Voce di Baritono

Voce di Tenore averages about 700 visitors a day. Yesterday there were over 1500, and most of them were heading straight to this page about a baritone. Perhaps because of this? The all-time attendance record still goes to a tenor, however. There were 6500 visitors on December 11, 2006.

Odyssey: Olga Averino

Richard Dyer, The Boston Globe, January 21, 1989...

The soprano Olga Averino died Tuesday night in her sleep. She was 93, and didn't get out much. But she was teaching up until the very end. She lived every moment to the full, and music was at the heart of her great heart. Open on her piano when this writer went to see her a few years ago was a well-worn copy of Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier." At one point, she gestured toward the music. "It is necessary."

"You really ought to go and see Olga Averino," said Phyllis Curtin about four years ago. "She was the most exciting woman I ever met; she still is." Curtin, currently dean of Boston University's School for the Arts was for more than 30 years one of America's most prominent opera and concert singers, and an important part of her preparation for that career was her study with Olga Averino. Curtin was a political science student at Wellesley when Averino "opened the door to the world of music" for her.

Olga Averino lived amidst some memorabilia of a remarkable past - in her apartment there were inscribed photographs of the composers Glazunov and Rachmaninoff, the pianist Siloti, the conductors Koussevitzky and Mitropoulos with whom she sang, the Boston Symphony violinist Paul Fedorovsky, who was her husband. She made short shrift of a remark about how people like these had set impossible standards. "On the contrary," she said, "they show you what is entirely possible."

Born in czarist Russia, in 1917 Averino fled with her infant daughter across the country to Vladivostok and down into Manchuria; from there she ultimately made her way to Boston in 1924. She was a regular soloist with the Boston Symphony during the Koussvetzky era, and sang in the Beethoven 9th, Bach's B-Minor Mass, Ravel's "Sheherazade," Debussy's "The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian," Berg's "Lied der Lulu." She sang early music with the pioneering original-instrument groups of her day and a lot of what was then modern music, Ravel's "Chansons madecasses" and Schoenberg's Second Quartet, which she performed with half a dozen leading quartets. She knew Ravel, Stravinsky and Schoenberg, and toured in joint recital with Piatigorsky. She obviously knew what she was doing, because she sang well for a very long time - her farewell recital was at the Longy School when she was 74.

Throughout her life in America she also taught singing at Wellesley, the Longy School and finally the New School of Music, sometimes taking as many as 50 pupils a week. She also wrote a small, privately published book called "The Principles and Art of Singing" that is a distillation of a lifetime's discoveries about an elusive art.

Just a year ago Olga Averino returned to the Longy School after an absence of several years to teach a series of master classes, and everything she had to say reflected her profound musicianship, vast experience, good sense and high humor; she was still opening the door to the world of music.

Very little seemed to upset her beyond the presence of cameras ("I have retired from having my picture taken") and any sign of a relaxation of artistic standards. She could be very outspoken about what she didn't like in the work of celebrity musicians (of Leonard Bernstein she remarked, "he reacts to the music so much there's nothing left for the public to feel." But with a student she could be infinitely patient ("It's very good -- that's why I'm stopping you," she said, relishing her own joke. "What's desirable is one thing. What happens is something else"). As she talked about the songs the students sang, she would occasionally indicate rhythms and pitches, usually transposed an octave down, but once or twice, she would forget that she was past 90 and "didn't sing anymore," and there, serenely floating in the air, would be the sound that Tchaikovsky's favorite tenor once likened to diamonds and pearls, the voice of a young woman, which Olga Averino always was.

Phyillis Curtin in 'What's the Greatest Voice You Ever Heard?', Opera News, September 1999...

Impatient of sloppy musicianship, demanding emotional commitment, she gave me a vision of the art of singing that led me the rest of my life. On the few occasions when she sang, I learned what a great singing artist is.


Greg Sandow in 'View from the East: Learning from Proust', New Music Box, April 1, 2004...

Olga Averino, a voice teacher with whom I studied many years ago, would bring her students all together for a class. Somebody would sing, and, in her Russian accent, Olga typically would ask, "What emotion does the person in the song feel?" "The person in the song is angry," the student would reply. "But which kind of anger?" Olga would demand, and then sing the opening of the song six times, in six precisely differentiated shades of anger, as distinct as six different people.)

Olga Averino, Principles and Art of Singing, 1989...

