Opera appreciations and discussion

[Steve5380]

15 hours ago, singalion said:

This about Youtube. Next one gone. Looks like they are increasing the copyright checks. Some people should read the small print of the tickets... it clearly says in most cases no photography, recording etc.

 

Coming back to Mark Knopfler (for those who don't know more mainstream rock guitar player), during his last tour he offered all ticket holders for a small fee to receive a video of the concert at the location you watched it). If you had registered early you even received 3 different concerts at your choice as a recording. But not alike Bob Dylan he doesn't fight all copyrights on youtube so far, initially he did. but we need to see after the change mid next year, many record labels may go out and ask to delete all the copyrighted materials.

 

 

We the users of YouTube, the ones who watch their videos,  have little to worry. Whatever fights go on over copyright won't affect us except that some prior viewed videos will have disappeared.  Fortunately, there is such variety there that one can always find a viable alternative.  If I don't find a certain version of Handel's Da Tempest, there are half a dozen others I can watch.   If a video of Mark Knopfler (I don't know him) disappears, I will seek a video by Andres Segovia playing so much nice Spanish music!

 

We should rejoice at the modern resources we have, but we should not let ourselves get spoiled.  Fifty years ago, it was the goal to have at least ANY version of a piece of music, opera, etc.

 

15 hours ago, singalion said:

What I miss often with Operas is, good information on the background of some opera plays.

 

I mean you have the classical pieces, some storyline from the Greek philosophy or the Greek gods (hey, don't get on the wrong track now). Yes, there have been some who were very introvert not disclosing the background of their opera piece but some revealed.

 

Like Verdi he was very outspoken about his plays, taking historical figures but actually telling something of his private life and loves.

 

 

Going back to the JOY over the modern resources we have,  we can google on the internet the name of any opera + composer,  and a wealth of information shows up:  libretto, history of when composed,  etc.  

 

Even this depth of information may not be necessary to make proper use of operas:  enjoying their music, their singing, and perhaps their scenes.   What else is there to them.  Whether the story of Aida comes from the Egyptologist Mariette or Temistocle Solera,  why should we care?  Isn't the singing much more important?

[InBangkok]

Continuing the little series to celebrate the lives of those in the world of opera we lost this year. Nello Santi was a giant in opera even though present generations may not have known him other than occasionally seeing his name on a CD cover. Undoubtedly one of the greatest Puccini and Verdi conductors, he died in February aged 88.

 

Santi was born south of Venice. At the age of just 3, his mother took  him to see a performance of Rigoletto. Soon he has started learning the piano, violin, viola and several wind instruments. After studying in Padua he joined the music staff at the city's Teatro Verdi. There he was what we might call the general dogsbody - he did everything from being prompter, vocal coach, chorus master and even played the anvil on stage in Trovatore.  His first conducting job there was Rigoletto.

 

Much of his career was in Europe, first in 1958 at the Zurich Opera for 11 years. Soon he was making he debuts in London, at the Met and various other Houses in the early 1960s. At the Met he was to conduct more than 400 performances mostly of the Italian repertoire with artists including Leontyne Price, Anna Moffo, Reline Crespin, Zinka Milanov, Birgit Nilsson (as Lady Macbeth), Mirella Freni, Fiorenza Cossotto, Pavarotti, Domingo, Franco Corelli and Carlo Bergonzi. At other opera Houses he worked with Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland, Renata Tebaldi, Angela Gheorghiu, Giuseppe di Stefano, Tito Gobi and Mario del Monaco. So popular was he with singers that he was nickname Papa Santi. One of his last performances was La Traviata with Anna Netrekbo at La Scala in 2017. 

 

This excerpt is from a live radio recording at the Met with Robert Merrill singing the intro and then the famous aria "Eri tu" from Ballo in Maschera.

 

 

Edited December 24, 2020 by InBangkok

[Steve5380]

32 minutes ago, InBangkok said:

 

 

 

 

Surprise, surprise!

 

I recognize in this video the recitative and aria Eri tu che macciavi,  which I sung decades ago in my study of voice.  It was the first in my book  OPERATIC ANTHOLOGY,  with piano accompaniment.   This aria is quite high for a baritone, and I wonder how how I was able to reach the high notes, since I cannot now. (ah... old age...)  I never sung it in such a dramatic way,  I knew little of this opera, its libretto, and I could not have cared less, concentrating as I was on the technique of singing.   

[InBangkok]

Another who died this year is someone only those who have worked in opera, read their programmes or opera recording notes very carefully are likely to know. Yet, although you may not have heard of her, she has been involved in many of the finest performances and recordings of the French repertoire for well over half a century. I first became aware of the name when I saw what has been described as the finest opera production ever at the Edinburgh International Festival, Bizet's Carmen with Teresa Berganza making her belated debut in the role, Domingo, Freni and Claudio Abbado conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. There in the programme is one line, "French language coach: Janine Reis". We tend to think that singers turn up for rehearsals fully prepared for the musical demands of a role. Perhaps we do not realise that how to sing the language is equally important. Some of the major Houses have specialist language coaches. Others will call upon freelance experts.

 

Janine Reiss died this year aged 99. During her long career she worked closely with many great artists coaching them on how to use their voices to sing accurately in the French language. Callas, Domingo, Pavarotti, Carreras, Jessye Norman, Angela Gheorghiu, Solti, Maazel, Abbado, Plasson are just some of the hundreds of musicians she worked with. 

 

Any readers in Chicago will know of a series of interviews done over at least two decades by broadcaster Bruce Duffie. In one he interviews Reiss who was in Chicago to work with Solti. There is one fascinating section where she talks about the sheer professionalism of the wonderful Romanian with the limpid soprano voice, Ileana Cotrubas, and her preparations for Massenet's Manon. I'm just going to copy and paste which is why there is a yellow background!

Quote

 I work often with Cotrubas and her French is perfect.  She speaks good French with a little accent, but every time she has ten words to sing in French, she comes and works.   I have known Cotrubas singing Traviata at La Scala every three years, and between the performances, jumping in a plane, coming to Paris where I was, to work for Louise, to work for Manon, to work for Shéhérezade, to work for anything.  Though her French is very, very good, she never does anything without working very hard, even if it’s not the first time she sings the part.  Even though now she has worked with the Manon very carefully and done the recording and everything, if she does it again she’ll come back and work!  She has been singing Manon at the Paris Opera, and the first time she sang it she worked with me maybe three weeks.  And after she sang it, when she made the revival, she called me from where she was and she said, “What do you think exactly about the Manon I sang last year?”  I said, “I think it was good, but it wasn’t perfect, especially the first act.  You didn’t sound as a very young, girlish Manon, and I think you can improve immensely the first part of your role.”  Then she came back before the revival and worked so hard.  She got exactly what she wanted, and one month ago, before the recording, she came to Paris and spent ten days, and we worked again on the part as if it had been the first time. 

