"Big Fan": Nicolai Gedda

Found a great link to get to know better Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda, a great interpreter of the French repertoire from the mid-fifties to the mid-seventies. I highly recommend to hear his Nadir in Bizet's Les Pêcheurs de Perles, his Faust in Gounod's eponym masterpiece, his Werther (Massenet), and his Don José in Carmen.

De toute beauté

If some of you haven't noticed it yet, I added in the right column, the delicious links I keep about interesting things to read.

Everyone should for instance go and read Maury d'Annato's latest post, "Can't quite let it go yet". There's nothing more appealing to me than feeling the love of someone for the quintessential element of the Opera: the Music. "I've just never found the music sufficiently wonderful to transport me to that land of suspended disbelief we ideally inhabit in the opera house when we need to." Aren't we all longing for that?

So what, exactly?

The 4 bloggers whose opinions I have learned to trust most in the virtual reality of operafans feel very oppositely about the recent performances of Rolando Villazón. Intermezzo and Mostly Opera were charmed by his Hoffmann at the Royal Opera House late last November.

But now, it seems his Edgardo in the current Met's Lucia is a disaster, if you're relying on Maury d'Annato and Sieglinde.

Add to that he just cancelled Jolanthe for the upcoming Baden-Baden festival.  

Can someone please tell me what the f... is going on with Rolando Villazón?

[again]

To tag or to be tagged

I'm usually quite reluctant to be part of those games that appear randomly on the web. It reminds me of those childhood weird moments when I would hide in hopes no one would chase me to be part of the human chains. But since I've been tagged by a blogger I do appreciate a lot (although I've never actually met her... one day maybe), I'll make the effort and continue the chain. Evidently, this provides for a perfect opportunity to share some of my favorite blogs.
 
The rules:  
1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog. I was tagged by Mostly Opera.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog - some random, some weird.  
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog.
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.  
5. If you don't have 7 blog friends, or if someone else already took dibs, then tag some unsuspecting strangers.


The 7 facts:
1. Because one expects the French to be cliché, I do live in a very old building - in a canut apartment, named after the silk workers, that can only be found in Lyon.
2. Like the vast majority of French, I'm not really that French (since half of my blood is Sicilian).
3. I'm entirely self-taught regarding opera - and came to it by chance, following my goth period (Sisters of Mercy, Dead can dance...) in my 20s
4. I used to be the laziest student you could think of - rarely attending classes. I had this thing going on though: having some good friends bring me their notes directly at home. It worked, since I never failed a class in my live and ended up with a great diploma in my field (chemical engineering).
5. I never liked our current bling-bling president, Nicolas Sarkozy, but I'm now totally over him (don't even get me started on the subject!). The saddest thing? The current state of the French opposition party...
6. My favorite word in French is atavisme (English translation: atavism).
7. I'd never been in the Netherlands until my brother had the strangest idea - move in Den Haag a few months ago.
 

I tag:


1. My Favorite Intermissions - Maury d'Annato is only one of the several New Yorkers blogging about opera, but has a great sense of humor and I enjoy his writing a lot.
2. Intermezzo - this blogger (whose sex I haven't found out yet, despite reading this blog religiously since many many months) provides an exhaustive coverage of the opera and classical scene in London.
3. I hear voices - citizen of the world, Rodrigo Maffei Libonati's posts are always insightful, whether he writes about opera, classical music, Broadway shows or other art forms.
4. Billevesées - William Madison fled the US after George W. was first elected and ended up sharing his time between Paris and Beynes, a tiny village somewhere in France. He may not write much about opera, but, amongst many other things, has a hilarious way of dissecting French icons.
5. The Opera Tattler - based in San Francisco, she also travels regularly throughout the West Coast and in Germany.
6. Le Poisson Rêveur writes passionately about classical music (I wish he would explore more the world of opera). The only thing that could prevent you from reading him? He writes in French. No no, don't be afraid, there are lots of translation sites available nowadays...
7. C mon oeil is my final pick, as a good Lyonnais can only share the wonders of her magnificent city with the world. This blogger will provide you with some great pictures from Lyon, just in case you still haven't heard about us.  

NB. I chose 7 bloggers I have never met...

