Norma Called the Everest of Opera

[lennygoran]

We see it Oct 3 at the Met. Len

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/arts ... ctionfront

[jbuck919]

My friend Ted whom you met in NYC would agree with that. In fact, when I first met him in college before we became roommates, I asked him what his favorite music was. He answered Bel Canto Opera. Well, I said, that's pretty specific, is there a favorite composer? Bellini. A favorite opera? Norma. A favorite aria? Casta Diva. As you know, I have never quite shared that interest and can only consider Norma an Everest in the sense that you have to climb pretty high for the air to stimulate you enough to enjoy it. There are many, many greater operas.

Here is an excerpt from Bellini that was featured, in an inferior rendition, in the great movie Fitzcarraldo:

[lennygoran]

I`d say great rather than greater-there are so many great operas-how you determine which is better than another-that`s hard for me to do. Len

[jbuck919]

I`d say great rather than greater-there are so many great operas-how you determine which is better than another-that`s hard for me to do. Len

As I've posted before, an opera can be no greater than its music. That is why The Magic Flute is the greatest opera by Mozart, the da Ponte operas notwithstanding, in spite of known aspects of silliness in its plot. Among other remarkable things, Mozart apparently took it for granted that boys whose voices had not changed could accomplish what he wrote for them. Think about it.

[lennygoran]

I love magic flute but I`d have to take norma over it-I`d also take don g or marriage of figaro over magic flute-fortunately these choices don`t have to be made. Len

[jbuck919]

I love magic flute but I`d have to take norma over it-I`d also take don g or marriage of figaro over magic flute-fortunately these choices don`t have to be made. Len

My friend, forgive me, but you are a well-versed amateur listener, without which the classical music world could not do, while I have two degrees in music from Ivy League universities. There are some things that cannot be explained over the gap in education. Happy listening, whatever it is.

[maestrob]

OOF! That's harsh, jbuck. We each have our own favorites, and your degrees don't make you a superior person, so really, get off your high horse, if it's not to much trouble.

You're entitled to your opinion, of course, crabby though its expression may be. Mozart intended to reach out to audiences with his operas, thus Len's opinion might, in some circles, be considered more valid than yours.

[lennygoran]

Happy listening, whatever it is.

Thank you-will do! Regards, Len

[lennygoran]

thus Len's opinion might, in some circles, be considered more valid than yours.

Brian thanks-that's right-Don G, Marriage of Figaro-I can't believe more experts believe Magic Flute is better than those 2--whatever the word better might mean? They're all great works! Regards, Len

[jbuck919]

OOF! That's harsh, jbuck. We each have our own favorites, and your degrees don't make you a superior person, so really, get off your high horse, if it's not to much trouble.

You're entitled to your opinion, of course, crabby though its expression may be. Mozart intended to reach out to audiences with his operas, thus Len's opinion might, in some circles, be considered more valid than yours.

Do not think for a minute that I have not learned a hundred times from here, including from you, more than what my formal education brought me. Why do you think I remain here after all these years? I just cannot communicate some things without referring back to that.

[John F]

When Renata Scotto called Norma "the Everest of opera," she was talking about the role of Norma, not the opera as a whole, though the writer of the headline mistakenly added quotation marks. And she was speaking either out of ignorance of the operatic repertoire - there are, of course, far more challenging or even punishing roles than Norma - or from her personal experience. When Scotto sang the role at the Met, it was a predictable disaster, we all predicted it, and we were right.

It was unwise of the Metropolitan Opera to open the season with Bellini's "Norma" without having engaged a soprano equipped to meet the challenges of the leading part. Renata Scotto essayed it, and she came to grief... Ester Mazzoleni, a celebrated Norma of the nineteen-tens and twenties, remarked in a 1977 Opera News interview:"I simply cannot understand what is happening nowadays. They all sing Norma - the coloraturas like Deutekom, Sutherland, and Sills, the lyrics like Scotto and Cioni, the spintos like Caballé, whom I admire in certain roles very much. But how can they do justice to this terrifying score? It is a travesty of what Bellini wrote, and the audience takes a lot of punishment."

The Met audience did. Miss Scotto is a serious and determined artist. If will alone could have driven her voice through the music, it would evidently have done so. But "Casta Diva" was a disaster. Sustained notes were often unsteady. The repeated A's at the climax lurched over, both times, into a sharp and strident B-flat, a curdled scream. The descending scales of the cabaletta were slithers. At coloratura passages she grabbed - and missed. By intention, the performance was powerful, earnest, and never perfunctory; Miss Scotto plainly does not share Beverly Sills' opinion, set out in her autobiography, "Bubbles," that "Norma is not a very difficult role" and that "there are some lines ... that always make me want to giggle." Miss Scotto was strongest in fierce declamatory recitative, as in the exchanges with Adalgisa before "Mira, o Norma." In passages of sustained melodic forcefulness, she pushed her voice to its limits. There was nothing in reserve to compass changes of color; everything was delivered in one hard, clear, high-pressure tone. Elsewhere, there were soft, gentle, floating notes, and some of them were beautiful. But, through either miscalculation or technical trouble, the "thread of voice" - a necessary weapon in any Norma's armory - was not evenly spun, and important statements faded in and out of audibility.

