# Round 2: Hamlet's Mad Scene. Sills, Moffo



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Click on the Youtube link for Mofffo;


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

This is the studio version Sills made the same year as the above recital performance.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

I don’t remember Moffo’s voice sounding so uneven in tone on the LPs I had heard in my youth. Digital sound really exposes a voice. Her traversal of this “Mad Scene” is a pleasant romp with nary a change in color or mood. I remember a friend at my local record store saying she sounded much more”subtle” than my favorite soprano. 

Sills is far from a favorite, but she does a better job in projecting the text as well as the changes is mood but the music itself hardly makes Ophélie sound unhinged, just charmingly _distraite. _In a flurry of notes, in which Sills specialized


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

The Moffo dates from 1975, the year of her disastrous recording of *Thaïs*. By this time she could do little more than croon and the sexy, breathy pouting she comes up with hardly suits Ophelia. I thought it was pretty awful, to be honest.

I only listened to the Sills that SAF had posted, which is to a piano accompaniment and therefore presumably from a live recital. I'm not a big Sills fan. She was an undeniably musical and intelligent singers, but the voice itself was rather shallow and there is no doubt that she asked more of it than it was comfortable with. It was never the voice for Norma or the Tudor Queens. However it was quite suited to heroines such as Giulietta and Ophélie and her performance here is in a different world from Moffo's. She indulges in a few too many pyrotechnics for my taste, but she definitely knows what she is doing and what she is singing about. A very easy win for Sills.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

Well, the choice was hard, but not because of admiration. Sills sang pretty well, her skills are out of any doubt. But Hamlet becomes an opera buffa in such a performance. Unlike Sutherland's cold and out-of-body acting, not lacking irony nevertheless, here we see madness like in Rameau's Platee. I can't escape the vision of Sills jumping with skipping rope and vocalizing. 
Moffo has passed her prime here, but is skilled enough to try to disguise it. If I heard it in the theater, I wouldn't notice too much and of even I would enjoy it. It's recording and comparison with others that harms the singer.
And I can't help but notice that Moffo was on of the most beautiful women in opera.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

ColdGenius said:


> Well, the choice was hard, but not because of admiration. Sills sang pretty well, her skills are out of any doubt. But Hamlet becomes an opera buffa in such a performance. Unlike Sutherland's cold and out-of-body acting, not lacking irony nevertheless, here we see madness like in Rameau's Platee. I can't escape the vision of Sills jumping with skipping rope and vocalizing.
> Moffo has passed her prime here, but is skilled enough to try to disguise it. If I heard it in the theater, I wouldn't notice too much and of even I would enjoy it. It's recording and comparison with others that harms the singer.
> And I can't help but notice that Moffo was on of the most beautiful women in opera.


I saw Moffo in concert, still gorgeous in her 40's but not in her prime.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Oh my goodness. As long as I MUST vote for one of these, please make it Sill. Poor Moffo (tsk!)

Natalie Dessay takes the crown as far as I am concerned even though I recognize the excellence of Sutherland's voice which was impeccable. But there is more than just a beautiful voice (say, who said that????) 
Dessay makes you feel!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Sills sings this the way Natalie Dessay might have if she could have. Both have bright, shallow voices, but Dessay gets little of her theatrical instincts into her actual singing, while Sills has the technique and musicality to phrase and shade, giving us the character in sound as if the part had been written for her.

I've nothing to add about Moffo, except that she started out with one of the loveliest voices in the business.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Sills sings this the way Natalie Dessay might have if she could have. Both have bright, shallow voices, but Dessay gets little of her theatrical instincts into her actual singing, while Sills has the technique and musicality to phrase and shade, giving us the character in sound as if the part had been written for her.
> 
> I've nothing to add about Moffo, except that she started out with one of the loveliest voices in the business.


Moffo had the physical appearance to match the voice.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MAS said:


> Moffo had the physical appearance to match the voice.


She was quite a package. My grandparents had an LP of her and handsome Sergio Franchi (anyone remember him?) singing operetta duets, and my high school music director was thoroughly smitten by her voice and looks.

I suppose this is a bit sexier than Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

nina foresti said:


> Oh my goodness. As long as I MUST vote for one of these, please make it Sill. Poor Moffo (tsk!)
> 
> Natalie Dessay takes the crown as far as I am concerned even though I recognize the excellence of Sutherland's voice which was impeccable. But there is more than just a beautiful voice (say, who said that????)
> Dessay makes you feel!


Would she make you feel if you couldn't watch her?


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

MAS said:


> Moffo had the physical appearance to match the voice.


Moffo lived right around the corner from my house. (In fact, JUne Anderson also lived in the same neighborhood too)


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I played Moffo's Songs of the Auverne countless times. She was a complete package early in her career before she oversang.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Seattleoperafan said:


> I played Moffo's Songs of the Auverne countless times. She was a complete package early in her career before she oversang.


Looking though my Moffo discs, I see that I have her early Susanna on the Giulini *Figaro*, her enchanting Nanetta under Karajan, her Musetta on the Callas *Boheme* and she also sings the Italian singer on Sawallisch's *Capriccio*. These were all for EMI. After she went to RCA, I have her Luisa Miller, which is, I think, one of her best recordings and that gorgeous disc she did with Stokowski (the Auvergne songs, Rachmaninov's _Vocalise _and Villa-Lobos's _Bachianas-Brasileras no 5_). I don't have any of the main stream Puccini or Verdi she did for RCA, mosty because I prefer other singers in those roles. Even in the earlier stuff she did for them, I can hear a suspicion of the crooning she indulged in as the voice started to fail her and I often feel that, however lovely the sound, she tends to skate over the music. Even in her Violetta, I never get the sense of abandon or desperation I feel the role needs and which I get from singers like Callas, Ponselle, Cotrubas and Gheorghiu.


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