My Twenty Favorite Sopranos: A Half-List

Taking a break from the story of my journey to a life in singing. Instead, today I am desperately trying to come up with a list of my Twenty Favorite Sopranos. I always say that I am not entirely convinced of the validity of music criticism, which only means that I should be doubly suspicious of this compiling of lists. However, it has been fun to pore through my CD collection and my memory to come up with a list of singers who have evoked extreme emotions in me.

The first ten are pretty easy. It’s limiting my choices to only ten more that is going to prove impossible.

So today it’ll be just the first ten. Interestingly, only one of them appeared on BBC Music Magazine’s definitive list (I just can’t get that out of my craw!)

Here they are; I’ll elaborate on them later.

1. Claudia Muzio

2. Lotte Lehmann

3. Maria Callas

4. Renata Scotto

5. Eide Noréna

6. Anita Cerquetti

7. Elisabeth Rethberg

8. Ileana Cotrubas

9. Hilde Güden

10. Florence Quartararo

I’m not sure these are in any particular order, or that this list will not change tomorrow. In fact, Noréna and Quartararo are fairly recent additions. And I could easily replace Rethberg with Delia Reinhardt. That’s the nice thing about a personal list like this; it’s fluid, and not at all definitive.

More later on these gals.

Hors d'oeuvres with Bubbles

Herein follows Part Two of the Gundlach journey to singing:

In the next few years, my further exposure to opera was limited. I remember seeing part of a Fledermaus on Public Television with a singer I learned later was Gundula Janowitz. When I turned ten years old, I was able to get a special stamp on my library card that allowed me to take out adult materials, including records. The first two records I checked out where an old Columbia pressing of the Opéra Comique version of Les contes d’Hoffmann under Cluytens and the Boulez recording of Pelléas. The Offenbach had no libretto, but the Pelléas had the original French and translations in English and German and Italian. I wouldn’t say that I quite faught myself conversational French in this way, but I sure as hell knew every word of Maeterlinck’s text. There were other recordings as well, particularly the Karajan Zauberflöte with Seefried, Dermota, Kunz and Wilma Lipp. This youngster loved Kunz and Lipp the most.

At the age of twelve, I began to earn some money as the associate organist at my father’s church (the main organist took a rather active dislike to the pastor’s kid, a know-it-all, big-mouthed pre-fag). With the money I earned, I started to buy my own recordings. When my parents found out that I was buying recordings of Bartók (the “granddaddy of cacophony”) and Wozzeck (the “devil’s tool”), I was cut off from buying any other recordings.

During this painful early adolescence, my parents sought to stave off the tell-tale signs of homosexuality by forcing me to join the junior high wrestling team. How grabbing at the shoulders, arms and thighs of my more generously muscled classmates was supposed to nip any latent homosexuality in the bug is beyond me. Actually, I believe it was advised by Dr. James Dobson in one of the books they took to heart. After three excruciating and humiliating weeks of after-school practice, I finally quit the teams. I fled instead to the public library, returning home only after practice would have ended.

My mother, of course, found out from the meddlesome mother of a boy in our church who was also on the wrestling team, that I had quit the team. She arranged a surprise attack, coming to pick me up at school after wrestling practice and of course not finding me anywhere. When I was confronted with my perfidy, I could offer nothing in my defense except that I hated wrestling and didn’t want to be on the team in the first place. My punishment was to be grounded from music for six weeks: no records, either of my own or from the library, no radio, no piano lessons. My older brother, with whom I shared a room, reported me for lying on my bed with his clock radio (at the lowest possible volume) pressed to my ear.

Shortly thereafter I assigned myself the task of listening to every opera recording in the Oshkosh Public Library (to which city we had by now moved). This was the best-stocked library I had ever had access to, replete not just with recordings, but with piano-vocal scores as well, and I took full advantage. I made so many miraculous discoveries from the beginning. First was the Ludwig-Berry-Kertész recording of Bluebeard’s Castle, which haunted me with its wealth of orchestral color and the peculiar inflections of the Hungarian language. There followed the first EMI Callas Norma. I hated it; I checked to see if the recording had been pressed off-center, so ugly did her voice sound to me. Only after I heard her “J’ai perdu mon Euridice” (recorded when the voice was in much more precarious condition) did I finally “get” her. But even at first exposure it was clear that Callas as Norma left Sutherland completely in the dust.

Another pleasure from early in the alphabet was the Lear-Böhm recording of the two-act Lulu torso (some baritone or other who shall remain nameless was Doktor Schön). The library had a vocal score of the opera as well, published only in German. Armed with an English singing translationof the libretty and an extremely fine-tipped pen, I wrote the entire English text above the printed German text.