There have been even worse matches of singer and role at the Met, such as when Nellie Melba took it into her head to sing Brünnhilde" in Wagner's "Siegfried" in 1896. Not only was it predictably a dreadful failure, it strained her voice so she was able to sing only once in the remaining 4 months of the season. Irving Kolodin writes, "Exhausted and tearful, Melba asked for [general manager] Grau and implored him: 'Tell the critics I am never going to do that again. It is beyond me. I have been a fool.'" So was Renata Scotto, but I haven't seen that she ever admitted it.

[John F]

As I've posted before, an opera can be no greater than its music.

That's a truism, isn't it? But it begs the question of what constitutes great operatic music, and how its greatness is to be measured. I won't debate your ranking "Magic Flute" so high, though I couldn't disagree more; you're entitled to your opinion. By the way, Toscanini agreed; the "Flute" was the only Mozart opera he conducted, and he once said he thought more highly of Rossini's "Barber of Seville" than "The Marriage of Figaro." I think I understand his reasons, but I don't understand yours because you haven't given them. I'd be interested if you would.

[jbuck919]

As I've posted before, an opera can be no greater than its music.

That's a truism, isn't it? But it begs the question of what constitutes great operatic music, and how its greatness is to be measured. I won't debate your ranking "Magic Flute" so high, though I couldn't disagree more; you're entitled to your opinion. By the way, Toscanini agreed; the "Flute" was the only Mozart opera he conducted, and he once said he thought more highly of Rossini's "Barber of Seville" than "The Marriage of Figaro." I think I understand his reasons, but I don't understand yours because you haven't given them. I'd be interested if you would.

I cannot explain it further, John. Sorry. We can throw all Bel Canto out the door with little loss, and of course Mozart wrote a number of masterpieces of opera, but only The Magic Flute is magic. Just the fact that he set a Protestant chorale, Ach Gott, von Himmel sie darein, near the end of the opera still sends chills up and down my spine.

[John F]

I cannot explain it further, John. Sorry. We can throw all Bel Canto out the door with little loss, and of course Mozart wrote a number of masterpieces of opera, but only The Magic Flute is magic. Just the fact that he set a Protestant chorale, Ach Gott, von Himmel sie darein, near the end of the opera still sends chills up and down my spine.

Well, OK, if you say so. Though I certainly wouldn't have chosen as my example of what's great about the "Flute" the one number in which Mozart uses some other composer's music. And I wouldn't say that the chorale, imposing as it is, is great operatic music - rather the contrary. For me, the apogee of Mozart's greatness as an opera composer would be the Act 2 finale of "Figaro" or the supper scene at the end of "Don Giovanni."

As for bel canto opera, you can discard it all if you like, but there are babies in that bathwater. An unfamiliar example from Donizetti:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH_NyNB3My0

If it were all truly worthless, then a musician and critic as sophisticated and discriminating as Will Crutchfield wouldn't have devoted so much of his career to studying it, teaching it, and performing it; conductors as serious-minded as Toscanini and Herbert von Karajan wouldn't have wasted their time and efforts with "Lucia di Lammermoor"; and Alfred Brendel wouldn't have recorded Liszt's "Reminiscences de Lucia di Lammermoor" (mainly the sextet).

[THEHORN]

The legendary 19th century soprano Lilli Lehman , famous for Wagner, said this about the role of Norma " It's more difficult than the roles of Isolde and Brunnhilde combined ".

[John F]

Another source (Opera News) claims she said that doing a single performance of Norma was harder work than singing all three Brünnhildes in a row. I wonder what she actually said, whether she meant it literally, and if so then what she meant by "harder work."

[jbuck919]

If it makes any difference, I've decided to lose this one. Thanks for all your thoughts.

[Lance]

Much as I love Mozart's operas, I think on my personal desert island, I would have to have the bel canto operas first. Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini, but not necessarily in that precise order.

[maestrob]

Much as I love Mozart's operas, I think on my personal desert island, I would have to have the bel canto operas first. Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini, but not necessarily in that precise order.

Luckily, we don't have to make that choice.

FWIW: "Ach, ich fuls..." is a masterpiece of vocal writing.

[barney]

Much as I love Mozart's operas, I think on my personal desert island, I would have to have the bel canto operas first. Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini, but not necessarily in that precise order.

Other way round for me. Mozart first, then some Verdi, Wagner, Strauss, Puccini. There would be a couple of bel canto in my top 20 but (avert your eyes here, Lenny) much Rossini and Bellini is interchangeable. I would definitely have Barber and Norma in there.
I listened to Norma last night on the new Callas live set, the 1952 recording. She was immense. So secure, so beautiful, so vulnerable. Stigniani was tremendous as Adalgisa. I tend to think of Sutherland and Horne in this partnership - and rightly but it shouldn't be only!

[lennygoran]

(avert your eyes here, Lenny)

Ouch I got your warning too late! Regards, Len

[jbuck919]

Much as I love Mozart's operas, I think on my personal desert island, I would have to have the bel canto operas first. Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini, but not necessarily in that precise order.

Luckily, we don't have to make that choice.

FWIW: "Ach, ich fuls..." is a masterpiece of vocal writing.

As if it were the only one in the opera.

I once heard the comic singer Anna Russell, at Avery Fisher Hall in fact. By then her voice had changed, which made her less funny. In the NY Times she reported that she could now sing "O Isis und Osiris" in its original register.

[John F]

Much as I love Mozart's operas, I think on my personal desert island, I would have to have the bel canto operas first. Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini, but not necessarily in that precise order.

Which operas in particular, Lance? And why, if you'd care to say?