I suppose that MERKIN and I could perpetuate this thread via personal mail, but after all, this is a Showdown thread and he and I can't be the only two readers who take an interest in opera. That said, please be advised that the ball is in my hands, and that I'm disinclined to pass it to anyone other than MERKIN, particularly not to anyone who wants to discuss anything other than opera. In basketball parlance, I'm a ball hog.
Does anyone recall the name of Earl Manigault? He was a legendary streetball player circa 1975. He stood 6'3", and from a standing start could place and re-place a quarter on the top of a regulation backboard. Which would require a vertical leap above 4 feet. Manigault had the attention span of a mayfly and had drug issues besides. I bring him into this conversation because it is about opera and I control the ball and Manigault could jump out of the gym.
There is also a class of female voice which can jump out of the gym. The standard soprano register reaches to high A. A spinto soprano can reach to high D on a good day. The exquisite Tebaldi, your classic spinto, could achieve that note to dramatic effect. Then there are the coloratura sopranos, who can deliver a high F. And maybe once a century we are blessed with a coloratura sfagato, whose range exceeds high F, and whose talent is complemented not merely by beauty but by dramatic presence.
Merkin wrote:
Sumi Jo as Queen of the Night
Anna Netrebko as Donna Anna
What catches the eye regarding MERKIN's recommendations, is that he proposes two roles by Mozart, both written for coloratura soprano, and both voiced by angry women. Nobody does feminine wrath like Mozart. As a composer, Mozart framed angry women in much the same way that Michael Douglas, the actor, personified irritable WASP entitlement. So there are three equivalences in MERKIN's two recommendations.
Sumi Jo, as Queen of the Night, is blessed with the aria "Der Holle Rache," (Hell's Vengeance), in which she demands of her daughter, Pamina, that Pamina kill her father, the Queen's ex-husband. In this demand there are two coloratura passages, ending in open-vowel stoccate, dozens of them, which bounce around the upper register of the most gifted soprano and do occasionally land on high F. If you were to compare Sumi Jo's performance of this aria with that of Diana Damrau, you may conclude, as I did, that Damrau doesn't naturally hit those high notes - rather that her Queen is just so angry that she can't help herself. On stage, Damrau's performance is grounded and menacing. Sumi Jo, on the other hand, is having too much fun playing above the rim to inflect much threat to her less talented enemies. She'll stretch the occasional note, or run off a trill while casting a glance over her shoulder, to make sure that the orchestra which is accompanying her has not lost interest in the chase. Several of her best performances of this aria have been recorded and no two sound the same. A third option, perhaps a middle ground, would be Lucia Popp, whose anger is suffused with melancholy. Popp, unlike her sisters Sumi Jo and Damrau, knows that she is pursuing a lost cause. Hers is the only version of this aria that I own (my VCR of Ingmar Bergman's phantasmagorical production of "The Magic Flute" having exploded years ago).
If you were to view Lucia Popp's rendition of "Der Holle Rache" on YouTube, you might be startled to find a picture of Maria Callas juxtaposed with Lucia Popp's voice. Callas and Popp bore as much physical and temperamental resemblance to each other as Morticia Addams to Doris Day. The picture is Callas. The voice is Popp. You should never trust what you see on-line.
MERKIN's second recommendation, Anna Netrebko as Dona Anna, is equally nettlesome. Dona Anna (scans with "Banana") is raped by Don Giovanni, who doubles down by murdering her father. As assayed by Netrebko, Dona Anna is a far more complex role than Sumi Jo needed to navigate as Queen of the Night. Much of Dona Anna's voice is in ensemble, where she needs not to shine, bur merely to fit in. So I presume that MERKIN's favor for Anna Netrebko depends on Dona Anna's climactic solo aria, Crudele! Non mi dir" (Cruel! Do not Tell Me).
Netrebko, who might have been a star point guard in the WNBA had she chosen a less affluent path, is no longer the sylph-like "Audrey Hepburn with a Voice," as she was originally touted, with a tone so crystalline as to verge on the metallic. There were and always shall be detractors. In purity her voice could be compared to Freddie Mercury's, late of Queen, based on a report by a Chicago-based comedy news show. But over time Netrebko has filled out, and developed a more insinuating, dramatic resonance. At the age of 46, she has a physique similar to the basketball player Linday Whalen, who is ten years younger. Netrebko's knees are in better shape than Whalen's, as well.
My at-home Don Giovanni is that of the Vienna State Opera, conducted by Riccardo Muti, with Adrianne Pieczonka in the role of Dona Anna. The mature Netrebko, channeling a Dona Anna less than half her age, is a better voice and a superior exponent. I hate to admit it.
It's time for me to step down from my soapbox. Without the soapbox, as you've no doubt observed, I can no longer execute a one-handed dunk. Wouldn't it be cool if I could heave the ball skyward, in the fragile expectation that MERKIN, or better positioned player, might finish the ally-oop, bringing Floria Tosca and her Mario Cavaradossi through the star-crossed year of 1800, and back from the dead?