Around this time, I had a dream that changed my life. This was neither the first nor the last time this happened to me. There was a convention attended by all the world’s greatest singers and due to a last-minute emergency, it was being held in the basement of our house, in a half-finished room where I holed up for hours every day listening to records. It was my responsibility to make sure that the singers had enough to eat, so I was passing trays of canapés to Birgit Nilsson and Jon Vickers, too deep in conversation to even notice me. Martina Arroyo was there; I complimented her on her Ballo recording which I had just heard. Tatiana Troyanos was there, and Shirley Verrett, just transitioning into soprano rep. Scotto was primping in a mirror, admiring her new svelte figure. Even my adored Leontyne was there, but I was much too intimidated to even take the tray or hors d’oeuvres over to her, much less speak to her.

The master of ceremonies at this event was Beverly Sills, nearing the end of her “Bubbles” period, before she became the more formidable BEVERLY. I had borrowed one of those enormous coffee urns from the church, when Bubbles grabbed my arm and interrupted my duties. What are you doing, waiting on everyone, she asked. You’re supposed to be up here with us. When I found my tongue, I said, but I’ve never even studied voice, I barely know how to play the piano—and she cut me off. You don’t believe me now, she said, but you wait, and you’ll see that I’m right.

Though “only a dream” this pronouncement had a huge effect on me. No one in my family ever had exhibit such enthusiasm for or belief in my vocal talent. Perhaps this was unsurprising, since my only vocalizing consisted of me singing along at climactic phrases of arias as recorded by my favorite sopranos: Leontyne singing Thaïs’ Mirror Aria, Sutherland singing the final pages of the Lucia mad scene, Janowitz singing “Ozean, du Ungeheuer,” Tebaldi singing Desdemonda’s “Ave Maria,” Scotto floating her magical pianissimi in the Canzone di Doretta. This was hardly a typical pastime for a red-blooded American boy; I had merely given up trying to make myself into something that I wasn’t.

A few weeks after I had had my Bubbles Dream, my parents asked if I intended to pursue music when I went to college. By “music” they meant my piano studies, so it came as rather a shock to them when I said to them, I’m going to become a singer. Their shock turned quickly to amusement: who are you kidding, they said, no one wants to hear you sing. And they laughed. It was an extremely hot and sticky summer evening and I went down to the basement and turned on the tap in the cinder block shower, and stuck my head under the water and cried.
But my wish wasn’t killed, just trodden underfoot. It took another dream twelve years later for me to finally realize that there was only one lot for me in life, and that was, after all, to be a singer.

A is for Aida

A bit of advice is given to young artists of any stripe: if you can do anything with your life other than be an artist, for God’s sake, DO IT! If you can’t live without pursuing your art, then the choice is made for you, but otherwise... Music chose me; I didn’t have that much to say about it. Apollo or one of those damn muses must have deposited me from some distant planet into the middle of a typically dysfunctional family that happened to live in Wisconsin. Nothing was out of the ordinary in this family except for the religious zeal that formed the basis of our existence. My father was a minister in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, one of the most conservative factions of any branch of Christianity. In our family, whether one embraced the hand of Jesus or pushed it away (which was something one could only do in secret), the motivating force of either action was the same.

And yet I somehow existed on a different plane, and all thanks to Sophia Loren. Early in the days when my parents were dating, they went to the drive-in to see Aida. This hybrid Italian production featured a young Sophia Loren as Aida singing with the voice of Renata Tebaldi. Though neither of my parents had the slightest interest in opera (but rather in fact, a mild aversion to it), the film nonetheless played some kind of significant role in their courtship.

For their first Christmas as a married couple, my father bought my mother an edition of The Victor Book of the Opera and inscribed it thus: "To my darling wife, that she may enjoy this festival even more. I hope this gives you many hours of happy reading. Love, Ted". I’m not sure my mother spent too many hours reading the book herself, but once I came along, I gravitated toward it, and we would spend whole afternoons and evenings (at least so it seemed to me) reading the story of Aida. We never got much past this story together; it seemed to occupy a singular place in my mother’s imagination. We planned to write an operatic alphabet in verse, but never got farther than the letter "A":

"‘A’ is for Aida,
Written by Verdi.
They get sealed in a tomb,
But they don’t get scaredy."

It’s possible that it was the buried alive part that attracted my mother’s fancy. She did, after all, recommend the works of Edgar Allan Poe to me when I was ten years old. (But this is more a matter for my shrink than for my blog!) Whatever the source of my mother’s fascination with one opera in particular, mine extended to opera in general, at least tragic opera. Not for me Barber of Seville, Marriage of Figaro, Rosenkavalier (at least not at that age); if someone didn’t die at the end, I wasn’t interested.

