# SOPRANO TOURNAMENT: (Quarterfinal 2): Ponselle vs Boninsegna



## Bonetan (Dec 22, 2016)

Rosa Ponselle, USA, 1897-1981 (tied, then defeated Tebaldi 18-13)






Celestina Boninsegna, Italy, 1877-1947 (defeated Netrebko 23-2)






Who's singing did you prefer and why?


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Bonisegna’s tempo is too slow, it makes her stretch her phrases and breathe in strange places. The voice sounds a bit girlish, and sounds incongruous in this music.

Ponselle’s tempo in contrast sounds a bit fast (perhaps in contrast to the above?) and she sounds a bit rushed in places. Great trills! I do not like the way she withholds her vibrato on some of the notes, making them sound “white,” but it’s fleeting. 

I pick Ponselle.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

The Ponselle is quite fast, but I put that down to the fact that she also includes the cabaletta. Even so, she moulds the phrases beautifully and her singing is wonderfully stylish. Also her low notes are gloriously rich but her scale remains wonderfully even. 

Bonisegna is way too slow and I don't like the way she overuses the chest voice so that it rather becomes a feature in itself. She sounds more like an Azucena than a Leonora.

Ponselle an easy win for me.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Wow, this is another tricky one. I prefer Boninsegna here rather than in her other aria we had earlier on. I find she has more character and I like her individual phrasing of this aria. That said, there was only one Ponselle and so she gets my vote.

N.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Looks like a no vote for me.
I was displeased with Ponselle's offering and was certain that the next voice would easily get my vote until the first 5 or 6 notes came on and I could have sworn my grandmother was singing an opera aria. And slow? Beyond slow.
Her voice is not my cuppa and trust me I didn't mind the lack of good sound because if I can sift the good through the Maplesons this one is easy peasy.
PASS!


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

I decided to give my vote by default to Ponselle.


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## Bonetan (Dec 22, 2016)

I am by absolutely no means an expert in soprano singing, and I'm not bothered by the tempo as I'm not terribly familiar with the aria, but I've found myself drawn to Boninsegna since the first time I heard her voice. The sound just pours out of her, big and beautiful at all times, consistently resonant from top to bottom with clean, pure vowels. Maybe she didn't have the elegance, star power, or career of the others but I feel like in terms of sheer voice she might have been blessed beyond the other sopranos in the tournament. I think Boninsegna's is glorious. 

There's something about Ponselle's sound that I don't like here, despite her obvious technical mastery. But don't take anything I've said too seriously as I've never warmed to the soprano voice and have a lot to learn.


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## Aerobat (Dec 31, 2018)

I'm broadly in agreement with Nina. I didn't get through either of them to the end. They were both great singers, but neither of them shines here.


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## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

Two greats. I have to say Boninsegna, though. I actually like the slower tempo (it is, after all, the cavatina), and I feel that she finds more meaning in the phrases and shapes them more interestingly. It's too bad there's no cabaletta from Boninsegna, though I have a feeling I would probably want to vote Boninsegna for the cavatina and Ponselle for the cabaletta.


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## Azol (Jan 25, 2015)

I'd definitely prefer the middle ground somewhere between the two performances 
But I'm not too fond of the excessive chest voice using by Bonisegna, it puts the aria into a completely different perspective: the mother waiting for her son to finally appear.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

This is very very hard. Very hard. Both are simply wonderful. I adore Ponselle and she has a great chest register but does not use it. It is Boninsegna's use of the chest voice that tips this in her favor. It would have been a better contest if they had both sung the cabeletta so we could see if her coloratura was up to Ponselle's standards.
I've said it before and will reiterate it here, Ponselle sounds much better on some recordings than others and this is one that doesn't grab me. Casta Diva... now we are talking. La Vestale: dear god. It would be interesting to hear her and Callas on O Nome Tutular


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## silentio (Nov 10, 2014)

I changed my mind. I will switch the vote to Boninsegna. At first, I was put off by her "yodeling"-like swoops, but now I take that it might not be a major defect, yet a matter of style. I somewhat prefer her timbre and accentuation. Ponselle has a very impressive evenly produced sound, but the recording sounds rushed, thus she couldn't phrase well as in some of her better works. 

I don't want to hi-jack the thread, but please also check out Claudia Muzio's wonderful version in her 1935 Columbia recital. It offers the best of both worlds: a more modern reading like of Ponselle, and with fearless chest-voice uses like of Boninsegna.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Boninsegna continues to fascinate me. This aria gives her fewer opportunities for creativity than does "D'amor sull'ali rosee," but she remains interesting and masterful. I'm normally disturbed by distinct register shifts in sopranos, but I believe the effect is somewhat exaggerated by the removal of resonance caused by the limitations of acoustic recording. The tempo does seem excessively slow before she starts singing, but she persuades me, especially since she is then able to accelerate and decelerate as an expressive tactic (very authentically Romantic, I think).

Ponselle is her usual impeccable self, but her tempo may straightjacket her a bit. The cabaletta is excellent, naturally. Too bad we don't have Boninsegna's. 

