Tuesday 25 September 2007

Googlebot kills tenor!

Giuseppe Sabbatini in La damnation de Faust, Parma, 2007

Trying to find the Voce di Tenore web site via Google? For some inexplicable reason, on September 15th, Google dropped all the pages on the main site from its search engine. Sister sites Carreras Media, Carreras Gallery, and Opera Polls have fortunately escaped the deadly ministrations of the Googlebot... so far.

The main site may eventually be liberated from the Underworld. In the meantime, if you're searching for items about Juan Diego Flórez, José Carreras, Roberto Alagna, or Giuseppe Sabbatini which you think might be on the main site, use the Yahoo, Altavista, or MSN search engines instead.

Cor mio, deh, non languire.

Thursday 13 September 2007

Thunder and lightning


Why should I be the only one who gets to 'enjoy' them? A selection of disgruntled and/or demented emails sent to voceditenore.com (original spelling and punctuation preserved)...

I. "One is amazed to see such limited unerstanding of singers as singers and artists and the time spent on the four listed, who seem to be favourites. It is so parochial. One aria in his day and you would forget all the tenors yowling their various arias and that was - Vickers - none you mention are in his league - they yowl for pretty notes - Carreras next to Vickers - Alagna next to Vickers - they are nothing . But then I am talking the real artist as against mere tenors most who have resonance where their brains ought to be as in the three tenors garbage . Expand !!!!!!!!!"

II. "On your web site - VOCE DI TENORE - there were one or two references to Battistini. Why is this? When I was trained in St. Louis we never tried to even suggest fatuous comparisons between past opera greats and the present crop of singers who may or may not be great one day. I guess what I'm saying is that just as Charlemagne had to send to Ireland for 6 monks who knew Latin Grammar intimately and scholarly and bring them back to Paris to lead the massive effort to reconstruct the "lost French language" of that time, we must find a music czar who will finally pronounce Enrico Caruso as number 1 and the remainder would be identified by a worldwide survey supervised by a committee that includes the United Nations, one ex-Pope, one ex-American President, Bill Clinton, and one Jewish banker to be named after Peace comes to the Middle East. Other than that I see no solution to this harrowing experience of living with wet and insipid opinionators who "sell certain singers" as actually being competent and alive and well enscounsed upon a fast tract to operatic stardom."

III. "Dear sir I want Villazon's items."