I would pore over the photos of the great opera stars whose photos were reproduced in the Victor Book: Gladys Swarthout as Carmen, her face imperious and mocking behind her fan, Olive Fremstad as Kundry, lying on the ground in rags, staring madly something outside the range of the camera, Ezio Pinza as Giovanni in an immaculate white period outfit (and sporting an earring, which fascinated me no end), the all-glamorous Jarmila Novotna as Manon, swathed in mink, Lotte Lehmann as Sieglinde proferring that horn (its significance escaped me); Bidú Sayao as Mélisande, hair trailing nearly to the ground, looking anxiously over her shoulder.


What was odd about all of this was that I had no idea what opera actually sounded like. My mother told me it was people singing high and loud in a language no one could understand. But what this actually sounded like I had no idea. All I knew was that they acted out these stories that had completely captivated my imagination. I was desperate to know all there was to know about opera.

My father had a few records from the time before he and my mother were married, but we had no record player, so classical music in general was a relative mystery to me. And yet the lure of this unknown Thing was so great that I could not forget about it and move on to something else. I was hungering for food that I had never tasted.

Finally at my fourth Christmas Santa Claus brought me a record player (we were disabused of the notion of Santa Claus very early on, but at this point I was none the wiser). The record player looked like nothing so much as a suitcase, which is what they told me it was when my grandfather brought it out of the back room after everyone else had opened all their presents. They couldn’t fool me, though, because the little metal sticker on the front bore the Columbia Records emblem (my father’s records were all from the Columbia Record Club, so I recognized the trademark immediately).
Finally I was able to listen to all those records that had been lying in the basement gathering dust. One of my favorites was Aida: Opera for Orchestra with André Kostelanetz and His Orchestra. So nice to have all the tunes without those pesky loud voices entering into the aural picture.

My life was now filled with music at nearly every waking moment, from the Firebird Suite to Scheherazade (which I would proudly and perfect spell for anyone who would listen), the Tchaikovsky Fourth (which I dubbed "The Lady Picking The Flowers" because of the picture on the cover) to the Dvorák New World Symphony to the Grand Canyon Suite to Bernstein’s Fancy Free and Milhaud’s Création du Monde. Each favorite piece of music had a specific narrative associated with it (for wasn’t all music like opera, in that it told a story?)

My father had a few jazz albums as well, but my favorite pop albums were Saturday Night Mood, a collection of twelve fox trots by "your favorite dance bands", the Norman Luboff Choir singing Easy to Remember and other nostalgic gems, and, especially, The Second Barbra Streisand Album, which belonged to my father’s sister Judy. It took some doing to get my parents to allow this record into the house; not only was the singer in question a "conceited" "hook-nosed Jew" but, worst of all, she had campaigned for JFK, who, though dead, was still The Enemy. I couldn’t be bothered with any of these particulars; I just loved "Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home", "Down With Love" and "When the Sun Comes Out" (shit, I had good taste even then!) I would dance around my bedroom holding the record cover (with that famous pageboy photo) in front of me, pretending that I was dancing with Miss Streisand herself. At this moment in my life, I wanted two things: to work in a record store and to meet Barbra Streisand (neither actually transpired, however).

All this time and I still did not know what opera sounded like, until one Saturday afternoon my father called me up into his study where he was studying his sermon. He always listened to classical music on the radio while doing his work, and he happened upon a live Met broadcast of Aida with Leontyne Price (pronounced "Lee-ON-teen"). Imagine, my first exposure to actual sung opera was Leontyne singing "O patria mia" in her creamy prime. It was a sound that I could never have imagined in the farthest reaches of my mind. All this talk we always heard of angels and I was finally hearing what one sounded like. I was bewitched. Somehow against all odds, music had found me, and has been at the center of my life every single day since.

Twenty Greatest Sopranos of All Time?

Finally, what we've all been waiting for: BBC Music Magazine has compiled the definitive list of the greatest sopranos of all time. And who might they be, you ask? Well, here they are, in descending order:

20. Elly Ameling
19. Rosa Ponselle
18. Renata Tebaldi
17. Christine Brewer
16. Elisabeth Schumann
15. Karita Mattila
14. Gundula Janowitz
13. Galina Vishnevskaya
12. Régine Crespin
11. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
10. Emma Kirkby
9. Kirsten Flagstad
8. Margaret Price
7. Lucia Popp
6. Montserrat Caballé
5. Birgit Nilsson
4. Leontyne Price
3. Victoria de los Angeles
2. Joan Sutherland
1. Maria Callas

Boy, I really got sucked into that one... yesterday I wrote this long rant against the choices, but this morning I feel a little more composed and realize that one should view this as a sociological phenomenon.