 

Ms Reiss was one of the unsung heroes in the world of opera.

Edited December 24, 2020 by InBangkok

[InBangkok]

40 minutes ago, Steve5380 said:

I knew little of this opera, its libretto, and I could not have cared less, concentrating as I was on the technique of singing.   

You should care more and learn more about it. It has some of Verdi's loveliest music. Here is an excerpt from the end of the first scene in Act 1 with Kathleen Battle, Pavarotti, Renato Bruson and conducted by Solti. But due to censorship, there are two versions of the opera (but with the same music) - one set in Boston, the other in Sweden.

 

 

Edited December 24, 2020 by InBangkok

[InBangkok]

Gabriel Bacquier who died in May was one of the finest and most versatile baritones of the second half of the 20th century. Born in France in 1924, he entered the Paris Conservatore in 1945. On graduation he spent several years with La Monnaie Opera in Brussels. Unlike many opera singers, he took a two year course in drama which made him one of the finest of actor singers. In 1956 he made his professional debut at the Opera Comique in Paris. In 1960 he appeared at the lovely Aix en Provence Festival and two years later at the Paris Opera. Within two years he had made his debuts at La Scala, London's Royal Opera and the Met. He would appear at the Met for 18 consecutive seasons. He had made his American debut just a few months prior to the Met engagement singing I Puritani with Joan Sutherland. Later he would add Vienna, Barcelona, Geneva and other Houses to his regular tour schedule.

 

While he may have been rooted in French opera (he was arguably the finest ever Golaud), his career was extremely wide ranging. From performances in Otello, Falstaff, Traviata, Forza, Elisir d'Amore, Barber of Seville, Tosca (opposite over the years Tebaldi, Nilsson, Crespin and Rysanek), Werther, Butterfly, Gianni Schicchi, Carmen, Gounod's Romeo et Juliet, Thais, Charpentier's Louise and many others.

 

This is a short excerpt from a 1969 recording from the Met of La ci darem with Marilyn Horne (thankfully not singing full voice!)

 

 

[InBangkok]

One of the unsung heroes in opera companies are the Chorus Masters. Most opera companies employ them and most are more than good. But some are outstanding. Arthur Oldham was one. He founded the Edinburgh Festival Chorus and went on to do the same for the London Symphony, l’Orchestre de Paris and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Herbert von Karajan called him one of the three great chorus masters in the world.

 

The accolade of best he no doubt reserved for Norbert Balatsch. A member of the Vienna Boys Choir, he graduated to singing baritone in the Vienna Staatsoper chorus. Slowly he made his way up to Chorus Director of the Opera, a position he held from 1968 to 1983. For some years he was at the same time Chorus Director for London’s Philharmonia Orchestra. For an even longer period from 1972 until 1999 he was Choirmaster of the annual Bayreuth Festival where he worked with many of the world’s major conductors including Eugen Jochum, Carlos Kleiber, Karl Boehm, Pierre Boulez, Daniel Barenboim, Georg Solti and Giuseppe Sinopoli amongst others. At that time the Bayreuth Chorus was the envy of all Opera Houses. Around the turn of the century he also trained the chorus of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

 

He also worked on preparing choruses for a number of fine recordings. Two won Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance – the 1980 Mozart Requiem conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini and the second recording for Nikolaus Harnoncourt of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in 2001. 

 

This is part of a live recording of the Bayreuth Flying Dutchman in his last year there 1999. The photograph is fascinating as it shows the exact layout of the Bayreuth orchestra pit – the canopy shielding it from the audience, the conductor at the top of the pyramid with the orchestra descending under the lip of the stage.

 

Norbert Balatsch died in May aged 92.

 

 

 

Edited December 24, 2020 by InBangkok

[Steve5380]

17 hours ago, InBangkok said:

You should care more and learn more about it. It has some of Verdi's loveliest music. Here is an excerpt from the end of the first scene in Act 1 with Kathleen Battle, Pavarotti, Renato Bruson and conducted by Solti. But due to censorship, there are two versions of the opera (but with the same music) - one set in Boston, the other in Sweden.

 

 

 

I don't remember caring much for Verdi when I was young.  My appreciation for bel canto came later. When I sung this aria I had little idea of the deep feelings of Renato.  What a tragedy!   Have a look at the libretto:

 

Eri tu che macchiavi

Eri tu che macchiavi quell'anima,

La delizia dell'anima mia;

Che m'affidi e d'un tratto esecrabile

L'universo avveleni per me, avveleni per me!

Traditor! che compensi in tal guisa

Dell'amico tuo primo, dell'amico tuo primo la fé!

 

O dolcezze perdute! O memorie

D'un amplesso che l'essere india! . . .

Quando Amelia sì bella, sì candida

Sul mio seno brillava d'amor!

Quando Amelia sul mio seno

Brillava d'amor, si brillava d'amor!

 

È finito, non siede che l'odio, non siede che l'odio

Che l'odio e la morte nel vedovo cor!

O dolcezze perdute, o speranze d'amor, d'amor, d'amor!

 

This is an invitation to suicide if taken seriously,  ha ha!

 

The recording you posted with Nello Santi directing does very nice accompaniment. But the tenor Robert Merrill is not of my choice.  His singing is much out of tune, with many agitated wooh-wooh-wooh's to impress the audience.   

 

The nostalgia hearing this aria gives me some dream of start singing again, but... it is not common to sing into one's 70s...  although I have not used up my voice at all.

 

I am posting two videos with superior voices:  Mattia Battistini in the first sings with class, without much effort, in tune, with plenty of fermatas all over the place to show off his legatos, portamentos.  Great recording considering that it is 113 years old!  That old gramophone with wax disks still captured the essence!

 

The second video is more recent,  only 75 years old,  with Leonard Warren.  He sings with clarity, good pitch and it is a pleasure to hear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 24, 2020 by Steve5380

[Steve5380]

It is coming back...

