HENRY HOLLAND HELP, ANNA’S DOING VERDI

(Henry Holland)

There is a huge international cabal to WILL Anna Netrebko a legend. I’ve seen it on social media. I have seen the whores do what they are bid; and as for the ‘Net flacks!!!!! We will read, “how gorgeous she is.” Yup. Why not just bring back silent films, or have her lip sync while a professional does the singing? (They did that often enough in the “old days”. Sofia Loren IS Aida while Renata Tebaldi sings on the sound track.)

It doesn’t matter. On a gay gossip board a thread about Maria Callas just this week brought out enormous ignorance. Once, many people of culture (certainly gay men) would at least have known that her name isn’t spelt Callous and they would have read a few reports about her gifts or problems. Now, it’s mostly morons and the one nasty flamer who is both defensive and a gross ignoramus named Henry Holland, hiding behind anonymity but recognizable. Well, he did have a web site up about sucking used athletic equipment so I assume drying all those sweaty socks in your mouth is an achievement. He is one of the star creeps at Parterre Box. You should look him up.

DG is obviously counting on forcing Netrebko Sings Verdi to become a great seller. 

To have such a grandiose presentation, the actual performances are trivial things. A problem with the same old same old in anything is that so many people have recorded this material, even the once rarely encountered Lady Macbeth arias, that it’s easy to find better, in great sound, at a discount! There is a difference between someone who is not that bad and what true stars were once expected to deliver.

Netrebko will actually sing Lady Macbeth. She has also done the lighter Giovanna d’arco. In the aria she has some trouble tuning the unaccompanied material that starts the scene but it’s an appropriate sound. She doesn’t quite get the marking “semplice” (simply) when the aria starts, and her phrasing is wooden; the triplets on “semplice” and “sua vesta” are not precise or in time. It doesn’t sound as though she understands why they are there. She also has a habit of sliding upwards, why does she scoop upwards the fifth from E flat to A flat that ends the word “giovanna”? There is a larger point here. That fifth punctuates an implied endless phrase, but Netrebko doesn’t sound as though she feels the need to sculpt the entire line and is phrasing with that as the point. There are no niceties in the reading. And, while it’s a decent performance in this dreary context, there is no sense of Giovanna’s circumstances or personality.

Arrigo ah parli a un cor from I Vespri Siciliani is taken rather quickly and the tenderness of accent even a distressed Callas (in her “Callas Rarities” release) brought to it is totally absent. This was a strong part of the Scotto, Cerquetti and Caballė
live performances (I saw first and third, second is thrilling on a pirate conducted by Mario Rossi). There is again a lack of firmness and point in the line. Netrebko does not spin out the span of B to G to F sharp on “io t’amo” in the first verse, “io muoio” in the second, a magical part of every good performance I’ve heard including Maralin Niska and Christina Deutekom neither of whom made history in the role but both of whom were better than this. Nor does she sing the repeat of each of those phrases as an echo, an obvious but lovely touch that everyone does. Netrebko is not very precise in differentiating pitches that are close; the G moving down to the F sharp is blurred. She doesn’t alter dynamics much either; the ability to convey sorrowing inwardness, so striking in Scotto or Callas or Cerquetti didn’t occur to her or she can’t do it. The slow descending chromatic scales toward the end are not well tuned. She sings the written cadenza up to the high C, a good note, but that version takes the line lower in her voice than she can sound. It’s competent. And that is greatness, I guess. (Except that there are many potentially greater singers without these problems, I’d nominate Christine Goerke, Sondra Radvanovsky and, given a bit of luck, Angela Meade).

As a performance from a great star in her prime, the Bolero (slow!) from Vespri is a clumsy joke

No Ruiz in Trovatore act four, means she must herself summon the desolate, hopeless scene in “Timor di me?” She doesn’t. The recitative is lifeless; she can’t infuse the words with urgency or color. She vocalizes the high B flat rather than singing the whole word “[pie] TOSA” then fails to shape the descending line, doing nothing with the final word “sospiri” (sighs). The aria is marked adagio but is rather fast, the quickish tempo lets her blur the trills, they’re there, not wonderful. She changes some words in the aria but more importantly doesn’t feel anything – either the rhythm, or the melodic shape or the situation. She sounds like a graduate student with some ability taking a test. The long cadenza is notable for extra breaths; some vague tuning and a lack of the sense that right here in these notes are Leonora’s thoughts of love soaring softly up to Manrico. The entire aria wonderfully dramatizes its poetic conceit and Netrebko gives no indication of understanding that (or of being able to do it).

Verdi makes the Miserere inevitable that way; the answer to Leonora’s sounds of love in the night is a chorus of death. The monks, offstage, sing a cappella with just a bell forlornly playing an E flat, but when Leonora enters the entire orchestra shudders, these are the wings of death. More than anything Leonora must mirror the rhythm, giving her words a hard or frightened point – Netrebko has no real rhythm, in fact she’s a bit behind. She artificially darkens her vocal color but that actually obscures the words. Moreover, she’s isn’t precisely in tune, she’s not able to sound clearly the crucial phrase E flat F flat G flat down to D flat on contende ambascia. And the cry, sento mancarmi, which others have infused with terror, is entirely bland. The great phrases where she cries, “how could I forget you?” in response to the tenor, “di te, di te scordarvi” are not inflected with anguish, they are dead. Poor Rolando Villazon in a far off echo chamber bleats Manrico.

