Toti dal Monte

A short article on Toti dal Monte from Wikipedia just to familiarize yourself with her importance in opera history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toti_Dal_Monte

I already always associated Toti dal Monte's name with "best Butterfly" of the pre-war era, but I had never heard her sing the role. While scrounging around at the Carnegie Library, I discovered a 1939 recording with Dal Monte as Cio Cio San and Beniamino Gigli as Pinkerton. Af first, I was really quite appalled at what I was listening to. After this first listen, I characterized her as nasal, and all that, but I thought "okay, I will be open-minded and I will examine what she is doing."

Toti dal Monte uses what is called the voce infantile or childlike voice that many Butterfly employed to sing Butterfly. After all, Cio Cio San is fifteen, and Toti was 46 when she made this recording! That is the beauty of opera. I hate when people say "oh, well how can I possibly believe that this middle-aged woman is an innocent, Japanese teenager?" Well, it is the singer's job to convince you and Toti dal Monte does that.

Compare Toti dal Monte's singing of the role to say, Patricia Racette's. Racette sounds like she is a divorced, middle aged housewife in white-face make up and a kimono. Sure! She "sings" the music, she "acts," but it is so disconnected from the music and the character. She's younger, slimmer than Toti dal Monte was - but she doesn't convince me.

My problem with the digitalization of opera is that, while it makes it more 'accessible' (I guess that's the argument), it turns opera into a visual rather than aural art. We are distracted from the music, the story, and the basic human emotion. The singers themselves seem to think "oh, well, I have to ACT it, I have to be a REAL actor," (whatever that means) and they fail to realize where the acting in opera comes from. It must ALWAYS come from the music. Every decision that the opera actor needs to make is influenced by the music. Every decision that the opera director makes needs to be influenced by the music.

Of course, one must sing with one's voice. One must also have the necessary and rigorous technical training, and the knowledge of how one's own personal voice works in order to color it to any character. That is why Toti dal Monte, Scotto, Callas, and to some degree Tebaldi and Albanese, are successful as Butterly. They use the voce infantile when it is appropriate (before Butterly becomes a woman after the 2nd act) and then make a change in their voice when there is a change in the character. Now, THAT is acting.

When listening to Toti dal Monte please don't assume that it MUST sound a certain way because it is Puccini. Butterfly needs to be sung by a lyric soprano or larger, it is true, but that does not mean she needs to lack dynamics, finesse, innocence, and dramatic/musical nuance.

For example, notice how different Toti's color is in the aria "Che tua madre dovra." Butterfly is now a woman in this. The voice is almost entirely different than we heard in the Act I duet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObbsZ8RhbeA&feature=related

And here is our friend Patricia Racette - singing the music, emoting in a generic sort of way, but what character is she supposed to be portraying? How do you believe that a middle-aged, white lesbian is a 15 year old Japanese Geisha?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bror-r0Wfw

TOTI DAL MONTE

I am curious to get your opinions on Toti Dal Monte, before I say anything.

Caro Nome:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Se8CYiyO8U&feature=related

Casta Diva:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imNlIS4-gP4&feature=related

Selections from Butterfly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imNlIS4-gP4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTadlnmtes4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObbsZ8RhbeA&feature=related

This reminds me. I want to see if I can get Gheorghiu's recording of BUTTERFLY for like $2.00 on Amazon... She is my guilty pleasure.

Listening to singers with big voices on recordings.

This will be brief. I no longer have internet at my apartment, so I am writing this from work. Does that make me a professional blogger?

I've had to explain this to a lot of people who don't "like" certain singers based on a few recordings they've listened to. Singers, I might add, that had long and well-respected careers or, if they had short-lived careers, contributed a substantial amount to opera (I write this specifically for Maria Callas.)

Singers who fall into this category include:
1) Maria Callas
2) Leonie Rysanek
3) Joan Sutherland
4) Renata Scotto
5) Victoria de los Angeles
6) Regine Crespin (the topic of today.)

My sophomore year of college is when I stopped listening to a singer's voice and started listening to their technique. I believe this is why I am such a critical and unbiased listener, even when it comes to my close friends and peers who are singers.