Tough choice, but I'll go for Boninsegna, partly in honor of her discovery by some of us here. We now have another fine example of bel canto technique to haul out when anyone suggests that our own age of operatic singing will someday be considered golden.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Seattleoperafan said:


> This is very very hard. Very hard. Both are simply wonderful. I adore Ponselle and she has a great chest register but does not use it. It is Boninsegna's use of the chest voice that tips this in her favor. It would have been a better contest if they had both sung the cabeletta so we could see if her coloratura was up to Ponselle's standards.
> I've said it before and will reiterate it here, Ponselle sounds much better on some recordings than others and this is one that doesn't grab me. Casta Diva... now we are talking. La Vestale: dear god. It would be interesting to hear her and Callas on O Nome Tutular


Ponselle's "O nume tutelar" is one of those moments of sheer divinity in music and in singing. One can no longer ask, "Spontini who?"


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Seattleoperafan said:


> It would be interesting to hear her and Callas on O Nome Tutular


I suspect Ponselle would win that one. The two interpretations are remarkably similar and have similar virtues, but Ponselle had the more naturally beautiful _timbre_. Callas could often be dismissive of singers of the past but she revered Ponselle. Apparently when she first started having vocal problems, Legge suggested she go and see Ponselle. Her response was, "No way. She started out with much better material than me."


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

I'm finding it odd to be disagreeing with some people I normally agree with. Bonisegna is indeed something of a discovery, but, in this aria at least, I much prefer Ponselle, even though the tempo is a little rushed. My main reason is that her use of the chest register draws attention to itself and away from the music. Ponselle, and Callas, also had impressive chest registers, which they exploit to tremendous effect in an aria like Gioconda's _Suicidio!_, but neither of them do so here and I am sure this is a conscious, stylistic choice. The music flows better without that sudden plunge into chest voice. Leonora is not _in extremis_ here. She is simply recounting her dream.

In my post above I mentioned that Bonisegna's treatment of the music made it sound more like something Azucena would sing, and, on consulting Steane's _The Grand Tradition_, I see that she did record _Condotta all'era in ceppi_, though I can't fnd it on youtube, Steane notes that she fills the low lying bars at the end of the piece "with a fine baleful expressiveness." He also notes elsewhere her very distinct chest register, but also "a slightly weakened part of the voice just above it."


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

^^^From what I'm hearing as I listen to Boninsegna, that abrupt change of register is the one flaw in her technique. I wonder if it remains consistent throughout her recordings. Some sopranos have used the break as an effect, though in some it's a problem, and in others just a peculiarity (I'd put Boninsegna in that last group). I recall Callas using the break effectively in her Carmen recording, but at the very end of her career (the final recitals) you can hear real difficulty with the notes above the chest voice, which at times she carried very high to try to compensate. That casts doubt on the notion that she could have continued as a mezzo. Ponselle obviously could have, and said as much.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> ^^^From what I'm hearing as I listen to Boninsegna, that abrupt change of register is the one flaw in her technique. I wonder if it remains consistent throughout her recordings. Some sopranos have used the break as an effect, though in some it's a problem, and in others just a peculiarity (I'd put Boninsegna in that last group). I recall Callas using the break effectively in her Carmen recording, but at the very end of her career (the final recitals) you can hear real difficulty with the notes above the chest voice, which at times she carried very high to try to compensate. That casts doubt on the notion that she could have continued as a mezzo. Ponselle obviously could have, and said as much.


It's also notable that, at least until the early 60s, Callas varied the use of her chest reigister, depending on what she was singing. At certain points in *Medea* she would carry it up quite high, as the dramatic situation required, and would do the same in an opera like *La Gioconda*. In *Il Trovatore*, though her lower register still has power, she rarely uses full chest until the moment in the last act when she sings _M'avrai...ma fredda, esanime spoglia_ ("You'll have me... but as a cold, lifeless corpse.")


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> ^^^From what I'm hearing as I listen to Boninsegna, that abrupt change of register is the one flaw in her technique. I wonder if it remains consistent throughout her recordings. Some sopranos have used the break as an effect, though in some it's a problem, and in others just a peculiarity (I'd put Boninsegna in that last group). I recall Callas using the break effectively in her Carmen recording, but at the very end of her career (the final recitals) you can hear real difficulty with the notes above the chest voice, which at times she carried very high to try to compensate. That casts doubt on the notion that she could have continued as a mezzo. Ponselle obviously could have, and said as much.


You can tell from the her recordings of Eboli's arias made about ten years before that, that moving from soprano to mezzo wasn't viable at that point in her career and the problems were more than just a wobble on the odd high note. I wonder whether continuing to sing as a mezzo at the start of her student days might have been viable. It would have been a very different career, though.

N.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

The Conte said:


> You can tell from the her recordings of Eboli's arias made about ten years before that, that moving from soprano to mezzo wasn't viable at that point in her career and the problems were more than just a wobble on the odd high note. I wonder whether continuing to sing as a mezzo at the start of her student days might have been viable. It would have been a very different career, though.
> 
> N.


It's one of the reasons I continue to believe she was a soprano rather than a mezzo. The voice didn't just shift down a gear, but the top register started to collapse. I think this was more a question of support and notes above the stave are no longer hit with confidence. In the 1959 recording of *Lucia* for instance, she can still hit the Ebs but she can't really sustain them.

On the other hand notes above top C, and sometimes top C itself were a bit of a struggle for sopranos like Ponselle and Tebaldi and they could often sound flat. Legge remarked how the low tessitura of Dalila's arias taxed Callas to the limits, and that she would never have been able to sustain the role in the theatre. Ponselle, on the other hand, sounds completely comfortable in the notes around middle C and below it.


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