I’ve heard Dessay live many times over the years. Her sound is simply exquisite, she has an amazing breathing technique and she’s the queen of projection. And there is nothing small about her voice. If anything over the years the sound has grown bigger and rounder. Whether it was in large opera houses such as the Met or Opera Bastille or in more intimate recital venues such as Wigmore Hall or Salle Pleyel to name but a few, her voice has always managed to move the audience. And her acting skills have made her a great communicator, whether she’s performing a full role in a stage production or simply telling a story in a lied or melodie. As they say, she’s got personality and that, you can’t teach! And having had the privilege to speak to her many times after concerts, I can also say that she’s extremely charming and down to earth.
she was a sexual exhibitionist no doubt that would be interesting if it were the least relevant with the chars she was playing.. unfortunately, it was totally out of place and irrelevant... Borderline behaviour that needed a bit of psychoanalysis... nevertheless her Early singing years were astonishing
I was there that evening. I remember that halfway through the performance of this aria we wanted to applaud. When it was over we exploded. I was in tears shouting "BRAVA".
@@Liszt31 It’s been a long time since I went to the opera! Because life is more expensive, children etc ... The last time I saw a great singer in a memorable way it was Youn Sun Nah in "Marciac", in a completely different register obviously, but here it is, my last big memory in "live" which dates from 2014 !!! Nothing replaces real vision (hearing), with all the richness of harmonics that no recording can fully reproduce ...
This is one of the best Olympia interpretations I’ve ever heard. Natalie sings an insanely difficult aria with such ease and beauty. A true Olympia brought to life by Natalie Dessay.
La Scala! Such an ovation. This is gold medal at the opera Olympics. Spectacular and extraordinarily entertaining. The best introduction for the novice. You'll enjoy this!
Maybe you missed the extremely heavily pregnant (with twins!) Elizabeth Watts barely able to rise from her seat to sing the soprano in Mahler 2 at the Proms 2017?
@@gordonhibbs4027 that's impressive as well (wow, I didn't see it!) but I think the real factor here is that this isn't concert performance, but fully staged... phew!
Interesting! A pregnant lady has an extra pint of blood i her body (about half litre) which means a greater oxygen supply. I wonder if it helped? Lucky baby anyway!
That’s what I thought when I saw Diana Damrau singing on the last months of her first pregnancy, she was like 7-8 months but I can’t remember which opera was it. She looked like a nordic warrior, valkyrie or something similar...as breathtaking as Natalie, they’re my favorite sopranos ever! 😍😍😍
@@ubergeraldine it’s actually the exact opposite, pregnant women tend to have less oxygen in their blood, cause they have more blood but less red blood cells, and in the later stages of pregnancy (third trimester or so) the baby pushes directly on the veins that go back to the heart causing breathlessness and such, as well it constricts the depth of their lungs. However, that all being said, some singers have said (like Mariah Carey) that middle stage pregnancy does actually create a funny kind of support cause the diaphragm is naturally more active during this period to account for breathing becoming progressively harder towards the end of pregnancy. It probs all depends on the women a lot hahaha and what her particular body does during pregnancy.
I first heard her do a recording of the Queen of the Night. I was hooked. Became a big fan. I always love seeing and hearing her amazing coloratura. She was like Sills a strong actress. I miss her so much on stage. Thank God there's a lot of videos and recordings to enjoy of her. I met her in app 2002 in Chicago doing my fav Lucia. Her Dad flew in to see her do her last night of Lucia. She was fabulous! I waited 45 mins afterwards, a bad snow storm was going on during this. This petite lady came out in a silver long parka. I asked for her autograph. Wish I would've thought of getting a selfie. She was so sweet. We chatted a few mins. I real thrill hearing her in my fav opera. Natalie is so down to earth, genuine and sweet. No Diva attitude whatsoever. I saw her a few yrs later in La Sonnambula in Santa Fe, NM. Met her again. A true lady and a class act. Thank you Natalie for those great memories I shall never forget.
Aw the fact that she sang sooo well while being pregnant makes me wonder how happy her baby might have been, hearing all those beautifully sung notes by his mommy :D Lol I actually got watery eyes thinkin about this, at the very end during the applause
drives me crazy too, Natalie Dessay is a comic genius actress as well as the clearest soprano, Charlie Chaplin would have loved her and she him and it's a better world that she's in it.
THIS!!! Prime Dessay is one of the best. The death scene was even more epic! Besides, her Ophélie mad scene is still unrivalled imo. Isn't she such an amazing actress too...
The way she can easily sing the absurdly high notes but chooses to not sing them in the repeat of the A section even though she can. She's like teasing us by not singing where we expect it and chooses to sing little bits here and there. Love it.
