guys and gal) decide it isn't as fun for you. This is all about fun for us. Woodduck I struggled on the Caruso issue as he is the ultimate Radames but I thought there were complications with it. Thanks for the link. If a majority want to keep it we will.


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## ScottK (Dec 23, 2021)

Cortigianni and The Tomb Scene would have to be in my list of top five Verdi scenes and with the heavyweights you're opening with you're serving up a feast SOF!

I drooled over Milanov's pianissimi when I first heard this and they've held up just fine. I didn't enjoy everything down lower quite as much. The middle never carried me away and as for how she sings it, I felt she did everything right but I wasn't really moved by anything. Bjoerling, I thought, was on his game. He sounded invested from the first and the tone at the beginning was surprisingly heroic. I liked the slow tempo at the beginning. I thought it gave it real weight. But I thought, since the piece is so divided up into sections, it would pick up later and didn't really feel that happen. Stylistically I never thought of Bjoerling as one who finds really individual phrasings, but his commitment carried the day for me and of course the sound. I don't know the year but this is when he started to show signs of pushing the top. Its not bad here but its the beginning of extra noise and harder tones up top. They say he could do anything he wanted with his voice but the truth is that to make the dramatic sound up top that he clearly wanted, he had to pay a price. But Bjoerling paying a price is still glorious.

Ponselle and Martinelli is the Tomb Scene I grew up on (IT WAS MY DAD'S!!!). I understand that Martinelli's voice can be an acquired taste but I acquired it long ago. The idea that that sound can compete with Bjoerlings - who also knew a thing or two about how to sing the music - sounds crazy, but for me it isn't that close. I'm prejudiced for sure but as I listened there is just a give and take within the line, a sense of proportion throughout, his characteristic long lines and an absolute absence of extra sound in his clarion upper register that makes his Radames the top for me. (If Caruso recorded this I haven't heard it.) 

And making my way up the ladder, this is the recording I think of whenever I consider that among Italianate sopranos, for me, there is Ponselle and then everyone else. The Terra Addio is beautiful beyond description. I find all of it to be big, beautiful lyricism on the highest plain with a full sense of the tragic love they're singing about. And the icing on the cake is the glorious blend that their two voices make as they soar.

Far from every beloved recording from my youth has maintained its place in my heart as I've gotten old. Obviously, this has.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

ScottK said:


> Cortigianni and The Tomb Scene would have to be in my list of top five Verdi scenes and with the heavyweights you're opening with you're serving up a feast SOF!
> 
> I drooled over Milanov's pianissimi when I first heard this and they've held up just fine. I didn't enjoy everything down lower quite as much. The middle never carried me away and as for how she sings it, I felt she did everything right but I wasn't really moved by anything. Bjoerling, I thought, was on his game. He sounded invested from the first and the tone at the beginning was surprisingly heroic. I liked the slow tempo at the beginning. I thought it gave it real weight. But I thought, since the piece is so divided up into sections, it would pick up later and didn't really feel that happen. Stylistically I never thought of Bjoerling as one who finds really individual phrasings, but his commitment carried the day for me and of course the sound. I don't know the year but this is when he started to show signs of pushing the top. Its not bad here but its the beginning of extra noise and harder tones up top. They say he could do anything he wanted with his voice but the truth is that to make the dramatic sound up top that he clearly wanted, he had to pay a price. But Bjoerling paying a price is still glorious.
> 
> ...


You brought me much joy with this critique. 
Woodduck included a link to Caruso above and I strongly considered it. He is the ultimate Radames, but this is about a singing team.


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## ScottK (Dec 23, 2021)

Seattleoperafan said:


> Years ago I had the recording of the whole opera with Milanov and Bjorling and it is wonderful.


So I'm confused. Is what we listened to from the complete?


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