 

Browsing my old book OPERATIC ANTHOLOGY I discovered another aria I had sung long time ago:  I Pagliacci  Si puo...Si puo.  I sung the words of course, and my book is full of annotations of Italian pronunciations,  but I didn't pay much attention to the story.  Today I read the libretto of I Pagliacci... and I cry. 

 

I found again a version of Si puo...Si puo by the King of Baritones, Mattia Battistini.  The quality of this old recording is not bad, and the voice is perfectly recognizable and appreciated. 

 

 

 

 

After listening the prologue, the natural progression is to hear the tragic aria  Vesti la Giubba  ( put on the costume ).  And what better tenor than Caruso one can choose to  hear?  This recording is from 1907.

 

 

 

 

It amazes me what a wealth of music I can find in YouTube.  Around 35 years ago when I was studying singing I would not have found these treasures, especially since I would not have known that they existed.  Now they are a mouse click away!

 

I hope that I don't anger anyone by my opinion that new recordings are not essential. What can a recording today with a famous living tenor with the best orchestra, add to these two above? They may add quality of sound and video, but I personally don't consider these essential.

 

If tightening of copywrite protections make videos disappear, I would assume that most of these will be recent ones. And I will not be much affected by this, I think.    

[InBangkok]

Another of those we lost in 2020. Opera Administrators tend to be overlooked in favour of Music Directors in Opera Houses. Yet many exert a major influence on artistic matters, including casting and repertoire. Most notable, perhaps, was Rudolf Bing. Following a career at Glyndebourne Festival Opera and directing the first Edinburgh Festivals after World War 2, Bing was lured to New York’s Metropolitan Opera where he ruled with a rod of iron (mostly) for 22 years. Since then, the Met’s Administrators have largely been forgotten until the unqualified and disliked Peter Gelb was chosen for the job he was quite unsuited for in 2006. But that’s another story.

 

London’s Royal Opera House never really took off as a venue for international opera until after World War 2. The Arts Council of England had been formed with as its first Chairman Lord Maynard Keynes, the famed economist. Bisexual, Keynes courted Lydia Lopokova, a ballerina who had been one of the stars of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. At the same time he was carrying on an affair with a younger man. In 1925, though, he married Lopokova.

 

Keynes was a lover of the fine arts and his priority was excellence. So he made sure that a large dollop of the Arts Council money went to the Royal Opera. To run the company, David Webster was selected. Until then Webster ran a department store in Liverpool although he had musical interests and was Chairman of the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Webster knew little about opera and many did not like him. With his lifelong partner joining him in London, he quickly earned the nickname “that homosexual haberdasher from Liverpool!” This at a time when it was still against the law to be homosexual!

 

Webster learned fast. His most significant appointment was Georg Solti as Music Director. Soon the Royal Opera was on the world map. When Webster retired in 1970, another businessman cum music administrator was appointed, his deputy John Tooley. Tooley had already been awarded his stripes, as it were, by persuading Callas to return several times to sing at the Garden. His time after his appointment was marked by several high points – the regular return of Domingo and a series of operas by the reclusive conductor Carlos Kleiber, as well as the encouragement of young British-trained singers like Kiri Te Kanawa and Thomas Allen and the young producer Elijah Moshinsky. But overall his time at the Royal Opera did not match the last years of Webster.

 

Perhaps he was shackled by the decision taken prior to his appointment that following Solti’s departure there be two artistic chiefs – Colin Davis and the theatre director Peter Hall. That partnership never really worked and broke up within two years when Hall backed out. Thereafter, with occasional exceptions, the Tooley years were marked by a generally high standard of performance but a lack of overall flair and excitement. Casting was sometimes too haphazard, for example. To be fair, though, finance for opera by the 1970s with the first of several oil shocks driving up inflation to record highs (24.7% in 1975 alone) became increasingly problematic.

 

Tooley retired in 1988. Thereafter he spent much of his time serving on the Boards of various musical charities. He also continued to work closely as an advisor to Domingo especially on his more commercial arena ventures. Sir John Tooley died aged 95 in April.

[InBangkok]

In a reflective mood, I can't help remembering the great loss to the opera world of the wonderful baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Hard to believe he died of brain cancer all of three years ago at the age of just 55. He came to worldwide attention when he won the BBC Cardiff Opera Singer of the World Competition beating out the local favourite Bryn Terfel to the first prize. From that moment he was in demand absolutely everywhere. I never heard him live. I wonder if he ever performed in Singapore.

 

This clip from a concert in Seoul features part of Rigoletto with Sumi Jo. I had assumed it would be a Korean orchestra until I saw it is clearly a western orchestra on tour. At the end I noticed that the conductor is the Russian-American Constantine Orbelian and so the orchestra was probably an expanded Moscow Chamber Orchestra of which he was Music Director. Hvorostovsky loved working with him and they made quite a number of recordings together.

 

 

[heman]

1 hour ago, InBangkok said:

baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

Indeed it was a great loss in the operatic world. I heard him a few times in youtube. His vocal richness and vocal dynamics were miraculous. I cant recall if he ever performed here in Singapore.

[InBangkok]

47 minutes ago, heman said:

I cant recall if he ever performed here in Singapore.

Hvorostovsky gave a recital at the 1997 Hong Kong Arts Festival. Sadly I was travelling at the time and was unable to attend.

[Steve5380]

11 hours ago, InBangkok said:

In a reflective mood, I can't help remembering the great loss to the opera world of the wonderful baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Hard to believe he died of brain cancer all of three years ago at the age of just 55. He came to worldwide attention when he won the BBC Cardiff Opera Singer of the World Competition beating out the local favourite Bryn Terfel to the first prize. From that moment he was in demand absolutely everywhere. I never heard him live. I wonder if he ever performed in Singapore.

 

 

We should give thanks to recorded music that immortalized the performances of Dmitri Hvorostovsky,  and thanks to YouTube for being a way now and in the future to listen to them. 

 

Here is a video of a concert made in honor of him:

 

 

[InBangkok]

Some rare footage has come to light of rehearsals for Gotterdammerung at Bayreuth in 1934. Brunnhilde is Frida Leider, one the truly great exponents of the role. Of special interest is the appearance at the production desk of the ghastly Nazi-loving friend of Hitler, Winifred Wagner. Welsh-born Winifred had married the homosexual son of Richard and Cosima, Siegfried, when she was 18 and he 46. Despite his homosexuality, they were to produce 4 children in quick succession, whereafter he resumed his homosexual affairs. After Siegfried's death in 1930, direction of the Festival passed to Winifred.

