This voice is beyond lovely -- even at age 50+. She also interprets her songs so beautifully -- rare -- mostly we get, "Well here's my big, beautiful voice!"
+brian barnett Rosa is singing at home and plays the piano at the same time... this is one of the home home recordings when she was older. She was not trained as a singer but a concert pianist. She liked to do a swim in her unheated pool... come in sit on her towel and sing while playing piano
A little song bird told me... Her sister Carmela was trained in voice and she was trained on the piano as youngsters. Really shows in her approach to singing in she sings every note as written, actually plays her voice from that aspect as an instrument. Ponselle often used a key (or her tuning fork) to tune her voice to. What is truly interesting is that in her classes and direction of the Baltimore Civic Opera she never technically explained things but showed by example but the precision was always based on precise reference of key. Maria Callas in her master classes explained much of her technique in technical terms, and being a great student (fan) of Ponselle based her (technical) explanations on the way Ponselle did it. Somewhere on RU-vid are some recordings of Callas's master classes... and in particular the one on trills where she explains it is one note and the technique in terms of playing an instrument... that she picked up from Ponselle... but in the RU-vid clip as I remember she does not explain where she got it from.
I discovered Maria callas when I was a kid and maria callas kept saying she was inspired By ponselle , and I have been the biggest fan of Rosa ever since the singing might now be sound old fashioned and vaudeville buy her voice and life force transcends time and styles ...worth reading the audition when a young Rosa ponselle sung for caruso for the first time its explains her amazing talent
