Random Jottings

Random at the Proms - Die Walkure

Tuesday found me dithering about going up to London. I know it is Bryn I thought but can I really sit in the Albert Hall in this temperature I asked myself and, yes I could and I did. But oh my goodness it was like a cauldron in there.  Packed house, not sure how many thousands it takes, but just imagine all that body heat, bad enough on an ordinary day but when the temperature was about 90F outside (I don't do centigrade) and over 100F inside, it was unbearable. How the performers coped is a mystery to me and they deserve a gold medal for sheer stamina.

Right, performance first.   Now I have to be honest and say that though the papers have been raving about Barenboim's Ring, I am not so sure. Oh I enjoyed it and Die Walkure has to be done pretty badly not to blow you away, but there was something missing, for me at least. I think it is because I am not overly fond of Daniel B, never have been and I have never deliberately sought him out as either a pianist or a conductor.  My main reason for attending this Prom was that Bryn Terfel was singing Wotan and I will grab any affordable opportunity to hear him do so.

As I am sure you all know by now I first heard Bryn when he appeared in the Cardiff Singer of the World contest about 27 years ago. He sang the first act aria from The Flying Dutchman and I could not believe what I was hearing. I said then that in twenty years time he would be a great Wotan and when he did his first Ring I would be there to hear it, and I was.   It was good then but he really has grown into the part over the last ten years or so and it is now in his heart and soul.  He is a weak, fallible, tortured Wotan, capable of great love but is also deceitful and full of self hatred.   The one shining thing in his life is Brunnhilde and it breaks his heart to have to leave her at the end of this opera surrounded by the ring of fire. His performance was superb. I adore him.

I am not going to comment on the rest of the cast and the orchestra as the papers have had their say on this. They played superbly well and the cast sang superbly well. I am not sure that I like some of Barenboim's tempi which I found somewhat rushed, but as I learned my Wagner with Reginald Goodall who was notoriously slow, that is hardly surprising. I have heard it done faster but less frenetic if that makes sense, but I am nit picking and overall the evening was wonderful.

There were two issues during this Prom which have made the Press the first one being an altercation between DB and his leader of the orchestra (or Konzertmeister) at the end of Act II. It appeared that somebody in the string section cocked up big time and DB let rip about it.   First of all, hardly the leader's fault; secondly, DB had no business to do anything in public in front of a packed Albert Hall and with the standing Prommers less than ten feet away. Discourteous, unprofessional and downright unpleasant and no matter what he may have felt this discussion should have taken place back stage. Pity the performance wasn't on television so the viewers could have seen his disgraceful behaviour.   Apologists have rushed to his defence citing the heat and it made him 'snap' - yeh well the orchestra were feeling it too and so were the soloists; oh he is a perfectionist and a genius and we must bear this in mind - well, I don't care if you are Einstein, there is no excuse for arrogant behaviour.   End. Of.

OK other event - Nina Stemme who was Brunnhilde, came to a grinding halt in the final scene.  In an opera house there is a prompter, but obviously not here and it was clear she was in trouble and had a memory lapse.   Barenboim did not even turn round or give her a cue and it was left to Bryn, walking over and embracing her in character, who gave her her line and on she went and was fine for the rest of the opera.  Again apologists for Barenboim said it would have been difficult to cue her in when he had his back to her and he probably did not want to turn round in case it made her mistake obvious!    Utter bilge - it was already obvious, she looked distressed and everyone in the Albert Hall knew she had missed her line. We all felt for her and there was an audible sigh of relief when she continued.

The end of the opera saw the audience rise as one for this wonderful performance - I was cheering for the performers not the conductor and good to see Bryn, when he came out for his solo bow, going straight across to the leader, before acknowledging the audience, and shaking him warmly by the hand.   