 

In 1923 there was a knock on the door of Wahnfried, the house near the Festival Theatre where the Wagner family lived. Before Winifred was a man who regarded Wagner as the greatest German of all time. In his teens he had seen a production of Lohengrin, and later wrote, "In one instant I was addicted." Even the title he chose for himself is believed to come from Lohengrin - "Zum Fuhrer sei er euch ernannt (accept him as your leader)." That man was Adolf Hitler. She quickly came to adore him. Some have alleged there was a sexual relationship between them but there has never been any proof. 

 

Declared a "major Nazi offender" at the end of the War, Winifred was stripped of the direction of the Festival. Even so, she never wavered in her admiration for and support of Hitler. In his 1975 documentary film The Confessions of Winifred Wagner, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg reveals the depths of Winifred's Hitler adoration. To the camera she proclaims herself "the only Nazi in Germany." And then off camera when talking with her grandson, she says, "If Hitler were to walk through that door now, I'd be as happy and glad to see and have him here as ever, and that whole dark side of him, I know it exists, but it doesn't exist for me because I don't know that part of him."

 

There is a masterly biography of Winifred by Brigitte Hermann. Titled Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Heart of Bayreuth is packed full of fascinating facts. Just over 500 pages in the paperback edition, it reads very easily. Once I had started I could not put it down!

 

 

[InBangkok]

12 hours ago, InBangkok said:

In his 1975 documentary film The Confessions of Winifred Wagner, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg reveals the depths of Winifred's Hitler adoration.

I have found that film of Syberberg. It is a quite fascinating document of Winifred Wagner, from her interrupted childhood after the very early death of her parents and being sent to Germany to stay with distant relatives, the Kllndworth family, while she recovered from an illness. The elderly Klindworth had been a great friend of Richard and Cosima Wagner and was to write the piano scores for the entire Ring. Every year Klindworth was invited to all the Dress Rehearsals at Bayreuth. He refused to take Winifred with him until 1914 when she was 17. She was deeply impressed by the kindness Cosima Wagner showed to her at their daily meetings.

 

Back in Berlin, once World War I broke out, Siegfried Wagner visited Berlin to conduct many charity concerts for the Red Cross. On each occasion he would pay a call to the Klindworths. Klindworth noticed that he always paid great attention to Winifred. They got engaged in 1915 and married in the same year. Because of Cosima's ill health - she was then 78, the marriage was held at Wahnfried, the Wagner family home close to the Bayreuth Theatre.

 

The film opens with scenes of the ruined Wahnfried and what it meant to the Wagner family. Nearby was the house where dignitaries stayed, including Toscanini, Richard Strauss, Furtwangler and initially Hitler. Naturally Hitler played with Winifred's children, the elder son Wieland being his special favourite ("the Fuhrer's dariing"). Hitler personally arranged for Wieland to be exempt from the draft into the army at the start of the war.

 

The interview with Winifred actually starts around 9'20". Winifred talks about her relationship with Cosima whom she found "extremely delightful". She also had a great sense of humour which few believe even today. When Hitler visited Wahnfried in 1936 he was at the same time expanding his mountain eyrie in the Obersalzburg. He was enchanted with Wahnfriend. Winifred said to him, "I suppose you would like to live here permanently," to which he replied, "That would be marvellous." He was to stay in the house from then on every time he visited Bayreuth until the end of the war. When visiting near Bayreuth, he would frequently arrive after dark because he did not want to attract crowds.  It is very clear there was an extremely close relationship between the entire family and Hitler. It did not last for all, though, Winifred's elder daughter Friedelinde turned against Hitler and the National Socialist movement. With Toscanini's help, she moved to the USA, became an American citizen and broadcast regularly to Germany during the war. I once attended a fascinating lecture she gave on a visit to the UK around 1980.

 

This is Part 1 of Syberberg's 2 part film with subtitles. It ends with Winfred's views on Hitler and the Jews.

 

 

 

Edited December 26, 2020 by InBangkok

[InBangkok]

The last in this little series of those the opera world has lost this year. Swedish mezzo Kerstin Meyer is a name not so well known nowadays but for several decades she was one of the most sought after singers. She made her debut aged 24 at the Royal Opera in Stockholm singing no less a role than Azucena in Verdi’s Il Trovatore. In the same year she made her debuts as Carmen and Delilah. Wolfgang Wagner invited her for performances in Stuttgart and in 1962 as Brangaene in Tristan at Bayreuth. Ten years later she made her La Scala debut as Clytemnestra. She became a favourite at the Royal Opera where she made her debut in 1960 as Dido in the Berlioz Trojans, following that with Octavian in a production with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf as the Marschallin. Other operas included Rigoletto, Ballo in Maschera, Fricka in Die Walkure and Lucretia in the Britten Opera. Two of her signature roles were Marfa in Janacek’s Katya Kabanova and Kostelnicka in Jenufa which she often performed alongside her good friend Elizabeth Soderstrom as Jenufa. She and Soderstrom frequently appeared in recitals together. 

 

Although she sang in all the major Houses in a variety of repertoire, she remained faithful to Stockholm to which she returned regularly. Kerstin Meyer died in May aged 92. Sadly there are few clips on youtube. This is Kostelnicka’s aria from Act 3 of a live Swedish performance of Jenufa, the point at which she admits to having murdered Jenufa’s little baby.

 

 

[Steve5380]

19 hours ago, InBangkok said:

 

Sadly there are few clips on youtube. This is Kostelnicka’s aria from Act 3 of a live Swedish performance of Jenufa, the point at which she admits to having murdered Jenufa’s little baby.

 

 

It is sad that Kerstin Meyer had to age, to the point that she had to retire from singing and finally died at age 92.

It would have been so desirable if she had made many recordings, and posted them on YouTube for everyone to hear. 

 

The greatest artists in the world have been constantly aging, until their time for live performances invariably pass.  What remains then are their recordings.  THANK GOD that the technology to record, audio and video, now exist.

 

All the history of the past only exists because it has been recorded. 

Let's look at recordings as the magic solutions that allows to immortalize.  

[wilfgene]

1 hour ago, Steve5380 said:

 

It is sad that Kerstin Meyer had to age, to the point that she had to retire from singing and finally died at age 92.

It would have been so desirable if she had made many recordings, and posted them on YouTube for everyone to hear. 

