A few more words about (and a few more minutes with) Singer A

by Ken

After posting the sort-of-post "I wonder how much these three singers -- whom we heard recently, and who not so long ago would have been instantly recognizable (or almost) -- are even known now," I found myself remaking a couple of audio clips that have been in the DWT Archive for ages but that I thought I could do better, when it occurred to me that this might be a good time to share the "B" version. Partly I was also thinking that I hadn't done justice to "Singer A," or to my admiration for her. I might have mentioned, for example, that in the protracted period during which I've been toiling at various versions of this impending "post-cycle" I had occasion to dip into the archive and was startled but not really surprised to see how abundantly Singer A is represented there. Though I have no way of really knowing, it's possible that there are more clips of her than of any other performer in the history of Sunday Classics.

There was probably also some concern on my part that including any version of the clip we're about to hear would be a dead giveaway to Singer A's identity. That's even spooked me in my planning for the next post in this series, the one that's designed to give readers a proper samping of the singing of Singers A, B, and C. Well, too bad. As I've been thinking about my history with Singer A, I'm realizing that she is very likely the greatest singer whose career I've had the good fortune to witness at first hand. So without further ado, let's listen to the new version of this clip:


Singer A; Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. Decca, from the Fledermaus "Gala" sequence, recorded in the Sofiensaal, June 1960


YOU KNOW, NOW THAT THE "SECRET" OF SINGER A'S
IDENTITY IS BLOWN, WE MIGHT AS WELL HEAR AS WELL --

I wonder how much these three singers -- whom we heard recently, and who not so long ago would have been instantly recognizable (or almost) -- are even known now

Let's call our first singer "Singer A" --

Singer A; National Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Gerhardt, arr. and cond. RCA, recorded in Walthamstow Town Hall, London, May 10-13, 1982

by Ken

As I sort-of-explained in a post-placeholder that was up briefly, untold numbers of posts-in-progress, and in particular intersecting (or overlapping) cycles of posts, have been piling up in various state of incompletion, or maybe incompletability. What I put up briefly -- for the usual reason, that since the sh*ttification wrought by the Googlefiends since their takeover of Blogger, I still haven't found any way of seeing and hearing all the working parts of a post work short of actually publishing the thing -- was essentially a fleeting bit of what now stands to be the next-up post-cycle, and yet even so that pair of more or less self-contained scenes from a well-known show, totaling just about 15 minutes' playing time, had consumed a troubling number of hours over a bunch of days. For once instead of bitching and moaning about the grueling prospect of tending to all the details large and small, oh-so-many of them involving seemingly endless picayune picky-work, I had summoned uncommon stores of patience to just do it all, and by the end both excerpts were "done up" just about properly, including even the fully inserted vocal texts.

And "the end" is all too literally the case, since an hour or so after that chunk was posted, complete with a covering note explaining that at this point, now that I had the opportunity to check out and test those post-portions, I really no longer had any need to have them in "published" state but nevertheless meant to leave them up for a while in case any readers happened by -- well, at that hour-plus mark I worked my way through to the painful decision that I really couldn't use them, that thanks in part to the unaccustomed fastidiousness of the work product, it strayed too dangerously into copyright-infringement territory. So crashing down that stuff came.

Oh well.

SO, WE PROCEED -- TOWARD SOME CONSIDERATION OF
THE THREE SINGERS YOU'RE HEARING (AGAIN) TODAY

So much for my fleeting sensation of having brought all those grueling labors to an at least somewhat satisfactory result, not to mention the fleeing sensation of having finally gotten something, if not actually posted, finally, then at least made available for perusal.

So, to work. Before proceeding to Singers B and C --

Let's hear SINGER A sing the whole "Battle Hymn of the Republic"