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5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the most versatile and beautiful voices ever, May 31, 2011
This review is from: Sena Jurinac: Opera Arias (Audio CD)
Sena Jurinac, who turns 90 this October, was an artist of extraordinary versatility. Despite clearly being a soprano in timbre and centre of voice, fixing the category of her voice beyond that is difficult, as she successfully sang both Octavian and the Marschallin, Donna Elvira and Donna Anna, Dorabella and Fiordiligi, sometimes switching between those roles at the same stage in her career. Perhaps we may call her a lyric-dramatic soprano, in that she had the amplitude of voice to sing Tosca and Elisabetta in Verdi's Don Carlo frequently and to acclaim, yet no other lyric-dramatic soprano had her delicacy and facility in operetta, I think.
This was a voice that acknowledged few boundaries and could do so because it was so evenly and perfectly produced over its extended tessitura. It is invariably a beautiful voice without the blandness too often attendant on the singing of an artist too concerned with beauty of sound alone; there is always a hint of smokiness in the tone and she has the happy knack of injecting feeling into the notes without disrupting the line.
The Stockholm performance of the Four Last Songs here gives us a fair idea, despite the limited mono sound, of the gleam and soaring, unbroken line of Jurinac's voice. She reminds me somewhat of Lisa Della Casa (another great soprano born the year after Jurinac and also happily still with us) in the aristocratic poise and purity of her sound; how I would have liked to have heard them sing Der Rosenkavalier together. When Jurinac spins out the great phrase on "Und die Seele, unbewacht" her artistry is enough to forget at least momentarily the inadequacies of the recorded sound. As a non-fan of a certain celebrated contemporary of Jurinac who made two famous studio recordings of the Four Last Songs, I was amused by noted musical biographer Tully Potter's description of Jurinac's account as "proper, honest-to-goodness singing rather than the ghastly crooning affected by a much-touted rival." That should put a good few backs up...but I know what he means. If it were in better sound it would doubtless more often top the list of favourite recordings of these songs.
Otherwise, this disc provides treasurable accounts of Jurinac's most famous Glyndebourne roles, some wonderfully touching and idiomatic Smetana arias (despite their being sung in German) and, my favourite items, two absolutely beautiful Tchaikovsky arias which permit Jurinac to display the full, even range of her lovely voice from its mellow low notes up to its gleaming fortissimo top.
Truly one of the great voices of the mid 20th century.
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