 

The greatest artists in the world have been constantly aging, until their time for live performances invariably pass.  What remains then are their recordings.  THANK GOD that the technology to record, audio and video, now exist.

 

All the history of the past only exists because it has been recorded. 

Let's look at recordings as the magic solutions that allows to immortalize.  

Here we go again.

[Steve5380]

22 minutes ago, wilfgene said:

Here we go again.

 

Yes!  We should always go,  go forwards with the reality of our times.  

 

We should not go backwards to the past, to a time where the only way to hear music was to listen to it live.  

[InBangkok]

49 minutes ago, Steve5380 said:

 

Yes!  We should always go,  go forwards with the reality of our times.  

 

We should not go backwards to the past, to a time where the only way to hear music was to listen to it live.  

As @wilfgenehas pointed out, here we go again!

 

Actually, the argument put forward is not at all for going forward with the reality of the times. It is for going backwards. A performance captured by any means is purely a snapshot of a past event. It is history. It will forever remain in the past. It does not live, does not breathe and has nothing to do with the future. It is for historical purposes or for those so cocooned in the past they have no interest in the future.

 

It is absolutely no different from looking at a postcard sent from the Taj Mahal or Petra or the Niagara Falls 40 years ago. Every pixel will be the same every time you look at it. The photographs are merely snapshots of specific places at specific times. 40 years later the scenes in these postcards can never be recreated. It does not matter how the photos are reproduced. They are merely unchanging dead images.

[Steve5380]

10 hours ago, InBangkok said:

As @wilfgenehas pointed out, here we go again!

 

Actually, the argument put forward is not at all for going forward with the reality of the times. It is for going backwards. A performance captured by any means is purely a snapshot of a past event. It is history. It will forever remain in the past. It does not live, does not breathe and has nothing to do with the future. It is for historical purposes or for those so cocooned in the past they have no interest in the future.

 

It is absolutely no different from looking at a postcard sent from the Taj Mahal or Petra or the Niagara Falls 40 years ago. Every pixel will be the same every time you look at it. The photographs are merely snapshots of specific places at specific times. 40 years later the scenes in these postcards can never be recreated. It does not matter how the photos are reproduced. They are merely unchanging dead images.

 

You are right that the past is history  (if it is recorded).  In every NEW instant the world is shedding PAST.  My last word I wrote here is now in the past!   And it will be so forever!

 

But you need to give up this pessimism about the past.  The past is also our friend.  Everything in your memory about  your early life, experiences, your parents, friends, are in the past.  Every CELL in your body is a product of the past.  If tomorrow you go to a wonderful live concert,  99% of this concert will be from the past,  their studies, their rehearsals and ... their sheet music.

 

And please,  don't say that "a performance captured by any means... it does not live, does not breathe and has nothing to do with the future".  This is too negative to be true.

 

The new movie "Wonder Woman 1984" is now available in movie theaters and HBO Max.  But it was filmed "in the past". therefore, should it not live, breathe, influence the future?   The old silent movies from Charlie Chaplin live, breathe, every time they are shown.  ALL movies on earth, from any era, everywhere, are recordings of the past watched by MILLIONS who don't go to see something that "does not live, does not breathe, and has nothing to do with the future".

 

Christianity believes that the Bible is... a living testament.  Not something dead that has nothing to do with the future.

 

And so, there are tens of examples that show the great gift we have in the ability to re-live the past.  Be it by reading a book, watching a movie, hearing the record of a musical performance.  This gift is one element that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.  And technology makes this increasingly possible, from the chisel on the stone, the ink on the papyrus, the printing press, the silver photography, the gramophone, the video camera, the digital recording, the virtual reality, and who knows what more to come!

 

Technology is our friend.    ❤️

 

 

[InBangkok]

There is nothing wrong with the past being history. No matter how excellent or (more likely) how ghastly it was for most of those who lived throughout recent millennia, we all need to learn from it in the hope that our countries and the world do not make the same mistakes.

 

Living in and with the past is a totally different matter, though. The future starts now. And that is what I have found fascinating and exciting virtually all my life. Others can live in the past if that is what gives them their kicks. I have always preferred to look ahead to all the new experiences I want to do, to see, to hear, to witness for myself as long as I can.

[Steve5380]

No one lives mostly in and with the past.  It is just not possible.  

 

We live mostly in the present, and sometimes in and with the past.  Living in the future is only in our imagination.

 

The past is very important because...  we can learn only from the past.  Never from the future, and the present lasts only an instant.  In addition, we can be knowledgeable of the past, but not of the future.

 

( maybe exceptions could be made for prophets and clairvoyants.   )

[InBangkok]

I have always liked to look forward - with keen anticipation. I have my dreams and I try to do my best to make them happen. My past is largely a series of photographs, writings and memories.

[wilfgene]

10 hours ago, InBangkok said:

I have always liked to look forward - with keen anticipation. I have my dreams and I try to do my best to make them happen. My past is largely a series of photographs, writings and memories.

And you are well qualified to offer advices and suggestions to various departments of live performances.

Steve, on the other hand, to deep-faking technology.

[Steve5380]

1 hour ago, wilfgene said:

And you are well qualified to offer advices and suggestions to various departments of live performances.

Steve, on the other hand, to deep-faking technology.

 

What are here the "departments of live performances" ?  

I have some suggestions:  Keybox, Ten Men, Hook Club.  But I haven't seen InBangkok post there...

 

As for me,  all the technology I post here is proven real technology you use every day.

But I find deep-faking technology very interesting.  Maybe if I wanted to go back to work I would apply for a software engineering position at Pixar.  Computer animation (deep-faking of persons and objects) has hair-rising complexity in the software that produces it.  Like robots are replacing machines,  computer animation is replacing real actors and real scenes to the point that maybe already but surely soon we won't be able to distinguish what is real and what is animation.

 

Imagine future Virtual Concert Halls where a whole symphony orchestra and its soloist and its conductor are replaced by computer animation linked to sound synthesizers that read directly from an original script of a symphony or an opera.

This will allow for MILLIONS to attend such a concert, from the comfort of their living rooms, sitting at their 3D TVs while eating chocolate ice cream (no buttered popcorn, which is unhealthy).  I foresee a bright future!   

[InBangkok]

1 minute ago, Steve5380 said:

1. What are here the "departments of live performances" ?  

I have some suggestions:  Keybox, Ten Men, Hook Club. 

