OPERA: Digression on French Pronunciation
Vinh Nguyen
From: er...@sejnet.sunet.se (Eric Thomas, SUNET)
In article <1992Apr24.2...@husc3.harvard.edu>, vng...@husc8.harvard.edu (Vinh Nguyen) writes...
>Agnes Baltsa in the digital
>Karajan version [of Carmen] has only some temperament, a shrill voice and
>lousy French.
The choirs were very good I must say, and Carreras did a rather good job. The
idea of hiring local actors to do the spoken parts was a very good one -
singing in a foreign language is one thing, but *talking* naturally in that
language and with good diction is another matter entirely. Beyond that, this
was definitely one of the worst Carmens. Karajan and the singers are constantly
striving to play/sing louder than the other, while the cellos dutifully produce
a loud "thooooonk" at the end of each of Carmen's sentence (which in this opera
take an unusual plunge into the lower register), so we can't hear that Baltsa
can't articulate at the lower end of her range. Van Dam is singing with about
the level of subtletly that Karajan uses on the orchestra. Humpa humpa humpapa!
*** [Vinh] I suppose that Carerras doesn't do too good a job on pronunciation.
From my experience with his Werther on Phillips, his French is rather
pathetic compared to that of Frederica von Stade who likes to forray into
the French repertory with some success but less than sterling pronunciation
either -- just witness her rendition of Que j'aime les militaires from
Offenbach's La Duchesse de Gerolstein in a recent televised MET gala
performance of Die Fledermaus.
>Leontyne Price in the analogue Karajan
>version on RCA had some temperament (quite suggestively "sexy")
>a strange kind of a voice (eerily "husky") and decent pronunciation
>which only faltered in impulsive moments.
Er, I beg to differ on the pronunciation. I've just played it again just to be
sure I wasn't confusing... "s'il loui convient de refuser... Wrien n'y fait
menaces ou prieuwes..." Possibly better than average for an English-speaking
singer, but not good enough. Mirella Freni is struggling with the diction so
much that she has trouble concentrating on what she is saying - a pity, since
the voice is adapted to the role.
*** [Vinh] Thank you for putting a check on my excessive enthusiasm
towards Leontyne Price. Yes, her French diction is suspect for the
most part, especially in the recitative, even though I have to say
that her feel for the music enabled her to give a credible portrayal
which exploited the nuances of the diction quite well in the singing
sections (including the Habanera with which you are quibbling --
I found her vocal tricks suitable enough to the flow of the French
lyrics with apt emphases on the key words and cadences). Still,
I have to control my enthusiasm with the reality that her French is
far from perfect. But it is rather decent compared to the rest of
the un-French cast of Franco Corelli (a boorish Don Jose) and Mirella
Freni (a sweet-voiced Micaela with the most horrible pronunciation
possible -- she makes even Price sounds good I must say!) :-)
>(Placido Domingo on that set, as well as on the Solti one opposite
>Troyanos above, has offensively bad French pronunciation --
Domingo is notoriously unable to sing in French or English. I get mad the
second he opens his mouth; try listening to him singing "Yesterday" in English
if you think I'm just a bigotic purist :-)
*** [Vinh] Should I add that even his Italian is less than smooth, and
his "German" quite funnily "Spanish-Italian"! :-) So much for his show
of linguistic versatility in the "Three Tenors Concert".
>the same thing can be said for every non-French tenors --
>except the versatile Nicolai Gedda
Gedda does indeed have very good diction, and above all he sounds mostly
natural - just like someone who has been living in France for a long time but
still has hints of a former accent. He is also one of the best Don Jose I've
heard.
*** [Vinh] Complete agreement here. BTW I think that Gedda is Swedish.
But he's remarkably at home with the French and German traditions
(I haven't heard much of his Italian singing). Recently he has also
embarked on the role of Prince Mishkin (sp?) in Boris Godunov in
Russian. Talking about versatility!
I'm afraid there simply isn't any wholly satisfactory recording of Carmen. The
best voice I ever heard for the title role was Helene Delavault, but it was a
local production recorded on the radio and TV - a slightly modified and
shortened version attempting to reach a wider public, with success. I would say
that the best recording is Pretre's (Callas + Gedda), although it is far from
being perfect. The problem is to find someone with good diction, which is
almost impossible given that most famous singers come from other countries, and
that French singers learn french opera and its peculiar diction, with these
strong rrrr's and the deep e's that sound almost like 'eu'.
