# Round One. The Empess: Voigt, Rysenek, and Wilson



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I LOVE this. High D!!!!!!!!!!! Voigt from when she was a wonderful Strauss singer, the queen of the Empresses Rysanek, and a Tucker Gala winner, Tamara Wilson, who is one of the few distinctive modern voices today.


----------



## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Leonie Rysanek was my first Empress, followed by the young Eva Marton in the same production. Conducted by Karl Böhm, with Ursula Schröder-Feinem as the _Färberin_ and Walter Berry as _Barak_.

Rysanek sweeps all before her. Hers is a truly demented portrayal, pulling out all stops and her voice is lustrous and creamy - she is incandescent and throws out high notes like there's no tomorrow. She is unbeatable in this role, even if her idiosyncratic voice is less even than Voigt, in her pre-surgery video. I didn't like Tamara Wilson's decidedly modern instrument, full of unsteady tones, though she did throw up a startling splintered D.


----------



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

MAS said:


> Leonie Rysanek was my first Empress, followed by the young Eva Marton in the same production. Conducted by Karl Böhm, with Ursula Schröder-Feinem as the _Färberin_ and Walter Berry as _Barak_.
> 
> Rysanek sweeps all before her. Hers is a truly demented portrayal, pulling out all stops and her voice is lustrous and creamy - she is incandescent and throws out high notes like there's no tomorrow. She is unbeatable in this role, even if her idiosyncratic voice is less even than Voigt, in her pre-surgery video. I didn't like Tamara Wilson's decidedly modern instrument, full of unsteady tones, though she did throw up a startling splintered D.


Nice.Price was a good Strauss singer but after hearing Rysanek as the Empress said she would be foolish to try to follow that. Voigt did have a truly gorgeous voice, plush and round, back before the surgery. We forget. I heard her 2 years after the surgery and she was still pretty wonderful. Didn't last. At least Callas had that great artistry to tie her over after the voice waned. Voigt wasn't a great artist, but she had one of the most glorious voices of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.


----------



## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

I voted Rysanek although I prefer Julia Varady on the Solti recording.


----------



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Rogerx said:


> I voted Rysanek although I prefer Julia Varady on the Solti recording.


Now don't jump the gun on me LOL Be patient.


----------



## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Seattleoperafan said:


> Now don't jump the gun on me LOL Be patient.


Sorry, had no idea this was a more then one competition.


----------



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Rogerx said:


> Sorry, had no idea this was a more then one competition.


I was poking fun at you. After my personal discomfort last contest this is no big deal. In the future if I say Round One it means there will be a Round 2. I always will say Final Round for the last round. I usually say something like Only Round for single round contests. No sweat. You have lots of credit with me just by your great avatar  Get used to this as I want you participating in my many future contests.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I have no difficulty choosing Voigt from among these three. Strauss could be unkind to singers, and the Empress calls for the power of an Isolde, but with more demands on the top of the voice than Wagner made. Why, I wonder, did Birgit Nilsson avoid this role and come to the opera only late in her career as the Dyer's Wife? It would have suited her as perfectly as Elektra did. But here we have Voigt, pre-surgery, sounding very solid. Whether she should ever have fancied herself a _hochdramatische sopran_ is debatable, but she's at least as good a candidate as either of the others here, and it's nice to be reminded of her original voice.

I've never quite understood the hysteria around Rysanek, but then soprano hysteria is a malady I've never suffered from. Her laser-focused high notes have a feral, hair-standing-on-end quality that seems to affect some people quite viscerally; that she's also frequently out of tune seems not to be a concern. Some essential vibrancy is missing in her middle and lower range, and that leaves her instrument distinctly unbalanced. Apparently she had substantial dramatic gifts which no doubt helped secure her following, but based purely on her singing I can and do live without her.

Tamara Wilson may be one of our more distinctive sopranos - I'll take Seattleoperafan's word for that, though I find her sound less individual than Christine Goerke's - but her relentless, pugilistic vibrato is all too typical of the times. What was that note she just sang? Or was it a trill? In music as complex and dissonant as this - do I hear the influence of Berg's _Lulu?_ - we can't be expected to guess at pitches. Birgit never left us in doubt!

Easy-peasy. Voigt.


----------



## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I've never quite understood the hysteria around Rysanek, but then soprano hysteria is a malady I've never suffered from. Her laser-focused high notes have a feral, hair-standing-on-end quality that seems to affect some people quite viscerally; that she's also frequently out of tune seems not to be a concern. Some essential vibrancy is missing in her middle and lower range, and that leaves her instrument distinctly unbalanced. Apparently she had substantial dramatic gifts which no doubt helped secure her following, but based purely on her singing I can and do live without her.


Rysanek is definitely an acquired taste. I can't take her in Italian opera. But German opera was her _métier_. Her voice actually got better as the years went by; how can that be? Her lower and middle voice somehow ironed out and became less tremulous and less off key. Unbelievable. Her high notes were her selling point. Her crazed high notes, like the scream as Siegmund pulled out the sword from the Ash tree (as if he'd put it into _her_) was thrilling and completely sexual. But, she had to be seen. Recordings do not do her justice, as they emphasize the flaws, as always.

