Hi resolution version at www.elizabethpa... Olympia Les Oiseaux dans la charmille, Les Contes d'Hoffmann
Elizabeth: Olympia was one of those roles that I scorned as a student because I didn't consider it great music like Mozart and Strauss and the modern things I was doing. I think the devil heard me say that because Olympia turned out to be one of my main signature rolls. I sang it a lot. It is a crowd pleaser. It is one of those arias that brings you notice and success every time. It actually isn't that simple. It is written to sound simple but requires a lot of technical ability. You have to sing as precisely as possible. The singer is playing a machine which is perfect so the aria should come off perfectly. A machine doesn't make mistakes. I have heard it sung mechanistically and I was bored with it. There are hints she is human because there is feeling in her singing. She is spooky that way. I had a lot of opportunity to think about the role and how to interpret it. I knew it was about the bravado of the exact notes but it's also interpolating high notes that would excite everyone. The machine part was to hold the high E flat at the last to an almost unreal length. I would make it to nine counts before I would come down on it. Well, she is a machine so she can hold that note as long as she wants.
I think the best staging I ever did for that role was in Frankfurt. Olympia sat perfectly still on a pedestal that turned. I never moved a muscle the whole time I was on stage. It's challenging to sing an aria that way. I was in 30 performances of that production.
Charlie: I saw you do Olympia at MOT in Detroit. You moved around on stage but it seemed like your eyes did all the communicating.
Elizabeth: I wanted Olympia to be a little strange and spooky. The costume made you look like a Madam Alexander doll but I wanted her to be a spooky doll.
Charlie: If you could have played Olympia exactly as you wanted what would that be?
Elizabeth: She would be a porcelain figurine. She wouldn't look comical with little round cheeks and a puggy nose. She'd be more like a mannequin-a stepford wife, Olympia played as a debutante, not a 10 year old child.
Charlie: I noticed she didn't have facial expressions but she seemed to express a lot in her face.
Elizabeth: Her eyes are alive. Read the libretto. Her eyes come from a magician. It's almost a Frankenstein story. Her eyes are alive. That's why she's spooky. Eyes are a mirror of the soul. She's spooky because everything else is dead but her eyes are alive so she has that human quality. The bad guy comes back at the end and takes her eyes back. That's what kills her. That's the story. (from a 2005 interview)
17 авг 2024
