I don't know what is the air/opera she sings but it has a strong eery feeling. Like a goddess singing from the depth of a magical forest like Broceliande or from the height of a mysterious japanese mountain with yokaï dancing around her. 😁
@@gd3172 yes, but before that it's dulcissime which is after and then it's stetit puella, so it's not "the part before in trutina" :) just wanted to help op name the songs
A filigree of beautiful musical notes--control, musicianship, find her interpretation intriguingly beautiful and mesmerizing. In her prime and in her repertoire, she was an assoluta. On a different note, just learned that soprano Teresa Zylis-Gara passed away at the end of August. Always solid and reliable in Mozart and Verdi.
Beautiful! I am a big fan of Orff. I have to say though, I liked Popp's rendition a bit better - her style is more minimalistic, which I think goes better with Orff's modernist aesthetic. Dessay's ease with the top notes is really without peer though. In her prime she was phenomenal - tonal beauty in every register, superb technique, and keen musicianship. But it was a light voice, and given her hunger from theatre and drama, it's not surprising she pushed it and ran into trouble rather soon. A 10-year prime, about the same length of Callas's, ironically.
Lohengrin O, you must be one of the few who finds beauty in Carl Orff. I do but I know we are in the minority… much beauty to be found here. How I wished she had stayed within her fach….
@@LohengrinO I think it's way more than that... It's a combination of a lot of factors, in addition to the abundance of high notes: - Her vocal placement throughout her register has always been a problem, especially because she had to figure out how to project her very, very light and not very powerful voice in the lows, medium and even high medium ranges. So she adopted a very muscular vocal placement, full of tension in the face and neck, to attack the notes more strongly and to project. Which is not natural for a voice like her. - She started her career when her technique and her vocal support were not ready (listen from 1988 to 1990/91. With the added stress of live she got used to compensating for her technical weaknesses by pressing her strings extremely resistant and flexible vocals, which does not pose a problem at the beginning and does not strain his voice much. - At this same period and later in the 90's too, we can clearly hear that she sometimes uses her vocal cords rather than her breath to save air (and making some beautifuls white tones and notes but it's not the subject here), she can even do it up to high C and D, E flat. But by saving air on those high-pitched notes, which still require a lot of air pressure to vibrate healthily, she wears out the muscles and the tension in her vocal cords which compensate. And saving too much air on highs is devastating for the vocals! Even more if, as Dessay always does, the sentences are very long, with highs, and large variations in range, etc. Add to that the stagings which made her sing in positions and situations never before seen in the history of opera, and which require such an effort that singing at the same time is extremely complex and necessarily wears out the voice more, the column of air never being straight and the body never in the same position, always moving and being unstable. And I'm sure there are still a lot of things that contributed to the premature fall of this unique voice (for example singing Queen of the night was not a good idea for her voice, because she faked dramatic tones with a full tension on the throat and the vocals cords, we can hear it's unheatlhy as hell!), which I would have loved to hear if she had developed the old operatic technique ... What a loss.
I agree with Thomas totally - it is hard to say whether it’s better to sacrifice drama for pure vocal breath and positioning - I believe it is an individual choice - sometimes sacrificing longevity of voice health for the truth of the drama makes for perfection of performance in the moment! Sometimes that’s what performers live for, and what live audiences may thrill to experience! That’s what makes artists and performances unique! I can’t criticize the choice great artists choose to make - I may be saddened, but what a luxury to experience such wonderful perfection when it happens! (Both for artists and audiences)!
...by the way, Im so crazy with Orff that when I listen to him I only wanna listen to HIM alone... he is like a highly addictive drug... but as with all addictions, the sensation is so STRONG that the brain rejects it after a while (like eating 10 kilos of Cherries or Strawberries and then Vomiting from them)
Her prime was sadly short, roughly from 1994 to 2006, but while it lasted it was exceptional, a truly complete artist with musicianship, beauty, technique, drama, acting skills, everything. The timbre itself was quite unique, definitely and completely unlike any other soprano before or after her - and IMHO that's particularly hard to find in lyric-leggero singers. She can boast that she became an almost unsurpassed reference in at least half a dozen roles, like Zerbinetta, Olympia and Lakmé.