Now I cannot write a post without trying to inject a bit of levity and, let's face it after five hours of Wagner, a little bit will not go amiss.   First up, I was sitting next to a guy who was dripping and I mean dripping with sweat.   We all were and best just to sit as still as possible but this bloke fidgeted, kept wiping his brow and showing the result on his hands to his wife who put up with it for as long as she could and then when the orchestra was playing a loud bit, hissed at him Will you SHUT UP. He did.   He did not return after the interval which I was pleased about as he had been wearing the most ghastly aftershave.    His wife said to me Oh we have got plenty of room now and can stretch out so we both dumped our bags on his seat, kicked off our shoes and attempted to get comfortable.

By this stage of the evening the temperature was awful and I had the bright idea of using the ice cubes from my drink to cool me down. There were lots of them and I ended up shoving them down my bra and then looked up to find two other women looking at me in amazement. One then said My dear what a WONDERFUL idea and promptly tipped her ice down the front of her dress as well, followed by her friend. I think I managed to start off the equivalent of a Mexican Wave as people down the row started hurling ice cubes about their person.   I must say it helped enormously.

I always find it hard to come out into the real world after Wagner.   To step outside in a warm summer's night with traffic and people and buildings and streets always comes as a bit of a shock. I am surprised not to find a Walkyrie or a God around a corner and the music is in my head and will not go away.

Short Tube ride (thank goodness) to Mile End where my daughter Helen had waited up for me and after a lightening cold shower, bliss, got into bed prepared for oblivion. I should have known. After Wagner I can never sleep, I am too elated by it all and did not drop off until nearly 1 am.   At 6am I heard a giggling and a cry of 'Grandma, grandma................'

Hoyotoho!

The Genius of Mozart

Just posted on the Radio 3 'Genius of Mozart' project over on Random Music. Do pop over and take a look.

Dame Joan Sutherland

The lovely diva Dame Joan Sutherland has died and I am so sad to hear this news.  Have written over on Random Music about this lovely lady so do please take a look.

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_music/2010/10/rip-dame-joan-sutherland.html

Lena Geyer - opera diva

I love books which feature opera and recently I reviewed The Maestro's Voice by Roland Vernon which I found enthralling and it set me thinking about other books I have read in which opera plays a large part.  I have to say that I cannot think of many, but I do remember reading the Mills & Boon books of Mary Burchell, pen name of Ida Cook, biographer of Tito Gobbi, who with her sister travelled around Europe attending the opera.  They seemed to be a slightly eccentric pair to put it mildly, neither of them married, both spending their lives indulging their opera obsession,  but during the Second World War, Ida used the income generated from her very successful romantic novelist persona to help Jewish refugees escape to England.  For further information see this article from The Guardian.

One book I remember well from my teenage years is Of Lena Geyer by Marcia Davenport.  I have yet to come across anybody who has heard of or read this book but am hoping that some Random Readers may know of it.

"Her first novel, Of Lena Geyer (1936, reprinted 1982), is the story of a poor Czech girl and of her ascent to fame and fortune, triumph and tragedy. It is a work of fiction, yet Lena is only partly the child of imagination: she is a composite figure of several singers Davenport had known intimately, among them her own mother. The background of the novel opens a wide vista on the golden age of opera both in New York and in Europe".

The author, Marcia Davenport, was the daughter of Alma Gluck, a celebrated American soprano and spent most of her childhood, indeed her whole life, immersed in the world of music and opera.   In the story of Lena Geyer we are introduced to 'real' people.  Lena works with Gustav Mahler at the New York Met who conducts when she sings in Don Giovanni, Lilli Lehmann is her singing teacher and Jean de Reszke is her co-star in Tannhauser. The production notes and details about her performances were so detailed and informative that they sent me scrabbling to the back of the book looking for a non-existent index and references.

When I first read Of Lena Geyer, I knew nothing about Wagner, but once I saw the light and became a devotee, I re-read all the chapters dealing with Wagner performances and found their detail and background information was spot on.  Hardly surprising as Marcia Davenport must have watched all these productions unfolding in front of her.  What an incredible experience.

Much though I love this story, I do feel that in creating the perfect opera diva in Lena Geyer she strikes me as being almost TOO talented.  She seems to be able to switch from Puccini, Mozart and Verdi to the heavier Wagner roles without batting an eyelid, a feat which is well beyond most operatic singers.  To my knowledge, the only singer who did essay this, though I am prepared to be proved wrong, was Maria Callas who sang all the coloratura roles and, in her early years, also sang some Wagner.  She abandoned the heavier German repertoire though for most of her career.