For one thing, this is so clearly a British creation, otherwise we would not be seeing people like Emma Kirkby and Margaret Price on the list (or Christine Brewer, though she is an American, who has a much more prominent career over there than she does here). And if this list had been compiled by the same forces ten to fifteen years ago, it would no doubt have included Kiri Te Kanawa and Felicity Lott as well.

I was also greatly amused to know that Emma Kirkby is a greater singer than Rosa Ponselle. Amused and relieved. Thank GOODNESS we no longer have to contend with opulent voices like Ponselle's when we can derive greater satisfaction from the Kirkby chirpings.

It's also good to know that Lucia Popp surpasses either Crespin, Tebaldi or Flagstad. Number SEVEN? Guess she got bumped up a few notches for the sympathy vote!

At least Mattila, one of the two great artists of today, is on the list, although Soile Isokoski, her even greater compatriot, is nowhere to be seen.

This would not be nearly as offensive if it were simply to have been called "The Twenty Sopranos Most Highly Regarded as of This Very Moment of A Certain Panel of Experts," which is of course what it really is. Seen in this light, it becomes a lot less toxic.

Admittedly, there aren't too many that one could agree on. Callas, for sure, but any list that doesn't have Muzio and Lehmann on it is just plain bogus. Neither Lehmann or Muzio ever sang a phrase that didn't emanate from their heart, and if that's not the primary criterion for greatness, then I'm packing my toys and going home. And okay, so Betty Blackhead is a shoo-in in the eyes of many, but how many phrases did she ever sing that emanated straight from her heart? I won't posit a guess, but out of generosity I will say less than half. :-)

musicalamerica.com was all upset because Gheorghiu, Netrebko and Fleming weren't on the list. It's supposedly a list of the greatest singers of all time, not the most hyped artists of the present day. Now THAT list would be easy to put together! Nobody's upset that Krassimira Stoyanova, Veronica Villaroel or Violeta Urmana are not on the list.

This list is obviously ridiculous and offensive, designed to rile up people just like me. Why do we have to have lists like this at all? Is this some sort of competition? If so, hadn't most singers of today just cash in their chips because they're never going to be as great as Flagstad or Callas or Ponselle? And perhaps all of us countertenors should give it up because we can't match Russell Oberlin, who was on the scene long before any of us and is still the best, bar none.

If this list serves any function whatsoever, it will be to inspire debate among opera lovers about their OWN favorites. Well, it will certainly increase this month's circulation of BBC Music Magazine as well.

I think I'm going to put together a list or two as well: MY favorite sopranos of all time, MY favorite mezzos, MY favorite lieder singers, MY favorite tenors, MY favorite "unknown" singers (no, this does not include me, though, come to think of it, it could!)

However, not today, dear, I have an audition. Look for such lists, pure expressions of my personal opinions, in future postings.

Ileana Cotrubas

THOSE YOUTUBE FUCKERS KEEP REMOVING ALL MY FAVORITE VIDEOS! ANYWAY, HERE IS COTRUBAS' VIOLETTA AGAIN, ALTHOUGH I'M SURE THE MET WILL MAKE THEM TAKE THIS ONE DOWN AS WELL...

Speaking of Cotrubas, as I did in my previous post, dig her in these two Traviata excerpts. Surely one of the most scrupulously musical singers ever and one of the most emotionally and dramatically committed and, though she has not been properly acknowleged for this, one of the most technically adept singers of her time. Maybe I should just let her speak for herself, since she does it so much more eloquently than I could. Enjoy!

My journey to blogdom

I was writing a blog before it was even known as a blog!

On my first audition trip to Germany in the fall of 1999, I wrote a series of emails from the road to friends, family and colleagues. My recipient list topped out at over two hundred. Some of you who are reading this now were among those first readers. A lot has changed since then.

(See what I mean? That tsunami-do went the way of all flesh years ago.)

I had some amazing singing engagements in Germany and in France, but in the end, I returned home to New York, where I have been now for nearly two years. During my time in Europe, I kept my travel emails going at sporadic intervals, but since I’ve been back in New York, I haven’t felt the need to keep them up.

In spite of all the changes in my personal life in the past two years, some things have remained constant, however. Those who know me well are aware of my strong opinions and convictions about singers and singing. Even in high school, my English teacher decided that I would become the chief music critic of the New York Times.

