Oh goodie! More evidence that the major US opera companies actually don't want people to know that good singers exist in the universe!

Saturday afternoon, soprano Jennifer Wilson received a call from the Lyric Opera of Chicago informing her that she would in fact be covering an ailing Jane Eaglen (shocking!) in that evening's Gotterd?mmerung. Six hours later, she was singing her first Brunnhilde anywhere, ever. By the end of the night it was quite clear that the Wagnerian mantle (or is it pashmina now?) had been passed to a newer, younger, fresher face and voice?one that was evenly produced, mature, and exciting. Sources say that there were hints of Traubel?with the high C and the end of the duet causing some of the audience to gasp audibly.

Our dear matron La Cieca at Parterre kindly scooped all this for us (since the press and management have remained all but gagged on the topic; god forbid Eaglen be dethroned). From yesterday, on her Demented page, La Cieca featured two decent-quality mp3s of the performance?the "Zu neuen taten" (with John Treleaven) and Wilson's "Ho-jo-to-ho." Not surprisingly, by afternoon today, Lyric Opera of Chicago had contacted Parterre, requesting that one of the mp3s be removed from the site. They're not fooling anyone; if the management had an ear and brain lobes half as big as their reputations, they'd bench Eaglen and send the real trooper out there. Ride the hype, LOC! Or at least give Eaglen a heroin addiction!

Luckily, we were able to snag both mp3's in time. You see, ladies and gentlemen, Trrill is a collective of fags and pirates. And since both will always go to any and every extent to secure their booty, we can be trusted to bestow operatic riches to the less fortunate and to those who can't wait five or ten years for the Met to wake up and feature rising stars on its broadcasts. But lest we offend the delicates of LOC, we'll leave it to you to contact us for "more info."

In the ongoing saga so fascinating we made an entire category for it, the New York Times has published an intimate interview with Deborah Voigt regarding the rumors surrounding her 100-pound weight loss. Writer Anthony Tommasini actually manages to be sensitive (!) when discussing Voigt's lifelong struggle with obesity, compulsive eating, and dieting. In her characteristic down-to-earth style, Deb talks a bit about her personal life, making self-deprecating, humorous jabs (but never actually revealing her past or present weight).

"I'm doing many more Toscas than I ever thought I would," she said of Puccini's glamorous Roman prima donna. (Some of those "Tosca" performances will be at the Met next season.) And down the road, Ms. Voigt, a renowned Strauss singer, hopes to achieve what she called a "personal triumph" by singing the title role in a production of Strauss's "Salome." She has sung the role only in concert.

The opera's climax is Salome's seductive "Dance of the Seven Veils." Ms. Voigt used to joke that her Salome would have to do the "Dance of the 77 Veils." But now she can't wait to take it on.

Move over Mattila!

How odd it feels to enter the hallowed halls of the Met on a Sunday, and yet how perfectly natural since, for some of us, this is church. Or in Gioconda's case, schul (We are of mixed heritage here at Trrill… or some of us are: half Jewish, half diva.)

Church in America, they say, is as much a social ritual as a religious one: see, be seen, hold forth with your opinions that everyone has already heard, and look riveted when others do the same. During the boring parts, it's perfectly okay to make mental lists of your favorite vegetables or people you're better than or whatever it is you do to wile away the quarter hours.

Not to say the competition was at all boring… except when it was. Mme. Gioconda Verkakte-Gemischt has chosen not to dwell on the negative here, for there is truly nothing tackier than picking on young singers in a moment of great nervousness. Reining in, for the moment, our irrepressibly negative nature, we will limit the kvetching to one needlessly picayune comment: for g-d's sake, if you can't sing a trill, don't program a piece with a trill for your debut in front of the world's second most critical crowd. (Has La Scala such a fete? Surely not, for only so much courage can be asked of the young.) And hold off on the Mozart until your sound is squarely more in the realm of Bidu Sayao than that of graduate voice recitals.

