Piangea cantando... O salce! Salce!... Ave Maria
Otello
Giuseppe Verdi
Farewell Concert at age 65
Covent Garden, London
June 8, 1926
I don't think the entire scene from this concert has been uploaded. It's a waste of time to add to the superlatives that critics, musicians, fans from her time and ours have lavished on her voice. But to very simply and succinctly illuminate the qualities of the voice and the artistic choices as they relate to the scene and character, let me quote from a YouTube commenter on another, older recording of Melba singing the Willow Song....
@AulicExclusiva:
"Sopranos who emote on the word salce miss the point. Desdemona is recalling her mother's slave's lament as in a dream, full as she is with the presentiment of doom. Her own sorrows are interspersed with the monotone words—willow, willow, willow. If the soprano boo-hoos at EVERY phrase, this alternation is lost."
"Melba does it perfectly. Her Desdemona feels her impending fate and sustains the chant-like phrases like a transfiguration. It is very vivid in the Farewell disks. Not even such flawless vocalists as Rethberg or de los Ángeles quite get that mood of sadness and foreboding."
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Piangea cantando... O salce! Salce!... Ave Maria
Otello
Giuseppe Verdi
Farewell Concert at age 65
Covent Garden, London
June 8, 1926
I don't think the entire scene from this concert has been uploaded. It's a waste of time to add to the superlatives that critics, musicians, fans from her time and ours have lavished on her voice. But to very simply and succinctly illuminate the qualities of the voice and the artistic choices as they relate to the scene and character, let me quote from a YouTube commenter on another, older recording of Melba singing the Willow Song....
@AulicExclusiva:
"Sopranos who emote on the word salce miss the point. Desdemona is recalling her mother's slave's lament as in a dream, full as she is with the presentiment of doom. Her own sorrows are interspersed with the monotone words—willow, willow, willow. If the soprano boo-hoos at EVERY phrase, this alternation is lost."
"Melba does it perfectly. Her Desdemona feels her impending fate and sustains the chant-like phrases like a transfiguration. It is very vivid in the Farewell disks. Not even such flawless vocalists as Rethberg or de los Ángeles quite get that mood of sadness and foreboding."
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