Obviously my aspirations led in different directions, but that has not kept me from expressing my opinions quite freely, and sometimes rather eloquently. The idea of creating my own blog came to me as I began working on revisions to my website about six weeks ago. I filed the idea away, unsure that I actually had anything of real interest to say. But I found the inspiration I needed from traveling the subways with Brigitte Fassbaender.

Recently EMI has reissued four volumes of Fassbaender’s early lieder recordings for Electrola, and though they are only sporadically available in the US, they are self-recommending to anyone who loves great singing. Has there been a greater lieder singer since Lehmann? If so, I need to be convinced. Mind you, I am a great admirer of Souzay, of Baker, Schreier, Ameling, and more recently Quasthoff, Goerne and sometimes Terfel (note that there are several significant names missing from that list!). But Fassbaender’s intensity and commitment are unique. When her voice was in optimum working order, as it is in these recordings from the mid- to late-seventies, she is without peer.

As do so many city dwellers these days, I get through the usual bustle and madness by listening to music on my headphones. Mine are connected to my iRiver, which I also use to record my voice lessons and which I affectionately refer to as my Object. The Object has very little storage space, so every few days, I replace the music I have been listening to with something new.

My tastes are very eclectic. I won’t say that I’m not a musical snob, because my standards are very high, but I do spread my net pretty wide. (Well, I may have a few hidden musical vices, but I'm not revealing all my secrets in my first posting.) Depending on my state of mind, on any given day I might be listening to Ileana Cotrubas or Rufus Wainwright, Pam Tillis or Georges Thill, Piaf or Magda Olivero, Dusty or Supervia. On these particular days of which I am writing, I had loaded Fassbaender onto the Object.

I am deeply affected by whatever music I am listening to, no matter if I’m at home, walking down the street, in the concert hall or riding in the subway. The frequency and intensity of my transcendent listening experiences can often be in complete opposition to the situation I might be in at that moment.

The other day I was heading downtown on the 1 train. As usual, I left the apartment about five minutes later than I had intended, so I had busted my ass to get onto the arriving train. I sat down totally winded. One reason I was a little late, of course, was because I had to get set with my music before I left the apartment.

Brigitte was singing Schubert, who is probably my favorite composer (I will certainly have more to say about him in subsequent postings), and I felt my heart rate slowing as my breathing got deeper. Around 103 Street, she began singing An die Musik, surely one of Schubert’s most popular songs, though not one I treasure most among his output. And yet this day, I found myself overwhelmed by the song.

How can anyone who loves music not have experienced this depth of gratitude to that art that this song reveals? I know that there have been moments in my life that without the transcendent power of music, I probably wouldn’t have survived. I have felt this way ever since I was a very young child, and I feel it even more now.

Hearing an artist like Fassbaender or Lehmann (especially as the final encore of her 1951 Town Hall farewell recital, where she breaks down before the final line) sing this song reminds me of why I chose music as my life’s calling in the first place (or, more accurately, why Music chose me). I sat in that subway car with my eyes pressed shut, feeling the tears welling up behind them, knowing that if I opened my eyes, I wouldn’t be able to keep from weeping. So I just kept them closed, dwelling in the depth and breadth of feeling that had been stirred in me.

Two days later, I found myself once again in the subway with my headphones on. This time I was at Times Square, surely the most abhorrent place in all of New York. Whether in the crush of the crowds in passageways and on platforms too narrow to accommodate them, or above ground, where eager tourists soak up the wholesomely corporate family values of Mickey Mouse (along with a good deal of bare skin, courtesy of Madison Avenue), I always feel as if I were entering the seventh circle of hell. In other words, hardly a place to find inner calm.

Passing through the gauntlet that is the platform for the uptown 1 train, one often hears a poorly-tuned and ear-splitting steel drum playing an inaccurate version of Für Elise. The crowds are impenetrable, and there is no midwest brand of politeness: in this glut of bodies, New Yorkers grab whatever few square inches of breathing room they can get and budge not one millimeter. My patience is always completely spent by the time I reach the far end of the platform.

At the end of this particularly long day, I was completely frazzled and at my wits’ end. Who should be singing in my ear at this point but Brigitte once more, and this time the selection was even more apposite. Mahler’s Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen. Suddenly it was as if I was floating over all those bodies, buoyed up by the suspended ecstasy of Mahler’s unending musical line and Rückert’s blissful text, imparted with such a sense of profound peacefulness by the glorious Fassbaender, passing beyond all of the insanity into a world where I was untouchable. Music is not always an escape, but sometimes when one needs to move into another sphere, music is the most efficient and meaningful way of doing so.

So I dunno... maybe I have something to say in a blog after all. Stay tuned. I look forward to your comments.