# Single Round: Coloratura Mezzo- Haydn> Jessye Norman, Cecelia Bartoli



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Please see notes below


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Before we do the second round of the Britten aria and close out the duet I wanted to jumble things up with an aria most of you will not be familiar with but which is very beautiful. Haydn wrote some gorgeous vocal music and this is a good example. For most of you this repertoire for Jessye Norman will be a big surprise. Bartoli can be fabulous or not so fabulous. On these obscure arias it is very hard to find more than two well known artists' renditions and that was the case here. Let me know what you think.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

I don't like Bartoli's excessive method in fast music, clucking and gargling in order to negotiate the _coloratura_. While this does delineate the divisions, it sounds very ungainly. She can make beautiful sounds in slower music but, to me, it doesn't compensate for the ugliness of the fast music.

Norman proves that _coloratura_ can be handled with ease and beauty (though some passages are slightly effortful). Elsewhere, Norman emits heavenly sounds and spins ethereal threads of shining tone, with softly attacked high notes.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Now here is a circumstance where my prejudice shows. It is unfair for me to vote because I actually am turned off by the voice of Bartoli. There is something about it that almost emits a certain artificiality.
Anyway, should I now go up and vote for Norman just because? Or make it a pass.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

I'd never heard this aria before and listened to them in the order above, that is Norman first. The voice is lovely and lighter than the voice we became used to. She's also singing at a higher pitch than Bartoli, presumably modern concert pitch. The slow section of tha aria is beautiful, but some of the coloratura in the fast section is a bit laboured. Still, I'd much rather that than Bartoli's ugly, rat-a-tat aspirated gunfire, which always strikes me as _un_musical. She might be able to take it at a faster tempo, but the results are not attractive.

Bartoli shows that she can sing meltingly in the slow section, but I still find the voice a little too over-vibrant and I prefer Norman.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

nina foresti said:


> Now here is a circumstance where my prejudice shows. It is unfair for me to vote because I actually am turned off by the voice of Bartoli. There is something about it that almost emits a certain artificiality.
> Anyway, should I now go up and vote for Norman just because? Or make it a pass.


I don't think it should preclude your voting for someone you do like; assuming you like Norman.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

ok-ya talkedme into it.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Considering the size of Norman's voice, and it was huge even early on, I was amazed she could handle this aria's demands so well. I was impressed with Bartoli early on the scene but have tired of her. Horne could isolate and hit individual coloratura notes in a musical and thrilling way sometimes, but with Bartoli it is more machine gun like and irritating. Her legato singing is gorgeous, though. I am pleased some of you enjoyed this round of mostly new music for most of you.


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## ScottK (Dec 23, 2021)

You are our Karl Haas! I love these journeys into unexpected areas!

My responses were, in one way, complete opposites....Norman's rendition either pleased me or didn't and with Bartoli I was never sure exactly how I felt. I essentially loved everything Jessye did until the coloratura which I found clunky. But the sum total was very high. I don't know the music at all but I thought it was a beautiful voice and a committed artist. Bartoli lost me from the word go with that breathiness. Had that been it I would have let it go but, of course, it kept coming back. None-the-less I still felt again and again that this is close to wonderful singing, also with a beautiful voice, but then it would feel over the top again...begging for us to feel! Once we got into the coloratura I was dazzled but quickly found some of the passages to have a slightly un-musical, very insistent machine-gun kind of sound. Too many issues with Bartoli so it goes to Jessye.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I've been unable to find a translation of this aria, and consequently I have no idea why Cecilia Bartoli is doing such odd things to it. But no matter: odd is odd, and I have to prefer Norman even though she's far from flawless. She was youngish here, and the voice is lighter and brighter than it later became; her soft singing sounds a bit constrained, she's accurate but not facile in coloratura, and she doesn't give me much sense of the dramatic significance that Bartoli is ever so desperate to convey, whispering it portentously - tenderly? seductively? fearfully? - in my ear.

I remember liking Bartoli immensely when I first encountered her, and I still like her voice and enjoy her when she can bring herself to let music speak for itself. But she, much like Renee Fleming, has a compulsion to make it unmistakably clear to us that every moment of music has meaning and that she knows what it means.


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## marlow (11 mo ago)

No question that Norman was never a coloratura soprano despite the splendour of the voice. Bartholdi despite the humourless accompaniment given to her by Harnoncourt.


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