Love is in the air

Backstage at the Opéra de Paris, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, 2005
Joyce DiDonato's official website

I am very relunctant to know anything about opera singers outside of their various performances. As soon as you learn about their lives, they fall down from the pedestal their singing puts them on.
They become humans.
Unperfect fallible humans.
Suddenly, their aura is less bright and overwhelming.

It's been quite a while since I know Joyce DiDonato is blogging.
I was never compelled to go and enter her personal world.
For starters, I like her as a singer.
I really like her.

But she's American. Worse than that: from Kansas.
And I admit I fully live up to the French cliché of anti-Americanism.
I do think mainstream-America consists of a bunch of uneducated rednecks who pride their superiority on the second amendment and a puritanism so hypocritical it's scary. A nation that elects George W. Bush twice is definitelly not one I portray as advanced.


Joyce DiDonato doesn't come close to matching those preconceived ideas of mine about the United States and the opera singers.
Her blog is an attractive journal of her professionnal life displaying great photographs, interesting memories sharings, an acute opinion about music and operatic scores, as well as a great inside into her open-minded conception of life.

It's a delight to get to know her that way.
A true delight.

Out and proud

I realize the average reader of this blog is either a gay man, a straight man or a straight woman. I'm not.

So allow me a little bit of proselytism.

Thanks to Vilaine Fille who relayed her friend Stephanie Schroeder's story on soprano Patricia Raquette and mezzo-soprano Beth Clayton.

True enough, I am not really interested in the sexuality of opera singers. Nevertheless, it's always good to know you have some friends in the biz.



Patricia Racette's future performances are here; Beth Clayton schedule is here (not updated) or there. More about the two in the article entitled Double aria.

The Barbie soprano

All in all, I love that kind of British humour. I love the choice of Katherine Jenkins, I love the fact they commit to it, plus of course I love the fact they are Welsh as well. Can please someone create a http://weloveannanebrebko.blogspot.com ? It, too, would be hilarious.

Opera Geek

" If, as people say, the Internet is a paradise for geeks, it would logically work to the benefit of one of the most opulently geeky art forms in history. "

Alex Ross


The New Yorker, Oct.22, 2007
Extract from The well-tempered web

Début de saison fantastique...

Je ne peux, amis lecteurs, que vous inciter à aller lire le compte-rendu de Mostly Opera sur le début de saison à l'opéra de Copenhague. C'est en anglais, je sais, mais faites un effort, c'est vraiment hilarant et surréaliste. Ce n'est pas en France qu'on aurait osé un tour pareil.
Ajout à 23h, toujours aussi hallucinée:
Je ne peux résister, non vraiment je ne le peux, à retranscrire ici une partie de cette histoire extraordinaire:
" Just before curtain-up, Kasper Bech Holten (General Director) appeared in front of the curtain with the following statement: That Johnny Van Hal singing Hoffmann unfortunately was ill, and the cover Nikolai Schukoff was available for all other evenings....except this one - that after phoning all over Europe, a tenor was found in Berlin capable of singing the role (Timothy Richards) and all was well....but then Scandinavian Airlines cancelled all flights from Berlin to Copenhagen.... however in the last minute he got on another plane and arrived in time for the production, but... it appeared that the version of Hoffmann he could sing was not the one used in Copenhagen, despite repeated promises from this agent......so (and hold on here..): Some of the part he could sing in French, some of it he could only sing in German... And some of it he couldn´t sing at all.... - and these parts would therefore be sung by the conductor Marc Soustrot!! Johnny Van Hal would be acting the part and Timothy Richards would be singing from the pit."

Addio, addio, visiteur régulier de ce blog, speranza ed anima Sol tu sarai per me*.

I'm headed for well-deserved vacations in the country of Vincenzo Bellini and Giuseppe DiStefano (and also my own personal ancestors). Back in two weeks, hopefully tanned and full of wonderful memories.

In the meantime, I advise you to go check out these other blogs partly or entirely about opera :

In French: Kozeries en dilettante
Les chroniques lyriques de Friedmund
Paris Broadway
In English: Sieglinde's Diaries
Opera chanteuse (with a title only an American can come up with)
Ionarts
Prima la musica, poi le parole
In Italian: Opera Bouffe
Di Tanti Pulpiti
Tanti Affetti
In Spanish: GTL Torn T, la temporada del Gran Teatre del Liceu desde distintas butacas
Una butaca en el paraíso
Opera siempre

Ci vediamo!


* from Rigoletto, Act One, Scene XII.