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"

Which is to say, the full performance from which we heard the brief extract at the top of the post.

JULIA WARD HOWE: "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"

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

In addition, since this comes from fairly late in Singer A's career, maybe we could hear a little something from the other end. Like, say, Adolphe Adam's "Cantique de Noël," known to us in English as --

ADAM: "O holy night"

Singer A; Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. Decca, recorded in the Sofiensaal, June 5, 1961


SINGER B sings, well . . . you'll know

It's become maybe the most of soprano arias, and can hardly fail to make its effect if it's even tolerably well sung, which maybe isn't as hard to do as it may sound. But singing it this well, and this personally, without teetering over into trite sentimentality?

Baritone Tito Gobbi painted this famous portrait of a character he loved,
recording Schicchi for EMI in 1958 (above), then for CBS-Sony in 1976.

Singer B, Lauretta; Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia (Rome), Giuseppe Patanè, cond. Decca, recorded July 10, 1966

(Of course, this is "O mio babbino caro," the lovely, lovelorn young Lauretta's life-or-death plea for help from her dear daddy, the title character of Puccini's great one-act comic opera Gianni Schicchi.)


SINGER C sings the end of Cherubino's "Non so più"
(from the 2nd "Parlo d'amor vegliando")

Singer C, Cherubino; Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra de Paris, Sir Georg Solti, cond. From a telecast from the Opéra, July 14, 1980

Come to think of it, maybe we should hear the whole thing. Because Cherubino actually played a large role in Singer C's career, I'm sitting on a pile of five or six performances of "Non so più," in which the later section is always beautifully done but the aria as a whole maybe doesn't work so well, often through no fault (or no great fault) of the singer. In this performance, though, everything works. It may be the most winning performance of the aria I've heard.

MOZART: The Marriage of Figaro: Act I,
recit., Susanna, "Povero Cherubin, siete voi pazzo";
aria, Cherubino, "Non so più cosa son, cosa faccio"


Singer C, Cherubino; with Lucia Popp (s), Susanna; Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra de Paris, Sir Georg Solti, cond. From a telecast from the Opéra, July 14, 1980


STILL TO COME . . .

. . . is a post in which I try to offer a sampling of what made these singers, each in her own way, so special to me -- first without identifying them, then with not just identifications but amplifications. (In the matter of identification, you'll notice that I've provided pretty much all our standard discographic credit with the exception of the identities of Singers A, B, and C, so that even if this isn't enough to identify the ladies for you, even fairly minimal research will turn up the answers. I just like the idea of trying for a while longer to focus in the singing before shifting the focus back to the singers.

I'm not entirely persuaded that the above agenda can be successfully pursued in a single post. Even if so, we're going to need an additional post, or maybe posts, because I'd like to take a closer listen to each of the singers' artistry. There will probably be bit of additional repertory for each that we'd like to hit, but also some more extended scenes. At the moment, I'm targeting at least one of Singer A's great Verdi roles; a Wagner role of Singer B's, but also a Puccini scene; and for Singer C a great Berlioz operatic monologue.


HOLD EVERYTHING! FOR A FEW MORE WORDS ABOUT
(AND A FEW MORE MINUTES WITH) SINGER A --

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

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