When writing this post I did some Googling and came across a fascinating article about the great Wagnerian soprano, Birgit Nilson, who was stalked for years by a female fan who sent her flowers before each performance and messages containing quotes from 'Of Lena Geyer'.  Read it here.  Quite chilling.

I am sure this is a cult book for all opera buffs.  I have a hardback copy of this on my shelves which I will not part with as it is no longer in print though copies are available on Amazon, including one with this execrable cover.  My particular copy came from Highgate public library where I worked many years ago.  Somehow it was recommended for withdrawal as it was never taken out and so took up shelf space.

As to who actually put forward this recommendation, my lips are sealed......

Catch up on two

Such a lot of reviews awaiting my attention and I seem to be finding my time so constrained at the moment with so much to do, being a grandmother is a fearful and a wonderful thing but all encompassing and tiring, so I am glad to be having a quiet few days to catch up on daily routines and sundries.  My apologies that my posting is not as regular as it normally is, I know I have readers who log on daily to see what I am up to. I also have to respond toi the many lovely comments left on my Post of a few weeks ago about blogging, stats etc and I am very keen to do this.  Perhaps this weekend.

Anyway, have been having a crimefest as you know, but before I embarked on this mad binge read, I read two really interesting books.  First up, The Bed I made by Lucie Whitehouse.  This is the second novel by this author, I reviewed her first, The House at Midnight last year, here.  I enjoyed that one, with slight reservations, but had none with this title which was written with more flow and ease, at least that is how it struck me.

Kate meets Richard, a powerful, fascinating sensual man. They embark on an affair and as the weeks and months go by she wonders why he will not commit to her and then discovers that he is married and has lied to her all throughout their relationship.  She flees to an old coastguard's cottage on the Isle of wight and seeks refuge in this place where she came for childhood holidays and where she feels safe and is comforted.  However, when she arrives it is winter and all is bleak and quiet, unlike her summer memories and shortly after she arrives a local woman goes missing in her boat and there are rumours of suicide.

Kate gradually becomes drawn into the community and begins to tentatively forge friendships and is slowly groping her way back  to normality when she starts receiving calls and emails from Richard who is determined to track her down.  There is a dark and vicious side to him which she discovered too late in the relationship and to her dismay she realises that he is relentless in his pursuit and nothing will stand in his way.

The Bed I Made has a slow start and then gradually builds up the tension and, as the narrative unfolds, we learn more about Richard and begin to feel Kate's fears and terror.  A real page turner and I found I was unable to put it down as events build up to a tense and exciting denouement.  

Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley.  My thanks for this fascinating book go to Louise at Chatto and Windus who, knowing I am an opera lover, thought I might be intrigued by the premise of this title.  What  happens after the death of Madame Butterfly and what happens to Lieutenant Pinkerton and their son who he takes back to America with his new wife?   Pleased to find out that Pinkerton is not quite such an out and out bounder and cad as he is in the Puccini opera, not that that is saying much.

The little half Japanese child becomes Joey and, on the surface, turns into an all American boy but he never really feels at home in the US, feeling the tug of his ancestry and the memories of his mother.  The Pinkertons are successful and comfortably off and Joey has all he could need, but then the recession comes and the family find themselves on the breadline. Life gets worse when Pinkerton joins a protest march to Washington and is accidentally killed when the national guard are sent out by the President to get rid of the protesters.  

"Once they had been hailed as heroes. Now they saw from the newspapers that the President had given them new labels 'Hoover's calling us bums, pacifists, radicals. He's locked the White House gates. Some of the guys have moved into downtown blocks about to be demolished......Nancy read aloud the scrappy pages that arrived from Washington. Later in bed, Joey studied the scrawl, read and reread the words and began to think about his father in a new way"

Joey is a solitary boy and a solitary young man who retains an aloofness from his classmates and friends and this stands him in good stead after Pearl Harbour, when a neighbour informs on him and he finds himself herded into a camp as an a alien, despite the fact the has lived in American all his life and is a US citizen.  He is bitter and angry and more so when he finds that though he is still regarded as an such, the army are happy to negotiate the release of able bodied young men from the internment camps if they will agree to fight for them in the army.

