I for one am delighted you are so enthused by her. I also think her
the 'real deal'. She is not a singer for all seasons - I personally
don't think she is going to keep those extended top notes for much
longer, and ultimately I think she is a lyric with flexibility (dite)
and not a machine gun coloratura. She is also not someone that is
going to make people think, "Oh, she should give up singing and be a
stage actress."

All this means (if I am correct, indeed) that she is still someone
young who is finding her way. What I think she does have is a complete
sense of sincerity and her own truthfulness in her singing - she's not
trying to be Callas or Sills or Sutherland or x, and her
interpretations are very much out of her own personality. I think that
in the next few years she will become one of the genuinely satisfying
singers in her repertoire - whether her lack of 'flash' makes her a
superstar is another question, but I think she will be very much our
"Devia" for a while, which would be imho a very good thing.

Richard

On Oct 25, 10:20 pm, SeattleJohn <johnmixonrobe... at (no spam) msn.com> wrote:



I just saw Eglise in Violetta and it was one of the 2 or 3 most
exciting operatic performances I've ever seen. Even with a cold she
sang with shimmering beauty and agility, was one of the most
mesmerizing, believable actresses I've ever seen, and truly WAS
Violetta. Her acting really drove home how truly sad this opera is and
my companion used up many kleenex for all her crying. She is a real
star!- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I think she's rather special too, and am only too sorry that silly,
extraneous stuff at the Royal Opera House on the opening night of
"Linda di Chamounix" should have in large part alienated the critical
community (of which I may add I do not consider myself a member, even
given latterday developments). Most of the mafia kept quiet about it,
but Rupert Christiansen of the Telegraph decided to spell it all out.
Apparently, the diva swanned on and in the process of taking up her
position at her music stand, some piece of paper fluttered out of her
score and landed at her feet. (Sir) Mark Elder looked on, waiting for
her to retrieve the same before commencing. Except she didn't, and
evidently expected him to pick it up for her. Stand-off ensues, at the
end of which Elder, in exasperation, retrieves the paper and slaps it
on her music stand, whilst she, according to Christiansen, gave a
conspiratorial wink to the audience. You don't do this kind of thing
in England, of course, and least of all expect people to be somehow
amused or enchanted. So she gets given grief, both by claqueuers in
the audience who hissed her "O luce di quest'anima", and later on by
the critics who made a meal of her stange sounds, pitch problems,
unequal registers, machine-gun coloratura, you name it, they hated it.

I wasn't there, I should add. I went to the second performance a week
later, and found her to be remarkable, not so much technically -
though everything on that front was in fine working order that night
- but musically, with a most unusual, for one so young, profound sense
of the music's natural ebb and flow, the long, lambent phrase, the
sheer quality of the vocal finish. She struck me as the very reverse
of the normal, squeaky coloratura, living largely for the chance to
hack out chopped-noodles and high notes, and rather seemed to me to be
a most serious and instinctive artist, with a range of moods and
colours at her disposal, tatsefully deployed, as well as the sheer
vocal stamina to get through the extremely demanding Act II sequence
of five consecutive duets with different partners. And a blinding high
F to end (which indulgence it would be churlish either to deny her or
complain about given its astonishing accuracy). I thought she was
wonderful.

I may add she flatly disputes Christiansen's account of events,
stating that the dress she was in was so tight she couldn't actually
bend over in it, and that what had fallen was Elder's own hand-written
decorative inserts on manuscript paper, about which he wasn't upset
and that she never "colluded"with the audience at her imagined little
"triumph". Who knows? Certainly she seemed genuinely surprised and
upset at how things had turned out, but essentially fatalistic: people
will believe what they want to believe. For what it's worth, she
seemed to me to be completely without guile or calculation, just a
very serious and fundamentally simple, straightforward person, wholly
grounded (her mother was in attendance throughout) and keen to better
herself at every opportunity. I found her irresistible, and she was
direct - though doubtless indiscreet - enough to tell me when I
enquired that she is due back here as Gilda, Amina and La fée in the
Massenet Cendrillon Covent Garden are putting on for Joyce DiDonato.
Let's hope she has the triumph she actually deserves in due course...

SJT