sommaire fidelio otello  parsifal  liens vickers mozart wagner callas norma  divers glossaire  humour ?

1) tenor = idiot

       French say "con comme un ténor" ! Doubtless by jealousy !

     All the idiots, tenors! (except Gedda and Vickers and Melchior! and with the rigour Kollo and Schreier and Carreras and Domingo and even Pavarotti, it is well-known, it is even proverbial; the beautiful voices of males, it is or of "haute-contres" (not, they is not falsettists) or the low ones (a little common, but Giaurov, Ramey, Moll, Bastin, Christoff, it is not dirty) and especially baritones: asks which is the male heroes of Don Giovanni? 2 baritones and bass, the tenor in the history it is really the poor guy, it will never do it Dona Anna! Even Wagner really does not like them, it makes of it incestuous (Tristan, Siegmund, Siegfried) or/and of the idiots (Siegfried, Parsifal, Walter) or/and of the kissing step (Lohengrin, Parsifal, Tristan) or more kissing (Tannhäuser). But different listening thing that tenors, randomly Raimondi, Van Dam, Gobbi, Hotter and consorts and you will see that the appoggiaturas, ornaments, preciosities and other insipidnesses which inflate you are not an obligation (while waiting to learn how to like them)!

2) opera = beautiful canto!

  Not! it is right one period, short in a history quadrisecular, is not necessary to make as Hergé which the opera did not like which for him was limited to the air of Marguerite in Faust de Gounod, you know, singing Castafiore "Je ris de me voir si belle en ce miroir" (I laugh to see me whether beautiful in this mirror) (sublimates it air of "Roi de Thulé" in the Damnation de Faust of Berlioz should it have listened, hold, would be necessary that test you, you would see whether the voices are shitting).

Vickers in Otello

     Beautiful the canto or belcantismo, they is roughly speaking the years 1810-1840, of Rossini with Donizetti, a manner of singing which is characterized by the use of the falsetto voice, the singing exercises, the variations, the trilles. Soprano Cecilia   Bartoli or bass Samuel Ramey made much, after Callas and Sutherland, to give it to the style of the day.

    And then, the appoggiaturas and other improvisations and ornaments which allure the ones and can appear afféteries and insipidnesses are not obligatory, even in beautiful the canto, at least as we have heard it for several decades, since Callas.

3) opera = Italy!

  (and gondole and napoli E tutti frutti) my that E not vero (my E bene trovato) if you me master keys this Italian of cucina, OK, Peri and Monteverdi invented the opera, da Ponte wrote the booklets of divine Momo in the language of Dante, not solum "O sole mio" sed etiam "La donna e mobile", but Rameau, Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet [ Offenbach ] write in french, Moussorgski, Tchaikowski, Rimsky, Borodine in russ, Janacek in czech, Mozart in german also (for 3 oeuvrettes will say bad people it is true, but a small opera of Mozart is worth head of great masterpiece of another), Beethoven, Weber, Wagner, Strauss, Berg of German, Purcell and Britten of English

4) Italian opera = beautiful canto!

    Not, it is a short period (bis repetita placent) of a history of more than 400 years of Pieri with Dusapin, 20-30 years in Italy in first the the 19 2nd century half!
    All the Italian type-setters were not belcantists, had there all those of before 1800, Monteverdi, Vivaldi Pergolese, Salieri. Even Verdi finished with Otello and Falstaff with two Italian operas less the belcantists who are! Veristes were anti beautiful canto, that they judged an obstacle for the expression of the true emotion.

Caruso in Otello

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