"The voice is the instrument, but the performer is the imagination. The instrumentalist knows where the printed notes are to be found on his instrument. His technique consists in the rapidity and sureness with which his hands can find the keys of positions which correspond to those printed notes. But this is not the case with the singer’s instrument. The singer must imagine the desired sound, hear it very clearly, and feel the urge to produce it. This urge is the very essence of vocal sound. The singer then releases the breath and an audible sound is produced. But the singer’s vocal chords—the source of the audible sound—are involuntary membranes operated directly by energy and therefore they cannot be trained. Because of this fact, vocal technique is of a very different kind from that of the instrumentalists. It is energy and imagination that produce the song, but posture, breath, and speech align the instrument. The singer who coordinates these elements well and whose imagination works freely is indeed well trained. "

"Singing is an expression of life, and if you have no time for your life, how can you sing? Quality always needs time, not only in music but also in life itself."

Ascolta gli angioletti

Detail from a Neapolitan crèche by Angelo Rossi

«Mille cherubini in coro»
Text: Edoardo Senatra

Dormi, dormi,
Sogna, piccolo amor mio.
Dormi, sogna,
Posa il capo sul mio cor.

Mille cherubini in coro
Ti sorridono dal ciel.
Una dolce canzone
T'accarezza il crin
Una man ti guida lieve
Fra le nuvole d'or,
Sognando e vegliando
Su te, mio tesor,
Proteggendo il tuo cammin.

Dormi, dormi,
Sogna, piccolo amor mio.
Dormi, sogna,
Posa il capo sul mio cor.

Chiudi gli occhi,
Ascolta gli angioletti,
Dormi, dormi,
Sogna, piccolo amor.

Googling III

Juan Diego Flórez, how do they spell thee? Let me count the ways...

Juan Diego Flores
Juan Deigo Flores
Juan Diega Florez
Juan Diegi Florez
Juan Diego Flors
Juan Diego Floes
Juan Diego Floris
Juan Diego Flowers
Juan Diego Florees
Juan Diego Florenz
Juann Diego Florez
Juena Diego Florez
Juan Diablo Florez

They still managed to find him though.

See also... Googling I and II

Fiat lux

Googlebot has finally released Voce di Tenore from the outer darkness. Says Mr. Shelley...

Ten thousand columns in that quivering light
Distinct, between whose shafts wound far away
The long and labyrinthine aisles, more bright
With their own radiance than the Heaven of Day;
And on the jasper walls around there lay
Paintings, the poesy of mightiest thought,
Which did the Spirit's history display;
A tale of passionate change, divinely taught,
Which, in their wingèd dance, unconscious Genii wrought.

Ten thousand flowers in spring...

Plácido Domingo conducting Erwin Schrott

Puerto Rico, October 9, 2007

Ten thousand flowers in spring,
the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer,
snow in winter.
If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.

The Wu-Men Kuan

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.

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."

En fermant les yeux...

En fermant les yeux, je vois

Là-bas... une humble retraite,

Une maisonnette

Toute blanche au fond des bois!

Sous ses tranquilles ombrages

Les clairs et joyeux ruisseaux,

Où se mirent les feuillages,

Chantent avec les oiseaux!

C'est le paradis!... Oh non!

Tout est là triste et morose,

Car il y manque une chose,

Il y faut encore Manon!

Act II, Manon, Jules Massenet

Julián Gayarre

"A virile, vibrant tenor voice with the most beautiful timbre. When it comes from the chest, it exerts an irresistible power, penetrating the ear and the soul like the roar of the sea... When it comes from the head, it is radically transformed, and the voice that just a moment before had resonated with ardent and captivating intensity, is suddenly transformed into something very small and very gentle, a feminine voice, a kind of sigh that fills one with emotion, delight, ecstasy. Gayarre's voice is the most perfect that one could desire, and undoubtedly the most perfect that exists today."
Critic and musicologist, Antonio Peña y Goñi, in Arte y patriotísmo: Gayarre y Masini, 1882

“He had a voice of wonderful sweetness, full of a strange fascination that brought to mind the sound of angels and caused shivers of emotion. I never heard another voice its equal. It was the voice of paradise, an angelic voice”
Italian soprano, Gemma Bellincioni, in her memoirs - Roberto Stagno E Gemma Bellincioni Intimi, 1943

"The stage artist's glory is like one night's dream. A painter, a poet, a composer leaves behind his works. From us, what is left?... Nothing, absolutely nothing. One generation that says to another: "How Gayarre sang!"... When my throat says to me: "I can no longer sing", what will remain of Gayarre? A name that will last as long as the people who heard me, but after that no one. Believe me, Julio my friend, our glory does not last longer, nor is it worth more, than cigar smoke."
Julián Gayarre in a letter to Julio Enciso shortly before his death in 1890

Julián Gayarre began his career in 1869 in Varese, as Nemorino in L'elisir d'amore. His last performance was on December 8, 1889 in Madrid, as Nadir in Les pêcheurs de perles. He died 25 days later at the age of 45. There are no known recordings of his voice.

