# Final Round: Handel's Care Selve. Norena vs Quartararo



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I'm curious how this vote will go as both of these illicited a lot of passion from you.




Händel: Atalanta: "Care Selve" (1937) · Eidé Noréna · G. F. Händel 




*Florence Quartararo, "Care Selve" Atalanta*


----------



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

For me it is a tie. I cannot decide which is more beautiful or moves me more. I am so glad to have been introduced to both of these great artists


----------



## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Norena’s voice is astonishing! The high notes seem to have almost no vibrato, which gives them a purity that is remarkable. One notices the lower sustained notes have more vibrato than the highs. There’s also superb breath control and some of the phrases are very long.

There’s an immediacy about Quartararo’s performance that is absent from Norena’s more straightforwardly voicing of the aria and that gives Quartararo’s version a very slight preference, especially as she yields nothing in breath control.
I won’t choose between them.


----------



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

MAS said:


> Norena’s voice is astonishing! The high notes seem to have almost no vibrato, which gives them a purity that is remarkable. One notices the lower sustained notes have more vibrato than the highs. There’s also superb breath control and some of the phrases are very long.
> 
> There’s an immediacy about Quartararo’s performance that is absent from Norena’s more straightforwardly voicing of the aria and that gives Quartararo’s version a very slight preference, especially as she yields nothing in breath control.
> I won’t choose between them.


   🤩🤩🤩


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I'm sure that innocent ecstasy is a real thing - children exprience it quite regularly, if my seventy-year-old memory serves - but is there such a thing as ecstatic innocence? If not, I'm inventing it right now to describe Eide Norena. Freia, with her golden apples, was the Norse goddess of youth, and if she could sing (which of course she does for Wagner) she would sing like Norena, a woman-child with a voice made of light and air. The way it spans the phrases of this aria like the rainbow bridge to Valhalla is a wonder.

Quartararo sounds like a grown-up, flesh-and-blood woman rather than an Elysian spirit (sorry to mix mythologies, but syncretism has a long pedigree). She is less ethereal, more passionate, forceful and knowing, but every bit as masterful in sustaining the long phrases. Her style is stricter, more modern, with less use of portamento. She fills the notes with meaning.

Objectively, I should be unable to choose between these two, but if forced to take one to a desert island, I would take Norena. I'll need those golden apples, at least until I can train some monkeys to crack coconuts.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

It just now occurs to me to point out that Norena was 53 at the time of this recording (1937).


----------



## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

I the first round, Gluck vs Norena, I have mentioned the transcendent versus girly dichotomy. Both of my transcendent favorites have lost in the previous rounds. So now, I want the proper girly. Norena has my vote.


----------



## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

"How happy could I be with either, Were t'other dear charmer away!"

I know I can vote for both, but this is a competition of sorts and, like Paris on Mount Ida, it feels I should make a choice. At least I only have two Goddesses to choose between. Norena represents here more heavenly delights while Quartararo's are more earthly, or perhaps more sensual. However, unlike Paris, and possibly because I have less life ahead of me than Paris did, I'm opting for Heaven and Norena.


----------

