Abigaille + Marisa Galvany = A Reason to Live

Gosh I wish I had been in the audience for this! Is this from the 70's the late 60'? Who knows! Who cares!!

Prima Donna Galvany was an exciting dramatic soprano whose powerful instrument and take charge stage manner brought much joy to opera lovers like me back in the day.

Here, in this scene from Verdi's Nabucco, she is is playing Nabucco's imperious daughter, Abigaille, who has just seized control of the kingdom. At the end of this scene she orders her father (her own father! teh excitment!) arrested. And if you study her movements as he shakes off the guards who are leading him away, she is laughing at him. Bad bad bad!! In fact, study all her movements at the end. She brings her arms fast down after the high e flat---

(which she just pulls [thnx!] out of the ether [drawing on an account the pin number to which only she knows, kids])

---as though to say--- if the kingdom weren't mine before this note, after it it would be!---and that e flat is mighty nice, what bravura singing! She then sweeps her costume back to show dad that she so so so so so so so means business. She laughs at him, as already noted, and then up go the arms as she faces an idol or something that is at the back of the stage--- TREMBLE, PROFANI, I AM TEH QUEEN!!!

Out the Window This Morning

The wind had just shifted bringing cool winds up from the South. There were some showers riding on these winds.

Pictures of Anna Sure to Please My Dad!

Hey dad, we could take Anna to target practice!!! That would be pretty boss, don't you think?

In any case, don't #$%^ with Trebs is henceforth the watchword, surely.




The facets of Anna are fascinating in their unfolding, to put it mixedmetaphorically [I was seduced by the effs, your honour; the siren-song of alliteration made me do it!]

And, you know, a certain Romanian diva recently was less than complimentary about la Trebazoid. Hmmm. [Sotto voce to Angela, "cuidado, chica, k? justsayin' kthnxbi."]

(via Sieglinde's Diaries)

Eleanor Steber Sings the Pagliacci Aria!

Sorry not to be posting lately. There is just so much to do around here. Teaching of course and Chapter Five is well-along but it just takes so much time and sometimes I feel like I am in among the weeds near a pond and not on the royal road that will lead me home and to the finish.

But enough about that--- for the moment.

Here is Eleanor Steber, American Super-Star Soprano from 50s.

I love her! Have done so for just forever! If you run across the old recording of Barber's Vanessa, get it and you will hear her doing an excellent job with the title role.

Her voice has the sound of a well-schooled American diva from the middle of last century, which is not so surprising of course.

I dote on her rolled "r"s. Delightful.

You hear often a metaphor for good operatic singing-- that you have your capital that you preserve and that you sing off the interest. A solid base of masterful and patiently acquired technique makes the singing well-founded and the sound the audience hears is an epiphenomenon of a much larger structure. Understanding singing in this way means that the good singer does not throw him or herself into the role and lose control. Steber's singing here recalls such a metaphor (which is ironic, for she evidently did do things later that she should not have and, they say, ruined her voice [one of these roles was Marie in Wozzeck!])

AND, and and and and, don't miss the lovely control of articulation and volume from about the 44 to 35 second mark--- que bella!!--- AND, and and and and, she also takes no breath here. People!!

Take it away Eleanor!:

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