# Not the best role of a singer you like



## Lucrezia (Nov 21, 2013)

I wonder if it happends that you do not particularly approve your favourite singer (or just some singer you like) in some particular role.
I'd like to share what may seem to someone a blasphemous example: I am not a fan of *Placido Domingo's Cavaradossi*. 
While he is the Duke of Mantova alive, fantastic Canio, incredible Cid and many-many other things, I don't feel Cavaradossi's inner power in him. His_ Recondita Armonia_ is exquisite but his _E lucevan le stelle._.. well... not convincing for me.

Does anyone feel the same about any other singer?


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

I don't like Domingo as a baritone. Full stop.


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## rgz (Mar 6, 2010)

I dislike Natalie Dessay as the Queen of the Night. Well, her O Zittre Nicht is good but not nearly enough vocal weight or the right color for Der Holle Rache.


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## Volve (Apr 14, 2013)

Katarina Dalayman's Brunnhilde didin't do it for me, her voice just doesn't fit that character very well. I do love her Kundry though!


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I often love Jessye Norman singing Wagner, but after losing weight and getting older her performance late in her career of the Immolation Scene to open our new symphony hall in Seattle in 1998 was a disaster!!! Every note above G was flat. Way flat. She was too proud to admit she had become a mezzo/contralto and that singing soprano was no longer a realistic option for her. Her Sieglinde at the Met when she was still a big girl was amazing!!!!!!!!! 



. I think it is some of the most exciting Wagner I've ever heard.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Seattleoperafan said:


> I often love Jessye Norman singing Wagner, but after losing weight and getting older her performance late in her career of the Immolation Scene to open our new symphony hall in Seattle in 1998 was a disaster!!! Every note above G was flat. Way flat. She was too proud to admit she had become a mezzo/contralto and that singing soprano was no longer a realistic option for her. Her Sieglinde at the Met when she was still a big girl was amazing!!!!!!!!!
> 
> 
> 
> . I think it is some of the most exciting Wagner I've ever heard.


Just an observation here. I know we all hear voices differently, but Norman _always_ sounded like a mezzo to me, even when singing soprano roles. It's one of the reasons I never liked her recording of the _Vier letzte Lieder_. Where Schwarzkopf, Fleming, Te Kanawa, Popp, Janowitz, Della Casa and the like all soar, Norman seemed earthbound to me, and just under the note. I know this was a personal response and most people didn't hear the voice the way I did, but I just couldn't get on with the recording. I knew she wasn't actually flat. She just _sounded_ flat to my ears.

Interesting too that you should say that in 1998 you feel she had become a mezzo/contralto. Most sopranos, though their range might shrink to some degree, remain sopranos even in their later years. Sutherland and Schwarzkopf are very definitely still sopranos in their later recordings. Norman would have been 55 in 1998, not particularly old for a singer, and about the same age Renee Fleming is now. Fleming's voice may not have the sheen and lustre it had at her youthful peak, but she is still very recognisably a soprano.

You also mention the weight loss, which people often cite as a reason Callas's upper register shrank, but Callas too was always a soprano. With Callas, the support fell away. You can hear it in the later recording of *Lucia di Lammermoor*. The top Ebs are still in the voice, but she cannot sustain them and they acquire a pronounced, unpleasant beat. Even in 1960, when she records Dalila's arias, Walter Legge talks of the difficulty she had sustaining the low _tessitura_. Norman, one feels, would have sung these contralto arias with no problem whatsoever, even early in her career.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

GregMitchell said:


> Just an observation here. I know we all hear voices differently, but Norman _always_ sounded like a mezzo to me, even when singing soprano roles. It's one of the reasons I never liked her recording of the _Vier letzte Lieder_. Where Schwarzkopf, Fleming, Te Kanawa, Popp, Janowitz, Della Casa and the like all soar, Norman seemed earthbound to me, and just under the note. I know this was a personal response and most people didn't hear the voice the way I did, but I just couldn't get on with the recording. I knew she wasn't actually flat. She just _sounded_ flat to my ears.
> 
> Interesting too that you should say that in 1998 you feel she had become a mezzo/contralto. Most sopranos, though their range might shrink to some degree, remain sopranos even in their later years. Sutherland and Schwarzkopf are very definitely still sopranos in their later recordings. Norman would have been 55 in 1998, not particularly old for a singer, and about the same age Renee Fleming is now. Fleming's voice may not have the sheen and lustre it had at her youthful peak, but she is still very recognisably a soprano.
> 
> You also mention the weight loss, which people often cite as a reason Callas's upper register shrank, but Callas too was always a soprano. With Callas, the support fell away. You can hear it in the later recording of *Lucia di Lammermoor*. The top Ebs are still in the voice, but she cannot sustain them and they acquire a pronounced, unpleasant beat. Even in 1960, when she records Dalila's arias, Walter Legge talks of the difficulty she had sustaining the low _tessitura_. Norman, one feels, would have sung these contralto arias with no problem whatsoever, even early in her career.