Only one young artist could fairly be awarded the "What's She Doing Up There?" award anyway, with its shiny statuette in the shape of Sharon Sweet. Dishing about with the usual suspects at intermission, one got the sense there was pretty much a consensus on who this was. For the most part, everyone onstage had some reason to be there. To Madame's tastes, though, only two sang in a way that said 'get out of my way and hand over the mantel of greatness." That one of these was 21-year-old Lisette Oropesa only goes to show sometimes you just got it, and time will only (we hope) make what is good better. This young chicky could sing us some fine vulnerable Mozart ladies or maybe a Lakmé or two at the Met or anywhere else, providing vocal loveliness and frightening accuracy for those who lap it up and fodder for the kind of people who love nothing more than to say "her voice isn't big enough for the Met" to grumble at each other all the way home to put on their records of Zinka and cry. Just between you, me, and the ten-foot-tall autographed poster of Ghena Dimitrova on the wall here at Casa Verkakte-Gemischt, Gioconda loves the thrill of a big voice as much as anyone, but some flavors don't come in extra large, and this is one. It's audible, it's beautiful, and nobody's asking her to sing Ortrud. For the record, her pieces here were "Ruhe sanft" and "Una voce poco fa." The former was so appropriately, unobtrusively pretty that nobody got all that rowdy about it. The latter was actually funny, which is something of a feat, and the fiorature were beyond reproach, her pitch better than anyone else in the competition.

The other standout, it seems to us, was self-described-in-bio 'character tenor' Rodell Aure Rosel, who is more or less guaranteed a career. The Hoffmann aria, arteesteecally speaking, teetered on the brink of pandering, but the voce was all there, so really it seems ignoble to complain. The "Song of the Worm" (from Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles) gets points just for chutzpah in programming and yet more points for having the goods to back it up. This lad (and let me shed a tear here, moved as I am always by the success of fellow Children-of-a-Lesser-Height) knows what his career is going to be about and knows exactly how it's done. Never thought we'd utter this one but: move over, Gerhard Stolze!

Also ridiculously young, bass Jordan Bisch pulled fast one by singing an aria from Aleko, an opera nobody has ever heard. Ever. The lowest notes ring true, he's bothered to learn good Russian diction (wise move for a bass, eh?) and the climactic note of the piece was held so long the poor fellow was gasping for breath, as were some in the audience. We approve of a singer who isn't afraid to look a little beat up after a good workout. At least it's not the bored look they seem to be teaching in conservatories everywhere.

Well, and everyone seemed to have liked Susan Philips rather a lot. If Gioconda was less than thrilled, it may have more to do with an allergy to Juliette's waltz than anything else. (Not for nothing, we feverishly recall hearing the most poisonous soubrette mince her way through this one during our summer as Decrepit Diva in Residence at The Opera Company that Dare Not Speak Its Name.) Certainly Ms. Philips cannot be faulted in her choice of gowns.

We will not speak here of the dessert portion, wherein several established Met singers fulfilled some itchy clause in their contract by singing a single number while the judges did their basically very easy work. Except to say that Ms. Radvanovsky, about whom this writer has been somewhat agnostic, provided a model to all the youngsters auditioning and wrung tears from the usually stony Gioconda.



Related links:

• An Unamplified Voice's more exhaustive take on the Auditions.
• The official National Council Auditions page.

Speaking of queer opera zealots, iTunes lovers will be interested to learn that pop icon Rufus Wainwright has put together an exclusive iTunes EP for anyone who might want to know where he gets his inspiration:

"… some of the more daunting tracks, the operatic, weird stuff, some heavy number that relate to my classical sensibilities."

The compilation features, among other things, Joan Sutherland's Greatest Hits recording of "Gualtier Mald?… Caro nome" from Rigoletto and Leontyne Price's take on "Absence" from Berlioz's Les nuits d'?t?. Wainwright also includes a short description for each track's inclusion. Of the Eurythmics' "Love Is a Stranger":

"This song ignited my childhood brain and hurled me into puberty."

Rufus Wainwright is an admitted opera queen, having written and recorded a tribute to opera's "Damned Ladies" for his eponymous debut album. He's also been known to perform selections from Verdi's La Traviata and Bizet's Les P?cheurs des Perles in live shows, sometimes invoking the ghost of Callas when he's about to execute a particularly difficult vocal passage. There are a few records of his obsession. Here he is singing "Vainement, ma bien-aim?e" (a tenor aria transposed for his baritone) from ?douard Lalo's rarity, Le Roi d'Ys:


? Download Rufus Wainwright - Vainement, ma bien-aim?e.
  MP3 [96 kbps] | 2.3 MB

Pretty durn charming, n'est-ce pas?