*** [Vinh] I have never heard of Helene Delavaut. I wonder if she is a
modern singer -- good pronunciation in her native tongue but weak on vocal
endowments as are most other French singers. That's the irony of French
operas -- those who can sing them well don't sing them idiomatically and
vice versa. June Anderson has decent pronunciation but such a sour voice.
Alfredo Kraus is getting too old. Who will take up the torch now that
the golden age of French singing has passed away long ago? Carmen is a
problematic opera and I think that the Callas version is further from
perfection than the de Los Angeles one, though both have the stylish
contribution of Gedda as Don Jose, and Beecham is more quirky than the
young Pre^tre. I applaud your incisive comments on the quirks of
idiomatic French diction!
Message-ID: <5td...@rpi.edu>
From: beas...@cs.rpi.edu (Alejandro Beascoechea)
Date: 25 Apr 92 18:53:40 GMT
In article <1992Apr25.1...@sunic.sunet.se> er...@sejnet.sunet.se writes:
>Domingo is notoriously unable to sing in French or English. I get mad the
>second he opens his mouth; try listening to him singing "Yesterday" in English
>if you think I'm just a bigotic purist :-)
I think you are totally right about Domingo, I simply wonder if we spaniards
are simply horrible at languages. But on the other side Victoria de Los
Angeles and Alfredo Kraus sound very good in french.
*** [Vinh] It's a tough call since truly Victoria de Los Angeles and to
a lesser extent Alfredo Kraus do have exemplary French pronunciation,
but on the other hand, Domingo, Carerras, Berganza, even Troyanos, do
have such terrible pronunciation -- Montserat Caballe is somewhere in
between, her Malthide in Rossini's Guillaume Tell on EMI is a mixed
blessing on the pronunciation count, better than average on most singing
parts but unpalatable in the recitative (it's quite unflattering to
hear her French opposite that of Nicolai Gedda, not to mention a largely
French cast of the shrill-voiced Mady Mesple', the dry-voiced Gabriel
Baquier, the curdly-voiced Jocelyne Taillon, the thin-voiced Charles
Burles, and some comprimario voices of French singers).
>>the same thing can be said for every non-French tenors --
>>except the versatile Nicolai Gedda
I would like to see what you think about Pavarotti. I saw the Pavarotti + 2
show in PBS, and when he started singing in french I really felt ashamed! I
do not speak french, but french is a language that you can really feel when
someone is doing a horrible job! :-). Unless, I am wrong and he was trying to
sing in Romanian!:-).
*** [Vinh] Pavarotti's French is a graver offense than those of most others.
I wonder if this is typical of Italians (Mirella Freni is another case in
point) with their open-sounded ending vowels (pretty similar to Spanish
too, I guess).
Also, in this same program I had the impression that Pavarotti was not totally
familiarized with the lirics of the song (a starting duetto with June Anderson).
*** [Vinh] They were singing the Act I duet from Donizetti's La Fille du
Re'giment. It's rather unfortunate that Pavarotti has "forgotten" the
lyrics of this opera which he and Dame Joan Sutherland have scored much
success in the early 1970s at Covent Garden (from which a Decca recording
was based), so much so that he had to sing (or actually to decipher)
from the vocal score.
R. Wilmer
>Message-ID: <1992Apr25.1...@sunic.sunet.se>
>From: er...@sejnet.sunet.se (Eric Thomas, SUNET)
>
>the French repertory with some success but less than sterling pronunciation
>either -- just witness her rendition of Que j'aime les militaires from
>Offenbach's La Duchesse de Gerolstein in a recent televised MET gala
>performance of Die Fledermaus.
I heard Frederica von Stade sing Massenet's Cendrillon, and her
French was excellent.
>
>>the same thing can be said for every non-French tenors --
>>except the versatile Nicolai Gedda
Jussi Bjorling pronounced French beautifully. So does Robert White.
>The problem is to find someone with good diction, which is
>almost impossible given that most famous singers come from other countries, and
>that French singers learn french opera and its peculiar diction, with these
>strong rrrr's and the deep e's that sound almost like 'eu'.