Agreed. I worshiped Norman when I was younger, but always felt she billed herself as a soprano to get leading roles and to add glamour and more money. She had a reliable upper extension to B, a lyric soprano sized C, but I felt she was more accurately billed as a mezzo. Actually my very favorite part of her voice was her chest register which sounded like a pipe organ. Her best roles were Ariadne, Sieglinde, and Cassandra. Even she admitted that her voice was basically darker in timbre. I love her Four Last Songs, but it is more thrilling than soaring.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Seattleoperafan said:


> Agreed. I worshiped Norman when I was younger, but always felt she billed herself as a soprano to get leading roles and to add glamour and more money. She had a reliable upper extension to B, a lyric soprano sized C, but I felt she was more accurately billed as a mezzo. Actually my very favorite part of her voice was her chest register which sounded like a pipe organ. Her best roles were Ariadne, Sieglinde, and Cassandra. Even she admitted that her voice was basically darker in timbre. I love her Four Last Songs, but it is more thrilling than soaring.


One notes too, that at the height of her operatic career, much of her concert repertoire featured material more readily associated with mezzos or even contraltos. She often sang the mezzo role in the Verdi Requiem, but I did once come across a youtube clip of her singing the _Libera me_ (since deleted unfortunately). A bit of research proved this to be from a performance in Munich in 1981. The other singers were Baltsa, Carreras and Nesterenko and Muti conducted. It would appear to have been recorded, but I'm damned if I can find even a bootleg anywhere.
Norman's version of the _Libera me_ could quite possibly be the best version I have ever heard (and I'm not forgetting Leontyne Price on the Karajan video), combining Scotto's and Schwarzkopf's dramatic intelligence with a voice of dramatic amplitude quite outside their reach.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

GregMitchell said:


> One notes too, that at the height of her operatic career, much of her concert repertoire featured material more readily associated with mezzos or even contraltos. She often sang the mezzo role in the Verdi Requiem, but I did once come across a youtube clip of her singing the _Libera me_ (since deleted unfortunately). A bit of research proved this to be from a performance in Munich in 1981. The other singers were Baltsa, Carreras and Nesterenko and Muti conducted. It would appear to have been recorded, but I'm damned if I can find even a bootleg anywhere.
> Norman's version of the _Libera me_ could quite possibly be the best version I have ever heard (and I'm not forgetting Leontyne Price on the Karajan video), combining Scotto's and Schwarzkopf's dramatic intelligence with a voice of dramatic amplitude quite outside their reach.


A pp high B is perfect for her and the climax of the piece is A, which is where her voice climaxes so it lies perfectly in her range as do the low lying passages. I would love to hear it!!!!!


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

A near-the-end Astrid Varnay as Mamma Lucia in Muti's recording of Mascagni's _Cavalleria Rusticana_.

Great singer for so many things but... bad idea--_:scold:


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

Lucrezia said:


> I wonder if it happends that you do not particularly approve your favourite singer (or just some singer you like) in some particular role.
> I'd like to share what may seem to someone a blasphemous example: I am not a fan of *Placido Domingo's Cavaradossi*.
> While he is the Duke of Mantova alive, fantastic Canio, incredible Cid and many-many other things, I don't feel Cavaradossi's inner power in him. His_ Recondita Armonia_ is exquisite but his _E lucevan le stelle._.. well... not convincing for me.
> 
> Does anyone feel the same about any other singer?


Don't worry, I won't flame you for not liking Domingo as Cavarodossi, even though he happens to be my favorite in that role next to Jonas Kaufmann. But I understand that we all have different ideas of what a character should be/sound like.

What I'm going to say might seem like blasphemy, because I know this performance has been very highly acclaimed, but I don't really like what I've seen (Act III) of Renata Scotto's Desdemona in the 1978 Met telecast of OTELLO with Jon Vickers. Perhaps it's because I'm viewing it close-up, but I find her acting too exaggerated; by that time her loud high notes had become screechy as well. Objectively, I can see that it is an intelligent interpretation of Desdemona (she makes Desdemona much less passive than most sopranos do); I just don't _enjoy_ it very much and would rather see/hear Te Kanawa or Fleming in the role.


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