Head over to the Metropolitan Opera's new website and check out the announcement for next season:


? Met 2005-2006


There's actually lots to be excited about?among it all, a world premiere of Tobias Picker?s An American Tragedy and the company premiere of Tchaikovsky?s Mazeppa. And holy shit, it almost looks like the Met's learning how to put a cast together!

Look ma! No more Times New Roman! And it's about effin' time. The previous creature was atrocious.



The new incarnation of the Metropolitan Opera's official website is clean, elegant, organized, and intelligently integrated with external related resources as well as with the Met Family's associated websites. Our favorite new additions are the Met History and Broadcasts & Recordings sections, both which include gorgeous Flash timelines stretching from 1880 to present, complete with photos and embedded audio.



This is just breaking, and we're first on the scene. We've got a ton more to explore, and so do you. Scoot!

Things are really looking up for classical music blogs when your review of the latest release by one who may soon be the world's finest tenor shows up under the "Editorial Reviews" section of said tenor's official website. What's interesting is that Alex Ross is not cited by his post at the New Yorker, which would seem to lend more cachet, but strictly by his blog's name, The Rest Is Noise.

Wow. Classical blogs are so serious and interesting. You know, someone should really write an article about classical weblogs and how interesting they are and how there may (one day) be questions raised as to the validity of sudden rampant public participation in the appropriation of high culture via the internet and especially classical music and how bloggers are "invigorating the scene."

Oh, sorry. There for a minute, I thought I was slow-on-the-uptake-and-reporting-of-news-Andante.com! Just kidding, Andante; we luv u.

I don't have time to make excuses for Hilli. I only have time to plead.

I'm on my knees, begging you for more Pol. Plançon, that is. If any of you has recordings of the utter perfection of this turn-of-the-century basse chantante, I would be so grateful if you could rip some mp3s and either e-mail them to me or transfer them to me via some other webbernetical way. You see, I actually do support opera piracy and have no trouble propogating ill-gotten or at least suspicious recordings of performances, no matter the venue. Let's face it: opera's going indie, and if we don't spread the love by generating and sharing treasures from the vaults of private collectors, they likely be lost to and forgotten in loftier, more remotely-accessible towers, like university libraries (gross).

Also, I'm a real junky when it comes to instant gratification.

So once again, anyone with Pol Plançon mp3s, e-mail me or find me on AOL Instant Messenger (screen name: Mme Grisi Pasta), and we can figure something out. I'm fiendin' here. Don't make me go back to meth as my drug of choice. We're fancy now. Only exquisite trills and handlebar moustaches for us, please.

Good morning, West Coast. Good afternoon, East Coast. Good riddance, Eastern Bloc!

OMG, y'all. I'm only kiddeen. Hilli Heihmenn here, subbing for Mme. Grisi Pasta, who's taking her daily constipational. Wait… or was it constitutional? I dunno. Something. All I know is she's walking around some park in Seattle. I know..Seattle?puke… but at least she doesn't have to contend with those silly Christo curtainrods.

Besides, I want to take a moment to recognize a few new sites that I'm adding to the "blogroll." I really hate that term, as it conjures up images of auntie's favorite holiday concoction, except instead of being covered with various nuts and sauces, it's littered with comma splices and gigantic digital photos that screw up the HTML formatting and sizing. With the recent explosion of classical music and opera blogs, I can almost understand how Mme. Grisi Pasta and/or our editor might've missed these, but I suspect it's more due to the fact that they both wear adult diapers and are actually illiterate.

These weblogs have definitely earned a place of infamy on our sidebar:

• Finocchio: a blog mixing lit, crit, and polit, authored by a Philadelphia lawyer and a former academic. Pray, tell, Finocchio. Are you also an honorary "sister of the Church"? Hail, Mary!
• Never Been Home: "musical dispatches from the city of lights." Oh, sod off, then. You get to be in Paris? I'm herding goats and doing a stint as a sherpa. I can only dream of the Bois de Boulogne.
• SilverBlog: another professional singer! And one who adds Trrill to his blogroll with the tagline "because opera isn't just for straight men." But, Aaron, we wish it were just for straight men. If I hear one more faggot call some overhyped soprano "fabulous"… I'm gonna go home… and I'm gonna bite my pillow, is what I'm gonna do.
• An Unamplified Voice: "One operagoer's notes." Well, we only wish our Post-Its were so articulate and carefully-considered. Instead, ours look like we stuck the pen between our ass-cheeks, scooted around on the paper, and accidentally spelled "c doG runn."