One of the main things that I think account for the decline in good teachers of singing and in good singers is that everything is digital and recorded. With hundreds of thousands of recordings out there, we get into our ear an idea of "what an opera singer should be," and it is entirely and external notion. We have a difficult time looking internally and saying "okay, well what is he/she doing to produce THEIR sound?" This results in many teachers who want a singing "product" rather than a singing process. (The process is the only way to teach. Sorry if anyone disagrees, but get back to me in ten years when you have to pay thousands of dollars to rework your voice.) So what do we have? People who don't know what they're listening for, what they're teaching, and what they're singing.

Back to the point at hand. How do we listen to these recordings of big voiced singers? First of all there are many questions to ask, the most important one being HOW are they singing and WOULD this be audible in an opera house? For me, the question of audibility is one of the most important in singing (and a by-product of technique, not a component of it.) How can you communicate to me if I can't hear you??

Question number 2: What is lost when a voice is being recorded? That is why we listen for TECHNIQUE and not for SOUND, bitches. You can add "reverb" to a recording, but that is a false sound. Renee Fleming's voice can "sound big" in a recording, but it is not. (I know, I've seen her live and could barely hear her.) A problem with old recordings is that they didn't have the reverb option (or in the case of some singers like Callas, the mic was placed too close and you lose a lot of overtone color.)

Now, how does this apply to my BFF Regine Crespin? First of all, a little history on Regine Crespin (1927-2007):

A French soprano of both French and Italian heritage, Crespin was one of the first French singers who had a successful career outside of France, mostly because she was schooled in the Italian tradition of singing. She sang Madame Lidoine in the FRENCH premiere of LES DIALOGUES DES CARMELITES. (This was NOT the world premiere. That was in Italian, at La Scala and starred Virgina Zeani as Blanche de la Force and Leyla Gencer as Lidoinie.) She also sang Wagner (Sieglinde, Brunnhilde), Strauss (Marschallin, Ariadne), Verdi, and Puccini (Tosca). This was a big voice, people! Later in life she switched to mezzo roles such as a Carmen (which is often done by sopranos anyway), and ended her career singing character roles such as the Countess in PIKOVAYA DAMA and Madame de la Croissy in DIALOGUES.

Regine's voice is bright, clear, technically secure (although her top wasn't the easiest), and penetrating.

What do I want you to listen for in her singing?
1. VOWELS. She sings real, bright, honest vowels. This is her voice.
What people have said about her: "She's nasal." "She has no color."
Wrong, people. She didn't have a naturally dark voice, so she sounds "nasal" because someone where along the line some moron decided that a dark voice was really "operatic." This is entirely incorrect. Listen to any good Italian singer before the 80s. (This includes Pavarotti before the 80s but not after.)
2. Vibrato. There is no excessive vibrato. This is her NATURAL vibrato, a result of good, free singing.
Complaints: She sings everything straight tone. She's flat. Once again, "She has no color."
One of the things that I like about her is her crystal, clear voice. It's not straight tone. It's unaffected, real singing. Get WITH it, people.
3. Listen to how her voice "soars." I never heard Crespin live, but you can just hear how the top just flies out of her mouth. Listen to the way she sings, how penetrating the sound is and you can imagine how BIG that must've been in the house. WOW.
Some say her high notes are "shrill," or "tight." That's how they SOUND to the ear that is only listening for the product. We can only judge how she sounds in records. I beg you, my friends, to listen to the WAY she sings, and imagine how that could sound in the house. Shrill on records, maybe, but a sound that must've filled the cavernous Metropolitan!

Okay, I hope SOME of this made sense. I tend to ramble.

Here are some TUBES:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpsbFZuvVu4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70rBkk759vo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwOFvOili-4&feature=related

DUET!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoA1DAi2Mm8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P-29vSnXI8

In Song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVuLQeQa8DA

Scotto

Our dear, dedicated reader Olivia (and thus far, only commentator) pointed out that I neglected to include the link to Scotto's DIVINE singing of Flammen, perdonami!

Eccola:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMwJUS6jq-M.

And as my penince, I just found this gem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMio52JOFhA&feature=related

I don't know anything about her, and while she certainly couldn't compete with her contemporaries such as Renata Tebaldi and Magda Olivero, I'd rather hear her on the Met stage than one Anna Netrebko or, sadly, Karita Mattila! (But only in Italian opera, otherwise I think KM is lovely.)