I am always wary of saying a book was a simply terrific read as it seems a vague generalisation, but Butterfly's Shadow is and I found myself totally engrossed in this story which has such depth and power.  Lee Langley has taken  a daring and imaginative leap by using the death of Madame Butterfly as the starting point of this story and there are surprises aplenty awaiting the reader.   Did Madame Butterfly commit suicide? What happened to her and her faithful servant and companion, Suzuki left behind?   As Joey gradually learns more of the events of his childhood he decides to return to Japan to see if he can feel at home there and, perhaps, to seek his mother.

But before he arrives in Nagasaki with the hope that at last he can find an answer to all his many questions, the Enola Gay takes off with its deadly cargo and life is never the same again....

Much more to this marvellous book than I can convey, do read. You won't regret it and Lee Langley now goes on my list of further reading.   I am so lucky on Random to have books sent to me like this. I wouldn't have picked this up or read it if it had not been sent to me and I am perennially grateful to all those publishers who give me books to review, my reading life is so much the richer for their generosity.

I am quietly compiling my list of Books of the Year 2010 and this is going on my list which is growing very quickly indeed as I have had a bumper year so far and we are only at the end of July!

Hot hot hot

Sorry everyone too hot to blog.   Though I don't suffer from hay fever as badly as I used to, my eyes are still bad, itchy and sore and I have just spent the afternoon in my bedroom which is cool and shady.  Fell fast asleep and just coming to now. Had planned all sorts of things to write but it may have to wait and, lovely o lovely, there is a broadcast on BBC2 tonight of Simon Boccanegra by Verdi.  Not one of his operas I am really familiar with but it has the most glorious father/daughter duet in the first act which always reduces me to tears and of course the main reason for watching is that Placido Domingo is singing the title role, which is for a baritone.

This man is a genius. He started off as a baritone and now that his tenor voice is going he is reverting back to his lower and middle register which still sounds rock solid to me.  And this man is SEVENTY next birthday.

Unbelievable.

Also unbelievable that the BBC are actually putting this on an accessible channel all evening.  I may have to lie down again to recover.

Back tomorrow I hope.

SUNDAY - Having watched this my feeling that this is one of my least favourite Verdi operas has been reinforced.  The lovers are particularly wet and annoying but the heart of Simon B is, naturally, in the title role and here was Placido quite magnificent, not only was his voice wonderful (though having watched a broadcast of Don Carlos on the BBC and finding Villazon also magnificent when he was anything but in the House I wonder if the BBC had mucked about with the sound levels which they do) but his acting was top notch as always.  Full of humanity and warmth and at the end a standing ovation from the audience.  There was a sense of farewell about it all as I think this will be the last time he sings here.  I could be wrong. I hope so.  After all I saw him sing Siegmund in Die Walkure just a few years ago and was totally stunned by his performance and the sound of his voice.

Wonderful

The Maestro's Voice - Roland Vernon

I love opera. To me it is the perfect art form, it has everything - drama, passion, glorious singing, acting, death, murder, vengeance, love, sacrifice - each opera usually has an amalgam of these properties and if you add to that singers on top form then the entire experience is simply sensational. Doesn't always happen but the chance of a glorious performance is always lurking and when it happens, then there is nothing better.

So when I was asked if I would like a copy of The Maestro's Voice I said Oh yes please and when I started reading it in the middle of the night after one of my recently restless attempts at sleeping, it kept me awake until the sun rose. I then finally fell asleep but grabbed it again as soon as I could and did not put it down until finished.

Wow, what a simply terrific read.  I knew nothing about the author but see from the press release that Roland Vernon was the winner of the inaugural Daily Mail First Novel Award (mem: must get hold of his first book now) and he himself used to be a professional musician so he knows what he is talking about when it comes to opera.