The first time I saw her was in a *Tannhäuser* and what I remember most was Rysanek holding her arms out as if parting the Red Sea and sustaining a huge high C while walking across the stage.


----------



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

MAS said:


> Rysanek is definitely an acquired taste. I can't take her in Italian opera. But German opera was her _métier_. Her voice actually got better as the years went by; how can that be? Her lower and middle voice somehow ironed out and became less tremulous and less off key. Unbelievable. Her high notes were her selling point. Her crazed high notes, like the scream as Siegmund pulled out the sword from the Ash tree (as if he'd put it into _her_) was thrilling and completely sexual. But, she had to be seen. Recordings do not do her justice, as they emphasize the flaws, as always.
> 
> The first time I saw her was in a *Tannhäuser* and what I remember most was Rysanek holding her arms out as if parting the Red Sea and sustaining a huge high C while walking across the stage.


Our former director, world famous Speight Jenkins, was a huge Rysanek fan. He said you had to see her live to appreciate her gifts. She actually became one of my favorite Klytemnestras later in her career. Her top notes were rumored to be bigger than Nilsson. Not a pretty voice but very moving. Tiny lady with a big head. As a steady diet of these three I like early Voigt. Regarding Tamara, she is a very winning personality onstage and off. I like best her notes above C... that is where her voice sounds most distinctive to me.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Does anyone know why Nilsson didn't sing this?


----------



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Does anyone know why Nilsson didn't sing this?


She sang C#6 in Vienna all the time as the orchestra is tuned sharp so a D should have been in her arsenal. . She was very good friends with Rysanek and she felt this was a Rysanek role so perhaps she didn't want to **** in her territory. I would have loved to hear her D6.


----------



## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Seattleoperafan said:


> Our former director, world famous Speight Jenkins, was a huge Rysanek fan. He said you had to see her live to appreciate her gifts. She actually became one of my favorite Klytemnestras later in her career. Her top notes were rumored to be bigger than Nilsson. Not a pretty voice but very moving. Tiny lady with a big head. As a steady diet of these three I like early Voigt. Regarding Tamara, she is a very winning personality onstage and off. I like best her notes above C... that is where her voice sounds most distinctive to me.


I thought I had no recordings of Rysanek. But I do have one, kind of a stunt compilation: it is of her singing all three roles in *Elektra* - she starts with Crysothemis in the early ´50s, the later on her career takes on the title role, in the film, then later still, Klytemnestra. It's an unusual counterpart to a soprano singing first Sophie, them Octavian, then finally, the Marschallin; though I think not many could pull that off. I recall only Elisabeth Söderstrom. Perhaps Lisa Della Casa?


----------



## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Seattleoperafan said:


> She sang C#6 in Vienna all the time as the orchestra is tuned sharp so a D should have been in her arsenal. . She was very good friends with Rysanek and she felt this was a Rysanek role so perhaps she didn't want to **** in her territory. I would have loved to hear her D6.


I think she was smart about which roles would suit her voice and temperament - I can't really imagine her as the Empress.


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Does anyone know why Nilsson didn't sing this?


No. I guess she was never offered it/wasn't particularly interested in singing it when she was singing lighter Germanic fare (up until '56?) and then her role was always the Dyer's Wife. Singing the Empress after Barak's wife would have been like going back to Sieglinde after Brunhilde (although there was a period where she sang both of those Walkure roles).

N.


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

The video of Rysanek is not available above. Fortunately I am familiar with her Empress and have no hesitation in voting for her seeing the other two we have here.

N.


----------



## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Being familiar only with Debbie, and liking her voice very much, I decided to take a different step and not vote for her simply because a singer who gets talked about but I actually never stopped to listen to, I found excited me in her delivery and so I am placing my bet on Rysanek.


----------



## ScottK (Dec 23, 2021)

The Queen of the Empresses had no trouble keeping her crown despite Voigts considerable gifts. It is so striking after hearing Voigt that Rysanek has that great ability to come immediately out of that declamative sound and Unleash sounds and phrases filled with all of her femininity and humanity. Voigt sings these passages but the sound remains too similar to the forceful sound she was using a few bars earlier. And then the Rysanek top. At least here, Leonie is in a league of her own!


----------



## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

I'm bowing out of this contest. I hardly know the opera at all and it's not really my field. I do have a recording of a live performance from Covent Garden under Solti, in which Heather Harper is the Empress, but I've only listened to it once I think. I just remember most of it being relentlessly loud.


----------



## ALT (Mar 1, 2021)

I can understand enjoying, and I do, early Rysanek, the earlier the better. But then she became something of a virago and a vocal mess, complete with arguably the worst intonation of any major singer at the professional level. Most of her fans simply choose to look the other way, allowing for some of the most deplorable singing ever heard from a soprano. Looking the other way and pretending to hear something else is the only way to cope, I guess. But they'd never allow or forgive her transgressions if they came from someone else's throat. In any case, here she is brazenly lopping off the _written_ D in the Kaiserin's entrance.


----------