Not all heroes are tenors...

Erwin Schrott in the title role of Don Giovanni

Royal Opera House Covent Garden, 11 June 2007

Deh, vieni alla finestra, o mio tesoro,
Deh, vieni a consolar il pianto mio.
Se neghi a me di dar qualche ristoro,
Davanti agli occhi tuoi morir vogl'io!
Tu ch'hai la bocca dolce più del miele,
Tu che il zucchero porti in mezzo al core!
Non esser, gioia mia, con me crudele!
Lasciati almen veder, mio bell'amore!

Don Giovanni, Atto II, Scena 3

Man's a phenomenon, one knows not what,
And wonderful beyond all wondrous measure;
'T is pity though, in this sublime world, that
Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes Sin's a pleasure;
Few mortals know what end they would be at,
But whether Glory, Power, or Love, or Treasure,
The path is through perplexing ways, and when
The goal is gained, we die, you know -and then -
Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto I, cxxxiv

"Erwin Schrott is the most sardonic, seductive, witty and mercurial Don Giovanni I have ever seen. This hugely gifted Uruguayan bass oozes sex appeal, but he doesn't just preen his good looks and firm pecs - this is a subtle and thoughtful characterisation of an insouciantly self-centred aristocrat, sung with clarity and sensitivity. His comic timing was immaculate, the champagne aria fizzed, the serenade melted, and he was dragged down to hell with splendid heroic defiance. An enthralling star turn."
Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph, 13 June 2007

Orpheus

Orphée devant Pluton et Proserpine

François Perrier (1590 - 1650)

Quels chants doux et touchants
Quels accords ravissants!
De si tendres accents
Ont su nous désarmer
Et nous charmer.
Qu'il descende aux enfers!
Les chemins sont ouverts.
Tout cède à la douceur
De son art enchanteur,
Il est vainqueur.
Act II, Scene 1, Orphée et Eurydice, Christoph Willibald Gluck

For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews,
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans
Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.
Act III, Scene 2, Two Gentlemen of Verona, William Shakespeare

"Orpheus, the mythic musician of Thrace, who charmed men, gods, savage beasts, the very rocks with his song, was the quintessential operatic hero. His story was an explicit demonstration of the power of music, an operatic archetype. Orpheus, most celebrated of mythological musicians, specifically harnessed the rhetorical powers of music for dramatic ends, to persuade the god of the Underworld to release Eurydice from the bonds of death..."
Ellen Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre

Googling II

More search terms that led people to Voce di Tenore. The primary interest here was clearly not vocal technique...

macho latino
cantanti nudi a casa
juan diego florez sexy
Juan Diego Florez women
juan diego florez pants
Florez hunk
Alagna and nudi
tenor guapo
plantureuses en chaleur
nude russian youthful Girls
caracteristicas fisicamente de juan diego flores
muscoli finti in rilievo
costumi streep tease

And of course...

Maxim Vengerov's girlfriend
rene pape girlfriend
Joshua Bell girlfriend
Juan Diego Florez girlfriend

See also... Googling I and III

Sunset...

Il tramonto by Andrea Maffei (1798-1885)
Set to music by Giuseppe Verdi in 6 Romanze, No. 1

Amo l'or del giorno che muore
Quando il sole già stanco declina,
E nell'onde di queta marina
Veggo il raggio supremo languir.
In quell'ora mi torna nel core
Un'età più felice di questa;
In quell'ora dolcissima e mesta
Volgo a te, cara donna, il sospir.

L'occhio immoto ed immoto il pensiero,
Io contemplo la striscia lucente
Che mi vien dal seren, dal sereno occidente
La quiete solcando, solcando del mar
E desio di quell'aureo sentiero
Ravviarmi sull'orma infinita
Quasi debba la stanca mia vita
Ad un porto di pace guidar.

Happy Birthday Rossini!

Gioachino Rossini

Born February 29th, 1792

"Rossini, in music, is the genius of sheer animal spirits. It is a species as inferior to that of Mozart, as the cleverness of a smart boy is to that of a man of sentiment; but it is genius nevertheless."

- Leigh Hunt, Going to the Play Again (1828)

"The first characteristic of Rossini's music is speed - a speed which removes from the soul all the sombre emotions that are so powerfully evoked within us by the slow strains in Mozart. I find also in Rossini a cool freshness, which, measure by measure, makes us smile with delight."

- Stendahl, Life of Rossini (1824)

"The point is... a person feels good listening to Rossini. All you feel like listening to Beethoven is going out and invading Poland. Ode to Joy indeed. The man didn't even have a sense of humor. I tell you... there is more of the Sublime in the snare-drum part of the La Gazza Ladra than in the whole Ninth Symphony."

- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

Werther

Nancy Fabiola Herrera and Giuseppe Filianoti

Las Palmas, 2006

From Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774, The Sorrows of Young Werther (Translated from the German by R. Dillon Boylan)...

August 21

In vain do I stretch out my arms toward her when I awaken in the morning from my weary slumbers. In vain do I seek for her at night in my bed, when some innocent dream has happily deceived me, and placed her near me in the fields, when I have seized her hand and covered it with countless kisses. And when I feel for her in the half confusion of sleep, with the happy sense that she is near, tears flow from my oppressed heart; and, bereft of all comfort, I weep...

Googling I

Some of the more intriguing search terms that brought people to Voce di Tenore...

Juan Diablo Florez
juan diego fires
costume de bain Alagna
Juan Pons furniture
baritones are men
Franco Spanking Drawings
french house on e-bay
come si fanno i vestiti dei toreri
colorful sleeveless undershirts for boys

See also... Googling II and III

Stage Fright

Enrico Caruso on stage fright from Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing, New York, 1909...

The most visible phase of the opera singer’s life when he or she is in view of the public on the stage is naturally the one most intimately connected in the minds of the majority of people with the singer’s personality, and yet there are many happenings, amusing or tragic, from the artist’s point of view, which, though often seen, are as often not realized in their true significance by the audience in front of the orchestra. One might naturally think that a singer who has been appearing for years on the operatic stage in many lands would have overcome or outgrown that bane of all public performers, stage fright. Yet such is far from the case, for it seems as though the greater the artistic temperament the more truly the artist feels and the more of himself he puts into the music he sings the greater his nervousness beforehand. The latter is of course augmented if the performance is a first night and the opera has as yet been untried before a larger public.

This advance state of miserable physical tension is the portion of all great singers alike, though in somewhat varying degrees, and it is interesting to note the forms it assumes with different people. In many it is shown by excessive irritability and the disposal to pick quarrels with anyone who comes in contact with them. This is an unhappy time for the luckless “dressers,” wig man and stage hands, or even fellow artists who encounter such singers before their first appearance in the evening. Trouble is the portion of all such.

In other artists the state of mind is indicated by a stern set countenance and a ghastly pallor, while still others become slightly hysterical, laugh uproariously at nothing or burst into weeping. I have seen a big six-foot bass singer, very popular at the opera two or three seasons ago, walking to and fro with the tears running down his cheeks for a long time before his entrance, and one of our greatest coloratura prima donnas has come to me before the opera, sung a quavering note in a voice full of emotion and said, with touching accents: “See, that is the best I can do. How can I go on so?”

I myself have been affected often by such fright, though not always in the extreme degree above described. This nervousness, however, frequently shows itself in one’s performance in the guise of indifferent acting, singing off the key, etc. Artists are generally blamed for such shortcomings, apparent in the early part of the production, when, as a matter of fact, they themselves are hardly conscious of them and overcome them in the course of the evening. Yet the public, even critics, usually forget this fact and condemn an entire performance for faults which are due at the beginning to sheer nervousness.

Giacomo V

Juan Diego Flórez in La Donna del Lago

From Sir Walter Scott, 1810, The Lady of the Lake,
Canto First, XXI...

On his bold visage middle age
Had slightly pressed its signet sage,
Yet had not quenched the open truth
And fiery vehemence of youth;
Forward and frolic glee was there,
The will to do, the soul to dare,
The sparkling glance, soon blown to fire,
Of hasty love or headlong ire.
His limbs were cast in manly could
For hardy sports or contest bold;
And though in peaceful garb arrayed,
And weaponless except his blade,
His stately mien as well implied
A high-born heart, a martial pride,
As if a baron's crest he wore,
And sheathed in armor bode the shore.
Slighting the petty need he showed,
He told of his benighted road;
His ready speech flowed fair and free,
In phrase of gentlest courtesy,
Yet seemed that tone and gesture bland
Less used to sue than to command.

Gian Carlo Menotti

Time Magazine, May 1, 1950, on the Broadway premiere of The Medium...

"On a rain-dashed afternoon in the spring of 1947 a lean, tense-looking man in his mid-30s walked into Manhattan's Edison Hotel, just off Broadway, and registered for a room. He specified that it must overlook 47th Street. Once upstairs, he walked quickly to the window, looked down on the street below, satisfied himself that the view was right, then turned away and began to pace the floor, chainsmoking cigarettes. Finally he settled down to a vigil at the window. With alert brown eyes he watched the bustling traffic on the sidewalks. How many of the passers-by would stop at the Ethel Barrymore Theater across the street? How many, once they stopped, would buy tickets for the show that had just opened?"

Gian Carlo Menotti died on February 1, 2006 at the age of 95.