From: adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Opera Queens (Re: PDX con & bickering)
Date: 7 Apr 1992 19:03:39 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: mizar.usc.edu

In article <7369@brchh104.bnr.ca> gal@bnr.ca writes:
| In article <ktd7iiINN7g@mizar.usc.edu>, 
| adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson) writes:
...
+ |>| >But hang around to watch the fur fly when someone starts to 
+ |>| >praise a nonentity like Kathleen Battle...
+
+ That's a bit harsh, eh?  She has done some decent work.  However, in
+ the Met ticket office, they listen to the rehearsals and I hear she is 
+ referred to as Kathleen Battleaxe.

Yes.  My ex-boyfriend worked his way through grad school as a Met 
"sales representative" and he has lots of backstage stories about
her.  (Do you know the party in London story?  It made the rounds of
the Met 4 or 5 years ago.  Battle and Jessye Norman at a party where
they're referred to as "black American divas".  Battle storms out
bitching, "Why do they always have to say I'm a *black* American diva?"  
When she's gone, Jessye looks around and says, "*Someone* has to remind 
her.")  She's a lovely little lyric soprano.  She has no business doing
half of the stuff she's doing.  Zerbinetta?  *Zerbinetta*?? 

+ Yes!  There really is nothing like a good Elektra.  (See .sig.)

Elektra is my all-time favorite opera.  Agamemnon! VAAAAAAAA-ter!

+ |>Oh, I suppose she's ok.  But after Ljuba Welitsch, everyone seems
+ |>so, well, saccharine.
+
+ I am sorry, but the Met historic broadcast of her is pitiful.  Her
+ intonation is terrible.  Her voice sounds like it will shatter and
+ break off at any time.  She sounds like a bad imitation of Florence
+ Foster Jenkins at some of the more important moments.  I assume her
+ strong point was her acting.

I happen to like the Met broadcast recording you so peremptorily
dismiss.  Oh, but then an *acted* Salome is so unnecessary, I
suspect you say to yourself.  She actually sounds like a crazed,
nymphomaniacal 15 year old to me.  Do you not care for Welitch's
two studio recordings of the final scene -- the 1949 recording
with Reiner or the sublime 1944 recording with von Matacic?

+ |>| and Gwynneth Jones in Die Frau (after I had completely written her
+ |>| off for *her* Salome), 
+
+ I love her Aegyptiche Helena (old, but recently released).  It thrills
+ me to hear such dreadful intonation done so well.  

Aegyptische Helena also has my favorite opera character: the all-
knowing mussel.  And the recording isn't all that old, or is anything
pre-cd positively neolithic to you?

+                                                     Leonie has always
+ been great about reaching for the note, going way past it, and making
+ her way down to it eventually.  It is just ecstacy.  The Met broadcast
+ of Die Walkuere (1988?) as Sieglinde was a fabulous example.  I listen
+ to it often.

Leonie Rysanek has *always* done that.  It's what makes her performances
of Chrysothemis sound so panic-stricken.  (Ob motss: Rysanek told a
friend of mine that she hated singing Chrysothemis to Inge Borkh's 
Elektra because Borkh would feel her up on stage throughout their
scenes together.)

+ |>Gwynneth Jones?  Ugh.  For an ugly-voiced Strauss diva I go to Astrid 
+ |>Varnay (an unbetterable Elektra *and* Klytemnestra, and a brilliantly, 
+ |>ghoulishly funny Herodias.)
+
+ I agree.  The films of Elektra and Salome are classic examples.

Have you ever heard the Varnay Elektra (conducted by Mitropoulos)
from a 1949 Carnegie Hall concert performance?  *Unbelievably*
exciting. 

Arne