King of the High Cs
I found out just the other day that The Met has a synchronous broadcast program that allows you to “attend” Met operas at your local theater. And I immediately went online and bought tickets for today’s showing of Donizetti’s La Fille du régiment, which I had heard such amazing things about. Here is what I got to listen to this afternoon (without the annoying pops, hisses and beeps):
“Il faut partir”
Marie: Natalie Dessay, soprano
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qER7aALaUE&hl=en]
“Pour me rapprocher de Marie”
Tonio: Jose Diego Flórez, tenor
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnW_7Fi_5Bc&hl=en]
These recordings do not fully convey the experience of listening to and watching comic opera while surrounded by chatty (and knowledgeable!) old ladies and eating Red Baron pizza and nachos. I will leave that part to your imaginations, however.
If any of you are interested, The Met will be showing a one-performance encore of Puccini’s La Bohème in theaters all across the country in May. You can learn more about it on the Met Opera website.
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April 28th, 2008 at 1:13 am
Nice, and good that the Met has programmes like this to bring opera outside its usual confines. And, according to my tuning fork, that was in fact a high C#2 in the tenor aria! Fairly extreme stuff… Now off to study Britten’s “Winter Words” for tenor and piano, which, at first glance, only goes up to A1. But what astounding music it is; Peter Pears’ recording with the composer at the piano comes highly recommended.
April 28th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Yeah, he has an amazing voice. I used to be able to sing a high C2 (C5 in American notation) in full voice, but I’m out of practice and am lucky to hit a G4 now.
I’ll have to check out that recording! It sounds beautiful, and I’m definitely in a tenor frame of mind.