@@LohengrinO it’s hard to pinpoint the root of her vocal problems. Her top notes were always effortless and free. No tension, no larynx popping, no scooping.. who had such beautiful easy high Gs? Hoch? Mesple? Hallstein?
@@gianerajohn436 Hallstein's were far easier and freer... no coloratura on record matches the Flow of Hallstein ... I think Dessay lost it by oversinging her G6 Ab6 live - those two tones were not of the same quality with the rest of her voice thus should only be sung rarely by her - I think
@@LohengrinO She rarely sang G6 and Ab6 live: the truth is, she had vocal issues during the entire 90s. She had learned to sing with them, and would have excellent performances followed by worse ones. By 2001, she grew tired of the inconsistency and decided to operate as the pathologies were very prominent at the time. In general, even in the 90s her technique wasn't very good, just very high and nasal, which makes singing in the tessitura she did very easy, but it by no means was a sustainable technique. Her technique was at its best between 2005 and 2010.
Personally I feel that among the coloraturas, Natalie Dessay is the most most most natural soprano in her natural excellent exquisite Refined Super high notes. I enjoy all her performances Best “Voices of Spring” Rachmaninov’s “Vocalise” Mozart “The Queen Of The Night” I love her exquisite refined Natural high notes in all her songs.
Indeed, i am sorry its not among those I've seen life. But I have seen Amina (Sonnambula), Julia (Romen &J.), Marie (La fille du regiment), Lucia etc. :)
I saved this video a year and listen to it about twice a month. It is mind-blowing - and for some reason it makes me teary every time 🥲 she is just beautiful!
Simply AMAZING and Simply PERFECTION!!!!!!! Her control is otherworldly. How she sings with such passion and emotion needs to be taught around the world to any and all artists.
She is pregnant her!?!?! It's sooooo difficult to sing when you are that pregnant because the baby really pushes on the diaphragm!! WOW!! BRAVA NATALIE!
This is above and beyond, especially during the applause at the end. She is absolutely charming and a great singing actress. I have tickets to see her sing jazz in Cannes on August 11. I can hardly wait.
I remember her saying in an interview once that the coloratura came easily but that she hated that she had a coloratura voice because she wanted to play the big dramatic heroines (originally wanted to be an actress.) The high coloratura roles are usually not very substantial dramatically. Interesting that she didn't have a proper trill. Did she develop one later? Her musicality and phrasing improved later. And she only does the 'doll acting' during the applause!
She has a studio version of the doll song and she presents a trill where you are able to distinguish the two notes she wobbled between. She actually trills in this video if you listen to 2:40
Even the greatest singers in the world have to accept that "you get the kind of voice that you get" and you make the best of what you got. I think she turned out alright.
Una recita.... che vuol dire far perdere peso specifico alla musica che diventa motivo di pura gioia...dove l'umano sfida le sacre misure del divino...pur restando coi piedi per terra...figura storica,...io c'ero ed avevo come misura la Serra all'Apice...e la Gruberova funanmbolica...con Sutherland come mamma moderna del ruolo......ma qui siamo Altrove che regalo Chapeau!
5:48 - 5:52 this note is so powerful, definitive and fortissimo. Feels like all the dynamic of her voice was freely came out and even stronger than instruments
@@LohengrinO oh i’ve not noticed it before. But that note was really beautiful (i think), anyway she has dedicated to “Musical Industry” so much in her whole career
I hate the tempo, though she handles it extremely well and the aria is considerably harder to keep light when it's this slowly. Her acting just doesn't seem very doll-like, but that may well be more the director than her. I will say that her top notes at this time were excellent, and the Mozart concert aria recordings (from about a year or two earlier) have the best high Gs you'll hear.
It is the direction. Natalie Dessay's capacity to act this role 1000 different ways is known to all who follow her renditions across the world, both in videos and live at opera houses.
I never got to see Dessay live in her prime. I didn't see her until a few years ago in a concert performance of Giulio Cesare, which was probably her last "coloratura" role. I will always remember how by the end she sang "Da Tempeste" like she didn't want to be on stage anymore. This was after her Met HD performance of the same role. In her prime she was quite a sensation, but when her better days were past her, she started to say that cared more about acting than singing.
