Perfect duet il corsaro nero
![perfect duet il corsaro nero perfect duet il corsaro nero](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1r0X0cGUXPA/maxresdefault.jpg)
Opera remains first and foremost about voice, and Meier’s is failing her more and more. And she flattens during the Liebestod and ends it on a truly sour F-sharp. Anything above high-A is open season for squeaks or squawks. The others are sometimes shrill, sometimes flat, sometimes just truly unpleasant. There are about seven reliable notes in her range, those that can do whatever she’d like. I’ve put up with her “unlovely” (let’s say) singing for years because the voice has plenty of character, but now each phrase carries a new awful surprise. She presents a complete character–enraged, loving, obsessed, filled with sorrow and then seen in a state of almost incredible grief.īut her voice, never lovely, is now truly unreliable. Yes, she is a great actress and a beautiful woman, sensationally insightful her reactions are as honest and “real” as her actions. Many observers who know and care about such things consider Waltraud Meier to be the world’s greatest Isolde and Kundry I would agree if beauty or quality of voice did not matter so much. It is a more complete picture of the opera than either of Barenboim’s other DVD performances, and that’s saying a lot. The La Scala forces, playing the work for the first time since 1978, are at their most inspired and alert, using an Italianate legato that is welcome and ravishing. When the mania of the opening of Act 2 gives way to the dreaminess of the Love Duet, it’s almost like Debussy. The conducting is simply gorgeous, with a true sense of yearning, sensible tempos (it never drags or rushes), utter lack of eccentricities (nothing is done for the sake of “affect”), a combination of warmth and sadness that is all-pervasive, an ability to balance orchestra and voices so that there’s never a struggle, an ebb-and-flow that is both graceful and heavy, and an overall eloquence that makes the best possible case for this grand work.
![perfect duet il corsaro nero perfect duet il corsaro nero](https://pictures.abebooks.com/isbn/9781477624913-us-300.jpg)
![perfect duet il corsaro nero perfect duet il corsaro nero](https://64.media.tumblr.com/6b3b67439675437486fd021d3e0d44bb/c8d4eda53ad7f4ef-ea/s1280x1920/d03e07eb2e2b50abb2fae2706fd89c94dfe10854.jpg)
Meier is even better under Barenboim from 1995, but we get to look at designs that are like paintings by Rothko or Albers rather than anything that evokes a setting. Meier certainly is in fresher voice in 1999 under Mehta, but the production (from Munich) is grotesquely modern (Tristan watches, grinning, as Isolde sings her Liebestod), and the Tristan is even worse than at the Liceu. Putting aside the somewhat abbreviated, minimalist, 1973 production with Nilsson and Vickers that everyone must own despite its technical shortcomings (mediocre picture and sound) and the Liceu show with Deborah Polaski in an ugly, claustrophobic production with a truly bad Tristan, each has something to offer and also something to rue. What is an opera lover with a spare 30 or 40 dollars (or more) to do? There are an astonishing 10 complete versions of this opera available on DVD three of them are led by Barenboim and three of them star Waltraud Meier. Recorded on December 7, 2007, this commemorates Daniel Barenboim’s conducting debut at La Scala, Milan, at the helm of the opera he probably knows best, Tristan und Isolde. Subtitles: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish Language: English (DTS 5.1), English (PCM Stereo) Wagner - Tristan und Isolde (200 Īctors: Daniel Barenboim, Teatro alla Scala Orchestra and Chorus, Ian Storey, Waltraud Meier, Michelle DeYoungįormat: Multiple Formats, Classical, Color, NTSC