Most French opera singers are trained to pronounce r's like Italian r's.
Of course in spoken French (or French popular songs) the r is pronounced
in the throat, not with the tongue. German has that same difference
between opera singing and popular singing.
Likewise the ``e muet'' is pronounced differently in opera and
melodie francaise, from classical French drama (Racine and
Corneille), which is still different from modern spoken French (where
it is usually not pronounced at all).
>Also, in this same program I had the impression that Pavarotti was not totally
>familiarized with the lirics of the song (a starting duetto with June Anderson).
I saw that Pavarotti plus concert and several things struck me. I
liked the singing of Kalen Esebian (sp?), the Italian soprano
(Paghighi?), and Florence Quivar. Sherrill Milnes and Raina
Kabaivanska (both of whom I admired in the past) made
me cringe. The Boccanegra duet was a sight with Esebian's easy
technique and relaxed, expressive mouth; while Milnes' grimacing
on every vowel made him look like as though he was impersonating
a mad sorcerer rather than a loving father.
I felt I got an insight into the opera, Adriana Lecouvreur, and
why aging sopranos (Tebaldi, Caballe, Sutherland, Olivero), like to
sing it at the ends of their careers. Much of the opera is
written conversationally in the middle range while the
orchestra thickly repeats (and repeats) lush melodies from
previous arias and duets. Vocal deterioration is well disguised
and then when out of the melodramatic low middle-range
utterance, Adriana suddenly exclaims something on a high G, it has
the tremendous effect of a high B. Recently we talked about
exposed arias (mentioning Porgi Amor as an example). The
role of Adriana is the opposite. You could call it cloaked.
I thought Kabaivanska in her regal Empire-style gown, was the
picture of the glamorous prima donna. Never to me, did a
Tosca *look* more like Tosca. But the voice was unreliable
in all ranges (whereas Milnes sang clearly flat, I found
it hard to know where Kabaivanksa's pitch was), and having
Kabaivanska sing Butterfly was simply a terrible idea.
Nevertheless, largely because of the compositional vocal
disguising I described, I liked the Adriana Lecouvreur.
I enjoy putting concerts together, but putting excerpts
that go well next to each other is not easy. I thought
there was a particularly dreadful bit of programming in
the second part of the program that ran from ``Adriana
Lecouvreur'' to ``Parigi o Cara'' from ``Traviata'' to
``Barbiere di Siviglia'' to the third Act of ``Otello''.
Because of the previous piece, ``Traviata'' sounded
ploinky, ``Barbiere'' sounded trivial, and ``Otello''
was embarrasingly dramatic, like a social ``faux pas''.
That order made it extremely difficult for the
audience or musicians to get into the atmosphere of
the operas. ``Adriana'', which I think most people
would agree was the least of those four compositions
was the only one that sounded like an appropriately
atmospheric work, because it had been well set-up
by ``Pourquoi me reveiller'' of Werther.
Richard
Jon Conrad
>I liked the singing of Kalen Esebian (sp?),
Kallen Esperian.
I'd hoped that we'd gotten this straight here a few weeks ago, the last
time her name got butchered here! :-)
Ah well, OPERA magazine just gave a glowing review of her Desdemona in
Vienna, while turning her first name into Karen! :-(
Jon Alan Conrad
Francois Velde
>Of course in spoken French (or French popular songs) the r is pronounced
>in the throat, not with the tongue. German has that same difference
>between opera singing and popular singing.
It was my understanding that the reason for pronouncing the r's as in Italian
is to make sure they are heard at all. After all, the modern, spoken French r
is barely audible as is.
I have heard a very good French tenor called Francois Le Roux, who sang French
"chansons" by Duparc *without* rolling the r, and then lieder by Schumann
*with* rolling r's. But then, the audience was small, and he was only fighting
with a piano.
To digress further, French r's used to be as in Italian. The Parisian
prononciation came to dominate after the Revolution.
>
>Likewise the ``e muet'' is pronounced differently in opera and
>melodie francaise, from classical French drama (Racine and
>Corneille), which is still different from modern spoken French (where
>it is usually not pronounced at all).
Same point about audibility.