 

2. This will allow for MILLIONS to attend such a concert, from the comfort of their living rooms, sitting at their 3D TVs while eating chocolate ice cream (no buttered popcorn, which is unhealthy).  I foresee a bright future!   

1. What are Keybox, Ten Men and Hook Club? I have never heard of them.

 

2. if that is the future, what a ghastly prospect! I trust I will have shuffled off this mortal coil years before that dreadful fate descends on the world.

[Steve5380]

11 hours ago, InBangkok said:

I have always liked to look forward - with keen anticipation. I have my dreams and I try to do my best to make them happen. My past is largely a series of photographs, writings and memories.

 

You don't realize it,  but you also live in the past, for very important reasons that are more than a series of photographs, etc.  

 

If you reject the past, you won't know where you left your car keys.  You won't know where your house is.  You won't even know what your name is.  Some people experience total loss of memory, and only the present and future exists for them. This is sad, because it opens the possibility that they end up in a mental care facility.

[Steve5380]

3 minutes ago, InBangkok said:

1. What are Keybox, Ten Men and Hook Club? I have never heard of them.

 

2. if that is the future, what a ghastly prospect! I trust I will have shuffled off this mortal coil years before that dreadful fate descends on the world.

 

Keybox, Ten Men and Hook Club are scenarios where some very natural acts are performed live.

 

You are already living in this "ghastly prospect".  Today you replace your legs with the car you drive, the transatlantic plane you fly in (even with its unreliable engines).  But if this is horrifying to you, there are good psychologists who can take care of this. 

[InBangkok]

I haven’t the faintest clue what you are taking about! It’s certainly not about opera.

[Steve5380]

2 hours ago, InBangkok said:

I haven’t the faintest clue what you are taking about! It’s certainly not about opera.

 

It surely is Opera.  It is opera in the future,  how you will enjoy it in your golden years  

 

You will be in your living room, sitting at your virtual reality system on an opera house seat, which you got cheap since most of them will have closed.

 

On the console of your virtual reality system you will choose an opera,  and the artists that will sing it.  From its huge database, the system will load the personification data of the artist, the orchestra and the music.   In a few milliseconds it will have processed the virtual reality with computer animation that will do the performance. 

 

The performance will start:  you will hear the public around you,  hear the orchestra tuning,  then the entrance of director with applause, and the overture starts with amazing realism.  You see the orchestra pit, a few heads of audience in front of you,  and then the curtain raises and the scene is in front of you.  The singing starts, synthesized with exquisite resonance, and on a corner is a display of the libretto.  Your seat shakes a little, imitating the legs of the person behind you.  You hear some coughing here and there.  From the console, you can "make" and intermezzo at any time you want to snack, or use the restroom.  At the end, the public applauds, the singers get their curtain calls,  and the lights come back on.

 

This is when you are raised from the opera house seat and helped into your wheel chair to roll into your bedroom to take your medicines and get some physical therapy.  You are at this point immensely satisfied to have attended another "live performance"   

[InBangkok]

5 hours ago, Steve5380 said:

 

It surely is Opera.  It is opera in the future,  how you will enjoy it in your golden years  

 

You will be in your living room, sitting at your virtual reality system on an opera house seat, which you got cheap since most of them will have closed.

 

On the console of your virtual reality system you will choose an opera,  and the artists that will sing it.  From its huge database, the system will load the personification data of the artist, the orchestra and the music.   In a few milliseconds it will have processed the virtual reality with computer animation that will do the performance. 

 

The performance will start:  you will hear the public around you,  hear the orchestra tuning,  then the entrance of director with applause, and the overture starts with amazing realism.  You see the orchestra pit, a few heads of audience in front of you,  and then the curtain raises and the scene is in front of you.  The singing starts, synthesized with exquisite resonance, and on a corner is a display of the libretto.  Your seat shakes a little, imitating the legs of the person behind you.  You hear some coughing here and there.  From the console, you can "make" and intermezzo at any time you want to snack, or use the restroom.  At the end, the public applauds, the singers get their curtain calls,  and the lights come back on.

 

This is when you are raised from the opera house seat and helped into your wheel chair to roll into your bedroom to take your medicines and get some physical therapy.  You are at this point immensely satisfied to have attended another "live performance"   

A glimpse of hell on earth for those who genuinely love opera and the operatic experience.

 

And you still have not explained what Keybox, Ten Men and Hook Club are and what they have to do with opera. Small local opera companies in the Houston area?

Edited December 30, 2020 by InBangkok

[Steve5380]

29 minutes ago, InBangkok said:

A glimpse of hell on earth for those who genuinely love opera and the operatic experience.

 

And you still have not explained what Keybox, Ten Men and Hook Club are and what they have to do with opera. Small local opera companies in the Houston area?

 

A glimpse of hell is always useful for those who need to behave well, to reduce the probability to end up there.  What I describe is a hope of heaven for those opera lovers (and other classical music lovers) who are getting too old to be globe trotting around to see and hear some concerts live.  

 

I mentioned Keybox, Ten Men and Hook Club responding to a post from @wilfgene about suggestions of live performances.  Operas are implicit in "live performances".   The ones that take place at Keybox et al are those where "live performance" is fundamental.  I haven't listened to opera in these places,  but the next time I go into one of them for live performance I may sing some opera arias I know.  Maybe this could even enhance my performance...   

.

Edited December 30, 2020 by Steve5380

[wilfgene]

30 minutes ago, InBangkok said:

A glimpse of hell on earth for those who genuinely love opera and the operatic experience.

 

And you still have not explained what Keybox, Ten Men and Hook Club are and what they have to do with opera. Small local opera companies in the Houston area?

 

6 minutes ago, Steve5380 said:

 

A hope of heaven for those opera lovers (and classical music lovers) who are getting too old to be globe trotting around to see and hear some concerts live.  

 

I mentioned Keybox, Ten Men and Hook Club responding to a post from @wilfgene about suggestions of live performances.  Operas are implicit in "live performances".   The ones that take place at Keybox et al are those where "live performance" is fundamental.  I haven't listened to opera in these places,  but the next time I go into one of them for live performance y may sing some operas aria I know.  Maybe this will even enhance my performance...   

 

11 hours ago, wilfgene said:

And you are well qualified to offer advices and suggestions to various departments of live performances.

Steve, on the other hand, to deep-faking technology.

Yet, instead of virtual sex, Steve still chooses to attend saunas.

