DiscountDelight - Handel
|
List Price: $17.98
Our Price: $8.50
Your Save: $ 9.48 ( 53% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Decca
|
Average Customer Rating:  
|
|
Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0028947554721
Label: Decca
Manufacturer: Decca
Publisher: Decca
Release Date: 2004-09-14
Studio: Decca
|
|
|
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: Handel sung with gusto and wit
Comment: I am utterly in love with Renee Fleming's voice and I am very glad that she returned to her roots in this luminous Handel Recital. While her fioritura is not as excellent as Sutherland's she surpasses the Australian with her sincerity and sense for drama. Not one word is sung without attention, her silken voice sound absolutely radiant here. I also noticed that she is singing more precisely and elegantly here, giving Handel a dignified elegance, yet passion that it hasn't had since Ferrier (Who was an alto but she still reigns supreme). It is definitely a step in the right direction. Brava Miss Fleming!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing Handel recital
Comment: This recital is mostly very bland and boring, with Fleming's Baroque vocal technique lacking in many ways.
The slow, languid arias like the opening "Oh Sleep" are too drawn out, without any character. The fast acrobatic arias show lack of agility, and poorly executed and overdone ornamentation. Fleming's heavy, laboured coloratura seems ill fitted for these selections. "Scoglio d'immota" in particular is very bad. Her leaps "from stone to stone" in this aria are proceeded by something of a bellow before each note. Fleming's rthythmic waywardness is also very evident in many tracks, and her diction is very indistinct. In English tracks she prounounces vowels in such bizarre ways, her singing of "endless laav" made me laugh and her Italian in "Quando spieghi" is just awful.
Fleming's "Ombra Mai Fu" lacks any character, tenderness, not to mention the missing recitativo. Lorraine Hunt's infinitely superior version should not be even compared to this one. And "Lascia ch'io pianga" is just so over the top, it sounds like a crossover track without the beat. Even Angela Gheorghiu's soppy but honest singing of this piece beats Fleming's interpretation.
"Let the Bright Serephim" has very serious tempo and scooping issues; Kiri Te Kanawa's unremarkable but pleasant enough version is better. "V'adoro pupille" is another drawn out, overtly sentimental aria. And in "Da Tempeste" Fleming sings the runs as it was jazz (?) music, it's strange, and the da capo part is so over the top. This aria is a total mess.
I have to admit I have problems listening to this album as a whole, midway through I just could not tolerate it any more. When I finally listened to the rest of this album, I liked it even less. The last track, Peaceful Shore is again so bland and pointless. I was just glad to be at the end of this recital.
As many people pointed out, even the accoustics of this recording are not good. The Orchestra of Enlightment plays just fine, but it makes little difference. With so many wonderful recent Handel recitals to choose from (Hunt, Bayrakdarian, Conolly, classics like Kirkby, Battle's Baroque Duets...) I think this is the one to skip.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Brava Renee!!!
Comment: This album is truly amazing. Renee has such a way with music from the Baroque era. She didn't over Romanticize the music. She lightened her voice perfectly for Handel's arias. The Giulio Cesare arias are incredible, and Endless Pleasure from Semele is astounding. Once again Brava!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Really Dull
Comment: I love Renee Fleming's singing and her voice, but lately she is becoming a "vocalizer" and not a singer. Her words are lost in the sound, her vowels are distorted, and even though the sound is lovely as always, this ruins what the singing is all about. Firstly, I care less if she sings quietly or loudly, for this idea of Baroque singing being gentle and light is silly, not to mention not supported by any of the writings of the day (were not the castrati noted for voices so full and vibrant nothing could compete with them?). Even the great Catalani was said to have sang so loudly that Spontini when asked if he would attend her concert stated he could well hear her from where he lived (about 40 miles away from where the concert was given), and the writers of the day stated that one was want to put cotton in their ears because her voice was so powerful. Marchesi was noted for his "bomba" where he could sing a scale (even a scale trillant) and end on a super loud full incredible note at the top of the scale and the top of his lungs. No singer, saving the creator of Orfeo for Gluck was noted for singing in some delicate manner with subdued volume (and in this case it was because he was seen as a fourth rate singer at best). Why we persist on thinking Baroque music must be sung in this sweet half voiced sound is beyond me. It is just not supported by the facts of the day. Perhaps their voices were smaller than what we are accustomed to hearing, but they were full and penetrating for their day, not caressing and gentle whispers.
This said, I think Renee would have done better to just sing out in the way she sings for normal singing. Let her voice go, let the fullness and vibrancy of her sound carry. The idea of a small vibrato, or nearly vibratoless sound is also WRONG, and not supported by any of the writings of the day. That is the creation of instrumentalists in the Baroque field who have taken the development of instrumental music and tacked it on vocal music, which was light years ahead of instrumental music in that day (the vibration of the voice is what inspired the use of vibrato in instruments, for it gave a cleaner and more "in tune" sound).
