Le grand maréchal drooled in Montreal in 1967. He was then 77 years old and suffering from advanced gagaism.

I think Norma must come across as noble even when provoked. Otherwise, the sacrifice at the end makes no sense.

Bartholdi sounds coarse and vulgar in her anger. It cheapens the role. Tragedy sinks to mere melodrama. Bartoli mistakes theatrics for drama and real emotion.

Sort of like Sills did at times.

Wow. I think Julia is a very precious gift to music. I hope she is careful with her operatic engagements until the voice matures. I dread the effect of unmusical directors who will encourage her to shout, scream and force for the sake of the drama!

Please let a great and voice-sensitive conductor taker under his or her wing like JEG did with Luba!

If LePage didn’t have this idea in mind when staging Brunnhilde’s sleep (see balcony’s and La Cieca’s comments above), he should have!

My first exposure to Renee was the Armida recording from Pesaro. I know some don’t like her there, but the sound of her voice then would have made her an wonderful “Grisi-style” Norma. Luba’s voice is more complex and colorful, but he too would be a Grisi rather than a Pasta. Perhaps Gens or Giannastasio would do for Pasta stand ins.

Thanks.

The Sombre Forets is utterly magnificent! The finest version of the aria I have ever heard. The tone is fuller throughout the range. Warmer, more expressive. The top -- which was thin and a bit pitchy -- is now alomst perfectly supported. She is going to be careful with working on the passages now that the voice is growing and the top is opening up.

Now this might strike you as a strange comparison, but I feel that this is the most gifted lyric soprano since Lee circa 54-57. Like Lee, Julia’s voice is totally secure in its production -- you never get the sense that the singer’s technique is being tested by the music. Everything flows becacuse the singer can do everything asked of her without any hesitation.

And though the voices are very different -- Lee’s voice is much more complex in timbre, but both singers have that “bell like ” qualility. Like voice is lit from within.

She is very special.

The Finale to Act I is very different from any I have heard before. Bonynge restored some of it in the earlier Sutherland recording so one can hear the third verse of the duet cabaletta and Adalgisa’s part of the canon trio. But his tempo sounded like a waltz and Sutherland did not bring enough tension to her opening section and it then seemed ludicrous that Pollione would stand there for so long without responding. In this recording the fast tempo erases that problem. The stretta, however, is comletely different from sny version I’ve heard, with Pollione and Adalgisa having more lines, Norma actually fewer, and no chorus off stage at all. I know that Anderw Porter wrote that Bellini crossed out some things in the autograph and also made changes. I wonder if this is actually what was heard opening night, or an earlier draft crossed out.

Bartoli, in the part I have heard, sings well enough and is technically competent and has a point if view, but I feel she misses out on some of the grandeur that has to be there and that I am sure Pasta supplied according to contemporary reports. While Bartoli wonders how Norma became a priestess and leader and wishes to play up Norma as woman, she underplays the public Norma too much IMO. Her “Sediziose voce” sounds like it is addressed to a board meeting rather than a gathering of the Druids. It is much too small scale for a public address. Her exchanges with Adalgisa and her part in the trio finale are dramatically presented, but she comes off as Adalgisa’s equal, she sounds like just another one of the girls squabbling over a guy. This may be a valid approach, there is no rule that says Norma has to dominate everything, but even so, I ind it a little limited in scope and underwhelming. Interesting and different, but not quite right.

Jo, thus far, has seemed exemplary with crystal tone, musical phrasing, and a believable chracterization.

Osborn I did not lke at first. The voice sounded like a second Flavio was in the scred grove, the tessitura seemed too low, and his ornamentation was more a rewrite of the vocal line taking it up rather than true ornamentation. A second listen didn’t change my initial impression much, but havig decided what was wrong with him, I began to listen to him closer and I did enjoy the musicality of his phrasing, his elegant finish and his commitment to his concept of Pollione as a serial seducer who alwys gets what he wants, a sort of metaphore for the Roman Empire. He fits in with the lyrical small scale approach well enough.

I’m just not convinced that this is what 1830′s audiences heard. Donzelli, the first Pollione, was a large voiced baritenor with chest voice up to A and head voice to C, as he wrote to Bellini. Osborne certainly does not use ny hed voice. Donzelli’s voice was o sonorous and large that whn singing in Pacini’ s Cesare, he second tenor tried to emulate Donzelli’s stentorian tone in a corresponding phrase in a trio and burst a blood vessel in his throat! So it is hard to believe Osborne is anyhing like Donzelli, or that much like most of the interpreters of Pollione in the 1830 ‘s.

Similarly, Pasta was noted for her sonorous and metallic voice that lent a tragic grandeur to her declamation. Many contemporary writers from Chorley to Lord Edgeware to Stendahl all comment on this aspect of her voice, as well as the fact that it was not all of the same metal, had certain notes in the middle that were under a cloud, and caused intonation issues. That she was a soprano is evident by the fact tht while she sang mezzo roles uch as Tancredi, Romeo, Armando in Crociatto in Egitto, they were all sung in raised soprano keys, not in the orinial mezzo or alto keys, She went easily to D (probably today’s D flat) and most of the roes written and tailored for her have many pages with singularlly high tessiture. I think Bartoli is being just a little to disingenious in calling her a mezzo. When mezzos such as Malibran, her sister Viardot, sang Pasta roles, they had to transpose thdm down. Other sopranos who took them on; Metic-Lalande, Sontag, Lind, Grisi, Strepponi, Tadolini, etc. sang them in the original keys, as the personal scores of these ladies show. Patti, who was taught Sonnambula and Casta Diva by Pasta’s rehersal coach, recorded both arias using Pasta’s ornamentation, and no one could ever call Patti in her prime a mezzo.

So I think it’s fine Bartoli wants to try to recreate early 19th century perforance style, and I think that historically it is valid to transpose these scores to fit the voice; but this “I’m singing Pasta roles because Pasta was a mezzo like me” stuff is just crap.

I read exactly three issues of Opera News roughly 20 years ago. Front to back. In an hour. I got the drift : definitely not my thing in any possible way. Including the reviews. It probably doesn’t mean anything to anybody but there you are.

http://www.confidencen.se/Eng/?sida=start

I wish everybody would sing like this. For me this brings back the glory of the 78s era.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4vwf76rFmc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YP9aNylRjg

This Fiordiligi is a mind-blower

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qylvp52Rck0