Customer Reviews

The Opera Gala Live from Baden-Baden ~ Netrebko / Garanca / Vargas / Tezier / Armiliato

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

How I envy those present in this live performance this July in Baden-Baden.
The programme was so well-chosen, the singers so top notch, the two ladies particularly full of starry quality both vocally and visually...
Back to the singing. Anna Netrebko here sings Norma's excerpt, and places herself in headon competition with Maria Callas.
Well, I have heard Callas's, as well as Sutherland's. Anna's is completely on par with these two illustrious predecessors. Her coloratura, well, is surely improving. The last part of this long aria is sung in an immaculately soft coloratura that challenges the best sopranos. Her smoky voice is reminiscient of Callas, yes, but I think the latter part of Callas's career really saw her in an inevitable vocal decline, whereas Netrebko's singing is actually improving with her maturity. Honestly, vocally I think Anna outshined her predecessor in this piece.
Ramon Vargas, a tenor often shovelled to the background (well, he hasn't got much looks), is a real lyrical tenor. I particularly love his duet in Bizet's Pearl Fishers: highly affecting and beautiful in every respect.
It is in fact the best performance of Terzier in that evening. Well, the Toreador's Song isn't every baritone's cup of tea. Apart from Ruggiero Raimondi, I haven't heard one single fully satisfying version, Van Dam, Hvorostovsky, Ramey etc. included.
The star of the stars that night is mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca.
Her solo aria is simply heart-ripping. What singing! What a mezzo-soprano!

THis is a beautiful performance with some really fun selections. The pieces that Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca sing together are sublime, all four singing a piece from Rigoletto is hilarious and Anna Netrebko's performance of a piece by Lehar is fun, captivating and charming. I don't know how she can fly all over the stage and still have breath to sing without apparent difficulty, but she does! All the selections are so excellent that it's hard to pick out just a couple. This is a CD I will watch/listen to many times with great pleasure.

well, I just love this Opera music, it is so soothing and food for my soul!Anna Netrebko has a voice that comes along only once in a while.

Live performances are both interesting and, with a cast of this worth a very rewarding experience. Anna Netrebko is certainly a delight with a fine voice and she alone makes this a worthwhile purchase. It is a great shame that the applause was not edited. The clapping on this CD is awful, it is loud and long after each aria. It ruins a nice CD.

This CD is a selection from a gala concert which is available on DVD. I haven't seen the video, but all of these numbers are wonderful...not a false note on the whole disc. Elina and Anna are billed as the stars, and, speaking as a guy, they are. Elina is absolutely lucious. But, don't forget Vargas and Tezier. I had not heard Monsieur Tezier previously, but he has to be one of the baritones of the day.

We open with the Flower Duet from "Lakme"...the two hot girls leading off...fabulous. Vargas two solos are superb, and Tezier's are better than that; I do think he had better material to work with, though. The Toreador Song, is, of course, a show-off piece, and he deserved every bit of his ovation. "Don Carlo" is one of the wonders of opera; why it isn't performed more beats me...great as the solo is, I wouldn't have minded having him pair with Vargas for the duet, instead [it is on the DVD]. Elina makes a perfect Dalila; again, a tiny gripe...Vargas could have supplied Samson's small parts in the number. The quartet is another show-off [hey, that's the idea in a gala] and the closing Brindisi is pure schtick, but the audience loved it.

Anna, Anna, Anna..."Boheme"...perfection. "Norma"? She really did bring Casta Diva off quite well, though I still maintain that the full role is too heavy for her. When I hear Casta Diva in my mind, I hear Rosa Ponselle. That's wrong, and unfair, but...Anna, I love you...you're beautiful and wonderful, but nobody is Rosa. Sorry.

All in all, five stars...get the DVD, but you might want this, too. Excellent choice of numbers, with four great singers giving us a grand evening.

Extraordinary singers delivering ever popular arias, duets, etc. with beauty of sound. Being live, the performances were delightfully not so absolutely perfect, but real and very impressive. Ony complaint is that too much applause is left in the recording.

It may be ungrateful, but one wonders if Rolando Villazon's widely publicized vocal woes caused the veteran Mexican tenor Ramon Vaargas, now 48, to drop in as a replacement. The other singers are young, as the product description states, but of course, Netrebko is the only true star among them, and this program of operatic chestnuts is directed to her cheering fan base.

If this gala were being held in any era other than the present, the voices would have been larger, and the opening Lakme duet must remind experiened listeners of the glory days of Sutherland and Horne. But Netrebko and Garanca certainly acquit themselves well, blending beautifully even if the soprano isn't perfectly at ease in the highest registers. Vargas's Una furtiva lagrima can't equal Pavarotti and Domingo for sheer volume -- his tenor is a couple of sizes smaller than theirs -- but his version is stylish and reliable. Charisma has never been Vargas's strong suit.

He joins Ludovic Tezier, a rising French baritone who was unknown to me, in the famous duet form the Pearl Fishers. It, too, is kept to a smaller, more lyrical scale than one is used to from, say, Bjorling and Merrill, but the singing is lovely and the mood ardent. When Tezier returns for Rodrigo's dying aria from Don Carlo, one hears that Tezier has a tremnedous voice, reminiscent in tone to the young Sherrill Milnes, but there's almost no attempt to inject emotion, not even the most basic operaatic pathos.

The darkness in Netrebko's voice suits the opening of Casta Diva, and she knows how to comunicate pathos, no problem there. The likes of Ponselle, Callas, and Sutherland have accustomed us to hearing super divas in this aria, but I must say that Netrebko is very satisfying. Although lacking the absolute mastery of coloratura that those great sopranos possessed, she's fearless, dramatic, and convincing, and the voice holds up throughout.

Garanca gets her own solo turn in Delila's aria from Samon et Delila, a role in which Olga Borodina has triumphed over the past ten years or more. Given how smooth and beautiful her voice is, as well as her ardor, Garanca could be just as successful, although there is some reticent emotionally compared to the most intense Delilas. Having paraded all the components before us, the four stars converge for the quartet from Rigoletto. It, too, is very stylish and musical, but at the same time we aren't in the same universe as Pavarotti-Sutherland-Milnes-orne or their illustrious predecessors.

It's better to be grateful for what this generation of singers can provide -- they all return for successful solos -- and this live summer gala, well conducted by Marco Armiliato, would have been delightful to attend, even with ghosts of former greatness perched in the rafters.

I bought this for Netrebko's performance but all of them sing beautifully. The foto on the cover mislead me because Vargas is on the right whereas Vargas, being the tenor, is listed first, not that this matters a whole lot. I am surprised to hear Vargas sing "Una furtiva lagrima," while the Italian is "lacrima," but he is a native Spanish speaker and "lagrima" is Spanish. Oh well, so what. Pavarotti, Carreras couldn't pronounce English to save their lives but they sang gloriously in their heyday. Nowadays are the heyday of all those on the CD and they sing gloriously. So get it and remember what G.B.Shaw had to say about critics - "they leave no turn unstoned!" Well. I expect there will be opera snobs who'll find fault with my review and carp about the performances because "Netrebko can't compare with Callas, etc..."