Classical
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Dvorak - Rusalka / Robert Carsen, James Conlon - Fleming, Urbanova, Diadkova, Larin, Opéra de Paris
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Thanks to movies and TV there are thousands of people who know the soprano's aris from the first act. I wonder how many people who have bought a CD of the complete opera were able to keep at the entire score. Certainly it pays off with repeated listenings but Dvorak's own assessment of this gifts for the stage were probably correct: he was not a natural born opera composer. I had a CD of the opera but truth to tell I was rarely inspired to take it down and listen to it. With the death of Larin I thought perhaps I have unfairly ignored the work, afteall even the Met has seen fit to mount it--probably because of Fleming. The Carsen production doesn't do the work any favors, but is not offputting to me, and I find it more acceptable than his Paris Opera Hoffman. For those who demand a setting more appropriate be warned: this is about as far from a sylvan milleau as you can get. Fortunately the singing is of a very high order. Larin's death robbed the opera world of an attractive spinto tenor. There is no doubt that his voice is hardly as melifluous as Ben Heppner's on the CD but his physique du role more than makes up for sheer beauty of tone. Fleming has always been a puzzlement to me. Optimum beauty of tone and face seem to be rarely coupled with optimum intelligence and a gift for stage characterization. Her most egregious performance is Capriccio in which she is merely content to be Renee Fleming. The updating of the production should not have deterred her from characterizing the Countess but either she doesn't care or can't find any reason to find an "inner" life in her character. As Rusalka (a role she has claimed as her favorite) she gives far and away her best dramatic performance; that it is vocally superior is a given. As to her Czech pronunciation I am unable to comment. The two Russians, Didakova and Larin, obviously are more at one with the idiom and Hawlata has such a gorgeous voice that one would have to be churlish to make a complaint. The one native, Eva Urbanova, has some of the faults that characterize Slavic singers--in the past. But her performance is not a deal breaker (the production probably is for most) and the role is not that large. I believe that the only competition of a film with Czech singers. I have not seen it, but I have such an antipathy to lip-synching that it would never make my "short list".
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