Mothers Day and Tenors
Well, Sunday was mothers' day for most of the ladies who were at our concert last Sunday at Randy Puckett's fabulous whale studio in Prunedale. A notable exception was our great pianist, Lucy, who was celebrating her last non-mothers' day.
So I started to think about tenors, I do that nearly all the time, and what nut cases they are as illustrated in most of the music I sang. We kicked off the recital with a performance of the beautiful aria from Donizetti's "Maria di Rohan".
The action takes place in Paris during the reign of Louis X111 and Cardinal Richelieu. It concerns a tragic love triangle where Maria, Countess of Rohan, is secretly married to Enrico, Duke of Chevreuse, BUT is really in love with Enrico's friend, Riccardo, Count of Chalais. |
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Forecasting his death in a duel with Enrico, Riccardo contemplates joining WHO in heaven? The woman they are about to fight over of course? No, NOT a chance, his MOTHER!!! It gets worse, Maurizio in Cilea's "Adriana Lecouvreur", as soon as he comes on stage starts singing about Adriana,
the woman he is in love with , "I see in you the sweet smiling image of my MOTHER" .
It gets even worse "You are as beautiful as the FLAG of my native land in the smoke and flame of battle" and "you are as cheerful as the dream of glory promised to the victor". WOW!!!! |
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Hector Berlioz, yes a tenor as well as a composer and writer, in his autobiographical "Lelio" waxes crazily over his lost love. Give me some sodium pentothal and I will think up a dozen more cases.
No wonder Rossini, the great composer, said "A tenor is not a voice, it’s a disease". Anna Russell, the comedienne stated "Tenors have resonance where their brains aught to be."
These observations must be true or I would never be trying to do for local opera what I'm doing. |
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