She shakes a fist a “tu vedrai” but lacks rhythmic point and in fact, is anonymous – allegro agitato is the marking, reflected neither in the orchestra nor in her attack. Verdi marks dynamics, a crescendo on the fourth, C to F (o con [te]), and then again on nella [tomba] and then places accents on strong beats leading to a big crescendo for the cadenza, where she sounds like a babushka in thick boots stomping out the cold. Comical. There’s only one verse. Just as well. Lack of a really thrusting attack in Tu vedrai is a problem in conveying Leonora’s sudden resolve, which must contrast with her dream sorrow in D’amor sul ali errante, and her terror in the Miserere.

In exposed vocal material of this kind the singer’s ability to use cues from the score, from the composer’s own timing of effects and sense of form is crucial. And it’s interesting that Caballė, not always inspired and apt to drop consonants and change vowels, in two live performances (from Florence and Dallas) makes so much more of this scene. That’s a glorious sound but the timbre is by no means all. Within her means, Caballė (who doesn’t sing “tu vedrai”), makes most of the expressive points strongly – without the chance of retakes.

What is there to say about the Macbeth arias, as recorded here? I saw in at least two European on line sites about the bit of Macbeth’s letter to his wife, which are written to be spoken: “Oh!!!! She speaks the opening lines!!!! Amazing!!!” You read them or you skip them. And, dear reader, if you or I whispered them into a mike with a Russian accent we’d sound spooky too, except I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t run out of breath before the short lines were finished.

“Ambizioso spirto tu sei Macbetto” lies over an octave but her attack is rough on the E that starts it, the color of tone changes (for no reason) on the E below and it sounds like she is going to break on the D sharp F sharp E on the word “malvaggio”. Even on a recording she needs to take a gulping breath to manage the big run up to the high C, though none is indicated and it breaks the line. The marking of the aria is “grandioso”. Clearly, Lady Macbeth is to make something striding of the line, to seize it forcefully. Netrebko can’t, she’s working just to get through. The first trill is a blur, she omits subsequent trills and doesn’t feel the rhythm when she cries “io ti daró valore” – (“I’ll give you the courage!”) -- the point of the aria is missed. She can’t make the slow crescendo that is marked to start with “accetta” and to grow to a very loud B flat followed immediately by a drop to pian pianissimo (ppp) – what she does is sloppy and irrelevant.

One is always struck by how much Verdi makes of melodic inflection. In just these few lines all this character’s steely cunning is made to sound by the simplest means. But Netrebko is hit or miss – in all three arias. She shows neither special mastery of the vocal line nor any great imagination. If one turns to another Russian, Galina Vishnevskaya in 1976, singing the role far past her vocal best and working hard to manage, she still understands how to make the rhythms work, how this music must be seized and colored. There, extra breaths and some unpleasant sounds are forgivable because the character is so vividly understood. I end this post with Vishnevskaya in this aria, not because it’s a great performance vocally, because it shows what sheer understanding and an imagination that meets the composer’s intention can do.

In the other Macbeth arias some phrases are easier for Netrebko than others, but she really isn’t able to manage a compelling complete performance of any, and again, for a great singer in her prime the small saves and lazy compromises are a lot to accept. Neither her timbre nor her manner is arresting. She only does one verse (thankfully) of “Or tutti, sorgete!” and doesn’t get a doctor or serving woman to help set the Sleepwalking Scene. She certainly doesn’t set the scene by herself.

La luce langue is about as dead a reading of the aria as I’ve ever heard. Leonie Rysanek couldn’t pitch it but was electrifying live and is rather exciting on the RCA record, Olivia Stapp was not thought a great diva but one wonders, after this. It would take nine Netrebkos to make one Rita Hunter, who being English, one would expect to be awkward in Italian style, but one Rita Hunter makes the impact of about forty Anna Netrebkos and is infinitely more accomplished in florid music.

And now, one even wonders about Netrebko’s usefulness in this rep. At Covent Garden Liudmyla Monastyrska buried her, given what she does here (that telecast is very easy to find). True, she wasn’t subtle or Italian but that was one wallop through these arias. In comparison to all these ladies, Netrebko sounds like an amateur, and the spectacular Christine Goerke, who in different killer parts, has demonstrated all the skills La Lady needs is looking at the role.

Is it possible that Netrebko, 42, and now rather thick set, missed her moment? 

That when she should have been doing Tosca and Manon Lescaut, Desdemona, Trovatore Leonora, say ten years ago, she was taking the easy way out – being a beauty with a good voice? Well, that made her rich and a darling of the Manuella Hoelterhoff school of music criticism: “she’s thin, she’s hot, she’s GREAT!!!” It made her neither an artist nor a virtuoso and these arias (the album extends to an improbably bland “Tu che le vanità”) expose someone who will need all the hype, all the empty queen worship, all the ignorance she can get to seem important in a decade. Henry Holland, calling Henry Holland!!! But then she has the great whorehouse DG behind her. Who can fail?