It's the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition again, and the preliminary rounds are being screened on BBC4 each evening this week, with other broadcasts on BBC Radio 3. I tuned in yesterday in time to hear what the commentators referred to as a 'Rolls-Royce of a voice': the Russian mezzo Olesya Petrova. Dear reader, her singing blew my socks off.
Apart from the fact that it must take guts to sing Saint-Saens' 'Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix' in front of the great Marilyn Horne (who's on the jury), this was one incredible artist with one vast crimson rose of a voice. She scooped the prize of the evening and though there were several other fine performances in the programme, she seemed in a class of her own.
The broadcast from last night is on BBC iPlayer, and here is the Saint-Saens from the contest website. But iPlayer isn't available outside the UK, and I'm not sure about the website either, so I've had a hunt on Youtube and found this from Vienna a couple of years ago. It's an aria from Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orleans. Enjoy.
4 comments:
Yes, that's another great Russian mezzo voice alright. Prekrasnaya! Thanks for putting up the Vienna clip - I now look forward to watching the finale on Sunday, which is the first chance I'll get to see any of it as it happens.
I agree that the voice is like burying your nose in a deep velvet Falstaff of a rose BUT the french is possibly the worst singing in a foreign language I have ever heard. On the other hand the diminuendo to a faint breath with the orchestra possibly makes up for it - as long as she isn't going to perform in Paris!
Caroline Zoob
Hi Jessica!
She was indeed fabulous, but did you therefore miss Thursday's concert?
That night, not one but two of the finalists (respectively, from Moldova and the Ukraine) selected arias by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and one of them won!
Valentina Nafornita, a beautiful young Romanian soprano from Moldova gave a stunning account of the Mariettalied.
Andrei Bondarenko, a 24 year old baritone from the Ukraine, then gave one of the best performances of the Pierrots Tanzlied that I have ever heard! He is a star in the making.
Bondarenko took the prize and will now go forward to the final on Sunday (and he is also up for the Lieder Prize too). Fingers crossed he may win...
I was both proud and delighted that a supposedly "suppressed" and formerly "forgotten" composer has been featured in the world's pre-eminent vocal competition, before a huge, worldwide TV audience and not only that, was chosen by young singers from a part of the world that can hardly be aware of his music!
Yet another indication that the music of Korngold has really been returned to the mainstream repertory!
Bondareko's agent is Askonas Holt and the clip of the Pierrotlied is here:
http://www.askonasholt.co.uk/video/artists/andrei-bondarenko
Enjoy!
Hi Brendan - yes, I'm afraid I have a lot to catch up on before the big night. Turns out Valentina is also in the final, so maybe Korngold has proved a winning ticket. Either way, it's nice to see that these young singers clearly regard the big arias from Die tote Stadt as a) standard repertoire that they need to know and b) winning showpieces to display for the hearts and minds of both audience and jury.
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