Just as inBangkok chooses not to go through local scenes and me on skipping posts by why? or guest guest.

Let's appreciate the choices available and the guy not saying 'I have been tested.  You can fuck me without condom'.

[Steve5380]

20 minutes ago, wilfgene said:

 

Yet, instead of virtual sex, Steve still chooses to attend saunas.

 

 

This comes because unlike in live concerts, in the live performances in saunas we come in direct contact with the stars of the show.  So the differences between live and virtual sex is much more fundamental than the minor differences between live and recorded sound, both some vibrations of the air.

[InBangkok]

2 hours ago, Steve5380 said:

I mentioned Keybox, Ten Men and Hook Club responding to a post from @wilfgene about suggestions of live performances.  Operas are implicit in "live performances".   The ones that take place at Keybox et al are those where "live performance" is fundamental.  I haven't listened to opera in these places,  but the next time I go into one of them for live performance I may sing some opera arias I know.  Maybe this could even enhance my performance...   

So you have moved the discussion on to gay Singapore saunas. How weird! And you plan to sing a few arias the next time you visit a Singapore sauna? As a near octogenarian (which you have mentioned many times in various threads) I'd have thought saunas were hardly your thing. And if you did happen to get to one in Singapore after covid19, I'd think singing opera arias would not help your chance of finding sex. But perhaps the young guys in Singapore are into opera after all.

 

Let's get the thread away from gay saunas back to opera.

[Steve5380]

18 minutes ago, InBangkok said:

 

Let's get the thread away from gay saunas back to opera.

 

I think that it makes a lot of sense to extend this thread to OPERA in gay saunas.  Why not?

 

This thread is about opera-queens,  so it already relates to gays, perhaps gays in saunas.

BTW, the TS, an opera-queen,  seems to have abandoned his thread.  Maybe he realized that not only queens but also real men found their way to this thread.

 

Surely the cute gays in the saunas will feel much more attraction to those who SING opera arias and not just passively LISTEN to them. 

. 

Edited December 30, 2020 by Steve5380

[Steve5380]

An amazing historical recording:  the oldest one of an opera singer.  Made in 1889!  131 years ago!

 

 

 

"This recording of Peter Nicholas Schram (1819-1895), Danish bass, in the very first recording of an opera singer in the history of recorded sound. Here he sings, in Danish, excerpts of Leporello's arias from Mozart's Don Giovanni. This recording is significant because: - Schram is the oldest-born operatic singer ever recorded, being born just 28 years after Mozart's death. - Schram's first teacher was Italian tenor Giuseppe Siboni, who was born in 1780, studied under castrato Sebastiano Folicaldi, and debuted in 1797 at age 17. - Schram was also a student of the eminent 19th century vocal pedagogue Manuel Garcia. The only other Garcia student whose voice was recorded was English baritone Charles Santley. - The various ornaments and style used here would likely have been taught to him by Garcia, who sang the role of Leporello in the first Italian-language performances of Don Giovanni in America—at the behest of an originating source: its librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, who was himself in the audience. - Leporello was considered Schram's greatest role."

[Steve5380]

Here is a more recent recording, from 1890,  130 years old.  I Pagliacci, easily recognizable.

 

 

"Here is an exceptionally rare 1897 cylinder recording of "Vesti la giubba" from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. Recorded just five years after the premiere of Leoncavallo's groundbreaking work (Milan, 1892), this cylinder, made for Gianni Bettini, is the first documented recording of any excerpt from that opera. Despite the rather antiquated sound, this is truly an historical document for the ages. As for the artist heard in this recording, Dante del Papa (1854-1924) was one of the musical artists who made the acquaintance of socialite and recording pioneer Lieutenant Gianni Bettini (1860-1938). Bettini made hundreds of cylinder recordings of famous (and not so famous) singers in New York and Paris during the 1890s and early 1900s. Del Papa was frequently invited to Bettini’s Central Park South salon to make recordings, both as a solo artist and in ensembles. Although del Papa recorded scores of cylinders for Bettini (nineteen solo arias are listed in Bettini’s May, 1897 catalogue alone), only about a dozen of the tenor’s recordings are known to survive today."

[InBangkok]

38 minutes ago, Steve5380 said:

I think that it makes a lot of sense to extend this thread to OPERA in gay saunas.  Why not?

 

This thread is about opera-queens,  so it already relates to gays, perhaps gays in saunas.

BTW, the TS, an opera-queen,  seems to have abandoned his thread.  Maybe he realized that not only queens but also real men found their way to this thread.

 

Surely the cute gays in the saunas will feel much more attraction to those who SING opera arias and not just passively LISTEN to them. 

It seems you are prepared to continue with this rubbish! Do you not realise that equating gay sex in a sauna to a live performance of western opera is indeed rubbish, frankly? There is zero correlation in a thread devoted to live performances of western opera (as clearly stated in two posts by the TS).

 

As for suggesting that "real men found their way into this thread" is a reason why it has been abandoned by the TS, that too is not just plain nonsense, sad to say it is an insult to the TS. Please apologise to him. Oh, and who might be the real men, I wonder?

 

Please also stick to the subject of live performance of western operas or start a new thread of your own that can include as many items as you post here and be far more relevant there - gay saunas, electronic means to hear/see western opera, ballet, piano recitals - whatever you as the TS would wish to include. You will be doing those who were pleased to see this thread and who have contributed to it as outlined by the TS a favour. Thank you.

 

As for your past paragraph, it is so absurd it merits absolutely no comment.

[InBangkok]

45 minutes ago, Steve5380 said:

"This recording of Peter Nicholas Schram (1819-1895), Danish bass, in the very first recording of an opera singer in the history of recorded sound."

Since you put this in quotes, clearly you copied it from some source material. Unfortunately it is not accurate! I also quote - and append the source at the foot.

 

"Schram’s recording was made not during the performance but at a party afterwards, hosted by the diplomat and merchant Gottfried Rubens, who had recently become the Scandinavian agent for Thomas Edison’s “perfected phonograph.” (The Edison marketing tour of 1888-1889 is the source of all the earliest cylinder recordings we can hear today.) Rubens was, as far as we can tell, selling machines and not recordings at this time, but he recorded many actors and musicians in Copenhagen for the purpose of demonstrating the new mechanical marvel at his shop, and his collection of cylinders is the earliest substantial group that has been preserved through the years. Peter Schram’s contribution consists of Leporello’s opening solo “Notte e giorno faticar” and the first pages of his aria “Madamina, il catalogo è questo,” sung in Danish and without accompaniment."