I think all around we would have had performances that were more exciting and more thrilling to experience. Prettiness is fine, but after a while it communcates nothing much.
I rated the recording only a four star, and not because of the orchestra. They are super and the concept of the music, the presentation as conceived by the conductor is wonderfully vibrant. Renee Fleming's voice just doesn't match it (as I said, she shouldn't have held back).
The other problem is her increasing habit of distorting the vowels while singing. She makes words meaningless and stupid by doing so. In "Endless Pleasure" the word "LOVE" is actually sang "LAV", and the vowel changes constantly, not as is often the case because of a vocal cover needed for the passagio, but because of BAD SINGING. As with most of her singing in English, it is sloppy and her diction is very poor. One understood Sutherland better than they understand her. Singing is not vocalizing, it is communicating, and quoting Toscanini when he first heard Callas at the beginning of her career, "What is she singing about, if the words aren't clear nothing has been sung worth hearing." Whether Callas actually ever heard this comment or not, I have no clue, but poor diction is NOT a fault one levels against Callas. She learned at some time that the words are every bit as important as the music, and she respected them completely. That is my complaint with Fleming, including a concert I was at of her singing Strauss's Four Last songs; one understood NOTHING, not one word of what she sang. She is getting worse and worse with her bad diction, and it is being replaced with delicate sweet singing, lovely tone, and dazzling technique, but like Toscanini said, "nothing worth hearing has been sung."
With the great talent Renee Fleming has, and she has been blessed abundantly with talent (more than most ever dream of), it is high time she cleaned up these bad habits that are creeping into her singing. Let us hear your words! Let us understand them! Let us feel something in our hearts because of them! Let us weep inside because we understand the message and the beauty of the voice reflects that message to us and shares it with our hearts. STOP just singing like you are vocalizing.
Other than this complaint, the set is beautifully sung, lifeless in many ways, but beautifully sung. Te Kanawa sings "Let the Bright Seraphin" a billion times better (even Sutherland outshone Fleming by light years, and her diction was sketchy at best); Beverly Sills did the Juilius Caesar arias (especially Da Tempesta) with excitement and with energy, a thing Fleming could learn from. Many of these arias are far better sung by other singers than they are here. Those performances seemed to radiate commitment to the music and the meaning of the words, this recording, sadly, does neither. It is pretty to the extreme, very wonderfully lovely, gentle on the ear, great as elevator music or something you listen to while doing the housework. Nothing about this performance commands your attention and makes you stand up and take notice. Despite the beauty and the finess of the singing, we are left waiting for some reason to listen to it, nothing grabs us and makes us pay attention to what we are hearing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Quite nice
Comment: Some people rip the album to shreds. Other praise every inch of it. I cannot do both. There are excellent points of this CD and is wonderful to hear works that are not done so often. I find that Ms. Fleming gives it a warmth that is quite nice and it makes me pick up the CD to listen to it. Bravo to the Orchestra. Bassoon and oboe players were AMAZING! Now, what irritated me about the singing is that Ms. Fleming's runs can be quite nice but I found in some of the arias that they were...how shall I put this...lazy. Almost laid back. I could feel myself trying to push her to keep the runs as even as the orchestras and in time. She does catch up but certainly not for Baroque music where you have to be so precise. No where have you ever had to do that with Emma Kirkby, Karina Gauvin, Kathleen Battle...and yes I shall use her...Cecilia Bartoli. And there this album looses the star.
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
Those who may have feared that Renée Fleming might approach Handel with a too-Romantic vocal attitude need not have; whether it's the leadership of the sympathetic, historically informed Harry Bicket, the sound of the spare but warm Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, plain good sense and musicianship, or any combination of these, here she offers sixteen arias in almost-impeccable Baroque fashion. I doubt whether sopranos of Handel's age had voices as plush as Ms Fleming's but she manages to keep her tone as light and as airy as possible in these selections, never leaning or swooping into an accompanying note in an "un-Baroque" manner, and the result is simply ravishing. The voice, of course, is almost unbelievably beautiful and agile, the technique impeccable, complete with a trill unmatchable in any soprano singing today. From the long-breathed lines of "O sleep why dost thou leave me" from Semele to the fireworks in Cleopatra's "Da tempeste…," with stops along the way at the famous "Ombra mai fu" and a complete rarity from the composer's Lotario, this CD is just breathtaking. Brava Fleming--and bravo Harry Bicket! Oh, yes--bravo Handel! --Robert Levine
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