"New York 1926: Rocco Campobello, the great tenor, one of the most revered entertainers in the world, collapses on stage.  He emerges from this brush a changed man: a fallen but enlightened colossus. Casting off the mantle of celebrity, he embarks on ajounrey into his dark and sinister past which takes him back to his impoverished early life and to the city that made him: Naples"

Rocco remembers his father who he abandoned when he became an opera star, he remembers his childhood friend and fellow singer, who he betrayed  and also abandoned, a woman he had an affair with who he left and ignored when she told him she was expecting his child - he returns to Naples to make reparation for all his mistakes in his life and in so doing, finds himself at odds with his wife Molly whose life is totally wrapped up in his and whose identity and self esteem depends on her position as the consort of the most famous tenor in the world.

There are also darker forces at work - Mussolini is rising to power, Rocco's old friend and sponsor Don Graziana, in reality a high ranking member of the Family, moves against him when he learns that the tenor has decided that his career is ended. This coincides with the return of his son Bruno, who hates Rocco for being favoured by his father and who is eager to take over his position. 

Rocco meets the widow of his childhood friend who has a young,handsome and talented son with a tenor voice who he, in turn, takes under his wing and becomes his mentor. Rocco then finds himself falling in love with the widow......

My goodness me, I thought, this is a true operatic drama with dark forces and jealousy, love and hate all intertwined.   The book's narrative moves at a positive operatic pace, each scene seemingly aching for an aria, a duet, a trio, a tenor singing an impassioned love song, an orchestra in full flow. On comes the evil enemy, a bass, has to be and dark cello chords in the orchestra.  It is wonderfully done and the writing is also like a piece of music, it enthralls and grips and urges you on to the final conclusion.

The musical background and the life of an opera singer is fascinating.   All opera audiences, whether they will admit to it or not, are waiting for a singer to fail - will the tenor reach his top C? Will he be as good as he was in Trovatore in Rome last year?  How much longer can his career last?   His voice is not as good as it used to be, his vibrato is getting worse and so on and so forth.   We are also pretty merciless about all this - opera lovers are pretty unsympathetic on the whole - we also tend to contrast a current singer with someone in the past, someone much better (Oh you should have heard Callas do it my dear....).  The terror and hard work which all opera singers feel and do is well hidden from the audience and the life they lead, which appears glamorous to outsiders, is not so wonderful all the time.  There is hard, hard work and the knowledge that somebody is going to come along and take your place as soon as you show signs of failure.  So, It is in this context that we, the reader, feel the shock and horror of Campobello's serious collapse with which the books opens and the panic when it seems it may all be over.

I have said that this book moves forward like a four act opera and the final act is drama of the highest with the denouement taking place in the opera house itself with  Campobello having to be the most cunning of them all to fool his enemies and to achieve his desire.  (Thoughts of the ending of Godfather III came to mind when reading this section - that appalling ending is also in an opera house with the tension building up with the glorious music).   By the time the reader reaches these final pages we are all with Campobello and we are willing him to defeat his enemies and emerge victorious. 

And at the end, he realises what his talent has done to him:

"I tried to copy him but my father and I were different. He was master of his own soul. But me? My master was something else. I gave my life to the Voice, every ounce of me and so my soul withered away, a hollow little hell inside. With its own rats, eating away, spreading poison.......there's nothing left of me.....I have become an empty man"

It all appears to be too late.....or is it?

Stupendo Maestro....

Philip Langridge

I am not putting this post on Random Arts where it belongs because I am still building up visitors over there and I want this to be seen by as many as possible.

This is Philip Langridge who died on Friday. An English tenor with one of those voices which are difficult to slot into a particular fache, he seemed to be able to turn his hand to most things. I gather he said that he never had a voice which would 'make me a Pavarotti but rather a useful one which meant he had the chance of a varied career'.  I am paraphrasing his actual words, but it is typical of this man that he should be so modest.