 

. . . "Believe it or not, Schram’s turns out not to be the very earliest recorded opera voice after all. The same Rubens collection holds four cylinders made by Ludvig Phister (1807-1896) in his mid-eighties."

 

Like Schram, Phister was both an actor and singer. Although only one of the four cylinders has him singing and his opera singing was more towards the start of his career, Phister is the earliest recorded opera singer.

 

https://www.teatronuovo.org/record-of-the-week-2/the-oldest-voice

[Steve5380]

6 minutes ago, InBangkok said:

Since you put this in quotes, clearly you copied it from some source material. Unfortunately it is not accurate! I also quote - and append the source at the foot.

 

 

Your observation is senseless.  You may have a way of doing things, but this is not any universal law.

 

What I did put in quotations is the very comment that belongs to the video on YouTube that I posted.  I added the quotations simply to indicate that this is not my own comment.  I always specify the source when I find that it is necessary.  In this case, it is the video itself.  If you have a problem with the accuracy of this quotation, you need to take it up with the person who uploaded the video.  

[InBangkok]

Dvorak is best known today for his orchestral works even though he wrote 11 operas. Yet only one has joined the standard repertoire in several opera houses today. Rusalka is based on Slavic fairy tales with a water-gnome, water-goblin, prince, princess, gamekeeper and a kitchen boy among the characters. By far its best known aria is the Song to the Moon from Act 1. The soprano Renee Fleming has made the aria almost her own. She sang it here in Bangkok and also I believe in Singapore at recitals she gave in 2007.

 

 

 

Edited December 30, 2020 by InBangkok

[InBangkok]

8 hours ago, Steve5380 said:

 

Your observation is senseless.  You may have a way of doing things, but this is not any universal law.

 

What I did put in quotations is the very comment that belongs to the video on YouTube that I posted.  I added the quotations simply to indicate that this is not my own comment.  I always specify the source when I find that it is necessary.  In this case, it is the video itself.  If you have a problem with the accuracy of this quotation, you need to take it up with the person who uploaded the video.  

But the presupposes everyone who opens a video goes directly to the YouTube site. Given that you can simply click on the vdo link on the post, I never go to the YouTube link. There is no need!

[doncoin]

A friend alerted me of this blog many years ago. Who says male opera singers are all Pavarotti-esque? Think Nathan Gunn. 

 

 

http://barihunks.blogspot.com/

[heman]

5 hours ago, InBangkok said:

Rusalka i

There are many interpretations of this very melodious aria. However as for me nothing beats the vocal interpretation by Lucia Popp. I find this Dvorak opera a little boring frankly for the story line is not strong . Well that's my two cent opinion. 

Edited December 30, 2020 by heman

[Steve5380]

12 hours ago, InBangkok said:

It seems you are prepared to continue with this rubbish! Do you not realise that equating gay sex in a sauna to a live performance of western opera is indeed rubbish, frankly? There is zero correlation in a thread devoted to live performances of western opera (as clearly stated in two posts by the TS).

 

As for suggesting that "real men found their way into this thread" is a reason why it has been abandoned by the TS, that too is not just plain nonsense, sad to say it is an insult to the TS. Please apologise to him. Oh, and who might be the real men, I wonder?

 

 

I have to recognize that I am very, very surprised by your comment.  And a little disillusioned too.  I thought that you were more rational.  You seem horrified that I place opera houses and gay saunas on an equal standing!  I find them equals as places of entertainment with live actors, although the type of acting is different.

 

Unlike you, I don't think that opera belongs on a high pedestal of morality. Far from it.  An opera house is not a cathedral.

And I don't think that a gay sauna is a joint of perversion. I DON"T HOLD HOMOSEXUAL SEX AS IMMORAL!!

 

And here you of all persons, find this rubbish,  you who enjoy opera houses AND gay saunas, as you have said repeatedly.  I hope for your good that you also perform live in gay saunas, where you should not worry about your age as long as you take steps to remain somewhat attractive,  and you could also sing arias there since you know their melody.

 

Opera in gay saunas fits well within the topic of this thread,  since the TS choose to put in the name "opera-queens".  This is a SLANG somewhat demeaning expression referring to gay men who love opera because they are effeminate.  This is what "queens" mean. And I have remarqued in my first post here,  that I may be an opera-fan,  but NOT an opera-queen.

 

I know that homosexual men can be REAL men.  (and there are heterosexual men who are effeminate). I know it because this is what I am, and I am proud of it.   It would be so positive if you could feel the same way....

 

It would be helpful if you do some introspection and reconsider.  I keep some hope of that   

 

P.D....  

You must have noticed that most of my posts at BW are done in a spirit of humor.  Life is good to me and I have all reasons to be in excellent mood.  And life is short!  Why waste it in anger?  But you appear to be so dead serious!  So easily irritated!  The other day in the Instrumental Music thread you showed a spark of humor after you mistakenly wrote "after death" instead of "before death".  This is it!  This is the way to take it, but holding the humor all the time! 

 

Cheer up Man!  Nothing is important here,  the thread, the TS, the live music, the recorded music. This is nothing but an opportunity to chat about our beloved music, and maybe jest with some friendly punches.  Life is good!  

 

. 

 

Edited December 30, 2020 by Steve5380

[Steve5380]

41 minutes ago, heman said:

There are many interpretation of this very melodious aria. However as for me nothing beats the vocal interpretation by Lucia Popp. 

 

I agree.  This aria with nice Czesh cadence is so well interpreted by Lucia Popp.  I here hear her great singing, not only as the "Queen of the NIght", ha ha.  

 

 

 

[Steve5380]

1 hour ago, doncoin said:

A friend alerted me of this blog many years ago. Who says male opera singers are all Pavarotti-esque? Think Nathan Gunn. 

 

http://barihunks.blogspot.com/

 

In the page you posted I found a YouTube video of a baritone hunk (perhaps). Xiaomeng Zhang is a baritone singing Korngold's Die Tote Stadt with an admirable German pronunciation for a Chinese.  I still have to discover many opera singers who are...  good looking Asians!  

 

 

 

 

 

And thanks to Nathan Gunn,  I heard for the first time Bizet's opera The Pearl Fishers,  in a nice topless staging: (who would fish for pearls with a shirt on?)