@@italopera6036 Parce que les extra-terrestres nous font le grand plaisir de nous rendre visite en forme d'artistes. En étant artiste, tu ne décides pas sur ce qui t'est donner comme talent. Tu ne peux pas faire autrement que te perfectionner pour donner au mieux de ton être transcendé. Le public qui te cherche, qui t'écoute, qui te voit, qui te lit pourra s'en réjouir, s'épanouir, te réfuter, ne pas aimer ce que tu fais, rester indifférent. Sur tout cela nous n'avons pas d'influence. Mais tu partages ton coeur et ta vocation et c'est cela qui compte ! Amen et bonne soirée :-)))))
Prodigiosa Natalie Dessay, tanto en su faceta de cantante de coloratura, como en la de actriz. Sencillamente, ¡genial! Para que luego digan que la ópera es aburrida! Las hay -al igual que en las comedias- serias, dramáticas y divertidas; a esta última pertenece la interpretación de la gran Natalie, que la borda con su exquisito arte. Gracias por la publicación, me ha encantado, esta versión no la conocía.
I am not a huge fan of hers, but it's interesting to hear this and see all the. comments. This is of course very fine, and very impressive vocally. But I think that for whatever reason the voice did degrade substantially while she should have still been at the top of her career - maybe it was pulling the voice too much towards the top, maybe something else , I have always thought that the technique felt a little forced, not natural, and that the voice was always being pressured into doing something more than riding on a column of air - and I don't find it odd that she made comments, in the second part of her career, after some deterioration set it, that she was more interested in acting than singing. Singers always do that after they begin to have vocal problems. I remember very well Scotto saying almost the same thing by the late 70s (she made some public announcement about eschewing optional high notes when she came back to Butterly (talking about the entrance Db, for example) and her assumption of Bolena ,but when she had the notes (like the D at the end of the first act of Bolena) she used them) and Anna Russell has some very funny bits, and I think very true bits, about lieder singers and voice In terms of the tempo, which also seems to me somewhat slow (though I don't mind it), one thing that is clear is that the breath line is, not quite short, but there are more catch-breaths than you'd expect, and I wonder if her pregnancy, which surely must have had some impact on her breathing, was responsible for the slower tempi. I know that you could make the argument that it's harder to sing this slower if you really are a coloratura, but on the other hand, the slower tempo allows you moments to breathe, and she does take them. It doesn't hurt the performance imho - it's just a possible observation about the reason for the tempo (some of you might remember that old EMI set with Gedda, D'Angelo, de Los Angeles and Schwarztkopf. The Olympia, according to Legge, who could often not be believed, was supposed to have been Callas early on, although surely by the mid 50s this would have been beyond her, even in the studio. I think she surely would have taken this at a slower tempo by then). Finally in terms of her acting, I am. not a great fan, and have lots of sympathy with those who say that in the second part of her career the 'acting' became totally undisciplined, as if to divert attention from the voice (the Met Amnia was to me a perfect example of this) But I think even earlier on, as here, while I admire the pertinacity of her 'acting' - it is surely a real sign of devotion to the craft that, pregnant, you are willing to swoon into the arms of another actor, as she does - I still find a lot of it forced, although of course this is a role that calls more for almost charades on stage rather than 'acting'. I see that a comment about some personal peccadilloes in her life was apparently deleted by the moderator. I respect that, but in this case, from the bit I can see of what the comment. might have been, from the moderator's response, perhaps it was not so irrelevant. I think you could say that, in the balance between acting (which is after all ultimately something from within) and exhibitionosm, she has always erred on the side of the later, and so perhaps the comments, whatever it was, was not entirely out of place
Scotto was a technical disaster in the 80% of her career... very early she was sweet, later a nightmare... Tebaldi was a nightmare technically from start to end
Wenn ich mir die Kommentare hier durchlese, dann muss ich zu dem Schluss kommen, dass viele sich nur RU-vid Videos anschauen, oder nur gelegentlich Aufführungen an STaatsopern sich anschauen. Bei uns in der Region sind alleine min 8 (eight!!!) Musiktheater, die innerhalb einer Stunde zu erreichen sind. An allen Häusern wird exzellente Handwerkskunst abgeliefert und auch bei uns in Essen sind sogenannte "Stars" aufgetreten, doch hatten wir das bei unserem vorletzten Intendanten und Generalmusikdirektor gar nicht nötig, da waren wir mit Stuttgart abwechselnd Deutschland bestes Opernhaus. Sorry aber die waren Künstler für mich sind nicht die eitlen Sänger und Sängerinnen auf der Bühne, sondern die Komponisten und deren oft wundbare Textdichter, die diese wunderbare Musik erst möglich machten. Was mich oft wahnsinnig macht, sind die Claqueure, die nicht die letzte Note abwarten können oder gar in die Musik rein klatschen. Ob eine Tosca oder Butterfly sich das Leben nimmt, eine Antonia, Mimi oder Traviata den letzten Atem aushaucht, für mich sind es Geschichten auf der Bühne, die ich oft leidenschaftlich miterlebe und wenn ich ehrlich bin, tut mir diese vordergründige, oberflächliche 'Teilnahme oft leid....