Many years ago when I sang in the London Oriana Choir in London, we did a performance of the St John Passion and Philip was singing the Evangelist, a role which he sang many many times, and apart from the fact that he was quite superb and totally committed, I also remember what fun he was.  He came in wearing a long black coat with a university striped scarf slung round his neck and he and Brian Rayner Cook (baritone taking part) were exchanging back chat and jokes all the way through the rehearsal, save when it came to their turn to sing when they were immediately ready, at one stage BRC in the pulpit declaiming to Philip Langridge below much to the delight of all the choir.  Come the evening, come the performance, immaculately turned out (he always looked so elegant) he produced a stunning Evangelist that left me, hardly the most enthusiastic Bach fan in the world, almost in tears.

A few years ago, at the age of 67 he sang Loge in Das Rheingold at Covent Garden, the night that I attended because Bryn was doing his first ever Wotan.   I was unaware of the rest of the cast so thrilled was I to be seeing Bryn, but when I spotted Philip Langridge was performing as Loge, I was astounded and wondered how his voice would be now and how good he would be.   Silly of me to worry, he was simply splendid and garnered excellent reviews.   While the world is amazed and full of awe at Placido Domingo performing  on the world's opera stages at the age of 69, we should also remember Philip who did the same and with great style.

When I heard of his death, I was genuinely upset as I felt I had lost a friend and somebody who was part of my singing and musical life.  He will be much missed.

Further articles in the Telegraph and the Guardian

Bijou postette

New post up on Random Music. Do read - am trying to get the traffic up on this blog!

Tenor - History of a Voice by John Potter

Because I love opera and have done all my life, Yale University Press very kindly sent me a copy of this book for me to review.   Very much a 'newbie'  as far as receiving books from this publishing house is concerned, but the thing that has struck me already is just how gorgeous these books are.  Beautifully printed, high production values, paper you want to stroke and the whole package just resulting in a book that you want to hold just for its sheer sensory pleasure even before reading its content.  I am currently half way through the  Dickens biography by Michael Slater also sent to me and, apart form being a simply magnificent book (of which more later), it is also gorgeous to the touch.

OK back to the Tenor.  I was married to one of these strange creatures, for they are a race apart I can assure you, for some 23+ years and over the years became used to the endless practicing, in music room and in bath (Patrick's rendition of Nessun Dorma one evening bringing riotous applause from all out neighbours who were listening in), the sucking of cough sweets, the panic when anybody with so much as a sniffle came within a radius of 100 yards (with two young children this was problematical), the warming up, the repetition of listening to the same phrase over and over again as he learned a new role/lieder/oratorio.  This was all part of my life and I just took it as normal - heaven knows why when it was anything but.  So I came to this book with the working knowledge of what a life of a tenor was all about.

I went to my first opera when I was about 12. It was the Barber of Seville sung in English and I saw it at the then Sadlers Wells opera.  Sung in English with the Almaviva short and fat I was somewhat disappointed (this year saw Juan Diego Flores in this role at Covent Garden - oh my goodness) and it was not until I was taken to see Aida at Covent Garden that the gloriousness and wonderfulness of this art form burst upon me and I have been an ardent fan ever since.

The tenor has all the best tunes, we know this already though I always rather liked a baritone and I could go on about hat but won't as I am reviewing this totally fascinating book.  I was expecting something a little learned and rather difficult to read and though, indeed, it has obviously been heavily researched and sourced it is written in a relaxed and informative style that enabled me to zap through this in one morning with huge enjoyment.

Difficult to pick out a part of Tenor to concentrate on as overall it is just such an interesting book.  Best to run through the chapter headings I think to give you an idea of the stages in this history:  Prehistory of the Voice; Handel, Mozart and the Tenor-Castrato connection (this always makes me wince); The Tenor as Artist; Caruso and the Italian Succession; France; Russia, Romantic Tenor Hero; Heldentenor.

These are just a few of the aspects of the Tenor voice covered and I had more interest in some than the others because of my personal interest.  The section on Heldentenors and Wagner was, of course, one of the first chapters I read.  One famous such tenor Melchior, who was brave enough to leave the Festival in Bayreuth because of its politicization, a very career risking move, appeared at Covent Garden and became a long standing favourite at the Met in New York.  Melchior became involved in radio, television and theatre work so the 'cross over' singer is not a new phenomenon.

Later in this section Cooper discusses Rene Kollo, who I saw sing and then Siegfried Jerusalem, who I remember well as a sexy and gorgeous Siegmund in a televised Ring shown on the BBC back in the seventies (yes an entire Ring on the BBC - can you imagine that now?  No need to answer that). 

Then James King, who I never saw in Wagner, but remember hearing him in a dreadful performance of Il Trovatore at ROH - I can assume he must have been having an off night as I have heard him sing beautifully on record and TV - this was the only time I saw him live, sadly.  Jon Vickers - magnificent voice and though I never saw him live I have his recording of Fidelio and Othello on my shelves.

I have concentrated only on the Heldentenor section of Cooper's excellent book, but of course I cannot possibly leave this review without mentioning the Three Tenors.  Difficult to emphasise just how much impact this one concert had on the spread of opera worldwide - I remember watching it with my husband and two daughters and as the evening wore on the excitement and sheer total thrill of watching Carreras, Pavarotti and Domingo producing sound after glorious sound was overwhelming.   While I deplore some of the current so called 'opera singers' promoted by record companies and a certain radio station, and who are nothing of the kind (you know who you are...), I have to rein in my snobbish tendencies and remind myself that I am just so glad that more and more people are listening to opera in any shape or form.  It is the greatest art form in the world, well in my humble opinion anyway) and the tenor voice, whether we like it or not, is the one that has a visceral quality that will grab you and thrill you. 

I have been present in an opera house and heard Carlo Bergonzi (elegant, honeyed phrasing, not a nasty sound anywhere, sublime); went to a dress rehearsal and then a performance of Verdi's I Lombardi when I heard Carreras for the first time and practically had to be carried out on a stretcher; Pavarotti and Sutherland in Lucia di Lammermore when the Sextet brought proceedings to a halt while the audience shrieked and screamed; Domingo in Verdi and more recently in Wagner, which I will never EVER forget; further back in time I have heard James King, Alberto Remedios (ENO Ring-magnificent), Charles Craig (long forgotten English tenor, mentioned here,  who had a wonderful voice - saw him as Radames in Aida), Juan Diego Flores in Barber - well I could go on and on and add to that television appearances and all the opera recordings I own.

I cannot finish without mentioning Giuseppe di Stefano an Italian tenor who smoked too much, drank too much and womanised too much and who wrecked his voice in the end, but for ten glorious years was THE Italian tenor.  It was the recordings of Italian opera with Di Stefano, Callas and Tito Gobbi that I played over and over again as a teenager (played the records so often they resembled lace doyleys at the end) and I have never forgotten his full bodied and totally committed approach.  When I first heard the young Carreras I was struck how his phrasing was similar to that of Di Stefano, and then read that he had been his hero ....so the tradition goes on and on.

I am straying wildly form the main reason for this post which is to review this book, but then I do tend to get carried away when I discuss opera as I love it sooooo much but back to Tenor - the History of a voice..

And what do I think of it?

Totally fascinating, meticulously researched, a book covering the history of the tenor voice up to date, can be kept on your shelves as a book to be taken down and referred to at any time, flowing style, total honesty about past and present singers and, in short, a simply marvellous book. And, as I mentioned above, the tradition continues with new and exciting singers coming to the fore.  We may have lost Pavarotti and Carreras now retire, we still have Domingo but even this superb singer cannot go on for ever, and it is a comforting thought that the tenor voice will never die, the chapter Post War Losses and Gains makes this very clear.  I gather that John Potter is a tenor himself so he knows all about his subject.

I close with this rather touching anecdote about Francesco Tamagno who was of the first tenors to record. Nowadays when all singers can hear their own voices at the touch of a button of the click on an iPod, it is difficult to realise how a singer must have felt to hear himself for the first time:

".....but to watch Tamagno as he stood by machine, at times leaning lovingly over it, listening all the while with profound enjoyment to the tones of his own robust, colossal voice. From time to time he would ejaculate with a broad smile "Che bellazza" or "Com e bello, non e vero?"

Isn't that lovely?