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Tebaldi

Death on the Nile, or Tebaldi F****-Up

January 5, 2009

Mea culpa. I’ve been so engrossed in The Great iTunes Migration (creating a digital audio/video version of my opera collection) that I’ve been neglecting my blog. Still. “You can only have one addiction at a time”, as I always say. Or is “Two Masters”? Well, whichever it is, let me confess that my collection of recordings, or “iOpera” as I call it now (along with it’s sister library “iSing” for arias, lieder, and all things excerpted) is crucial to my survival; consequently, the Great iTunes Migration takes priority over creating witty/pithy/profound minor works of art for internet publication without any monetary compensation whatsoever. Hey, I’m crazy like that. Ardon gl’incesi…

And yet, occasionally, one addiction feeds the other - or is it “master”? Like today. My collection has ballooned since the advent of YouTube, so much so that I’m a little fuzzy on many things, I’m ashamed to admit, especially videos. Until I watch them, of course. Then the good ones are even better than I vaguely recalled, and the bad ones even worse. Like the one I’ve posted for you below (excerpted for maximum effect), which will remain in my library no matter how many nightmares it may induce. Why? To remind myself when feeling blue that even Renata Tebaldi f***’d-up every now-and-then, so why can’t I? The important thing is that you recover quickly, and drop that role from your repertoire as soon as possible. At least you didn’t f***-up “O patria mia” on television - French television, no less - looking like you’d just rolled outta bed with Daktari and Clarence the cross-eyed lion.

Watch

Ouch, that pains me. Let’s play it again! Santa Tebaldi prego, perdonami

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Fanatical faux pas: 1) i Due Renatii

October 8, 2008

Never confuse the two Renatas, like the Amazon customer reviewer below. It’s like confusing George W. Bush and George McGovern. [more . . . ]

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Demented Tebaldi

January 18, 2007

Some people spend all their lives searching for a new star in the heavens or a new dung-beetle in the Amazon rain forests. What a waste! They could’ve been looking for the demented Tebaldi instead. But if they had, they might have found it before I did.

“Because the voice was beautiful enough to be called, seriously and often, the voice of the day, it was easy to forget that Tebaldi was as well as highly expressive artist, not an important actress but a finely musical interpreter. … But because she was careful, she never broke through, in any part, to that summit of demented whereat singer and actress come together explosively, definitely. With Tebaldi it was the song … ” -Ethan Mordden, Demented.

The NYCOF agrees with Mr. Mordden that Renata Tebaldi grew careful, and thus consequently outlasted many of her contemporaries on the operatic stage. I also will concede that Renata Tebaldi may never have found her definitively demented role.

For one minute, however, in mid-century Naples, Renata Tebaldi did, in fact, reach the summit of demented — if only for a brief, shining moment.

Listen to the clip below, and see if you agree — and make sure to keep listening until the very end!

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  • Act IV, scene 2 (Valentin’s death scene). Gounod’s Faust (sung in Italian), Teatro San Carlo, Naples. 1950. Rolando Panerai Ugo Savarese is the Valentin; Renata Tebaldi is the Marguerite (or, in this instace, Margherita)

Did I lie? That was demented… demented Tebaldi!

While it would have been entirely inappropriate in a French-language Faust, Tebaldi’s psycho laugh somehow fits the Italian version (which sounds suspiciously like Boito’s Mefistofele to me)

What is brilliant about this one-minute mad-scene is that it’s just that — Marguerite going mad, in one minute. Tebaldi’s laugh serves as a bridge, and a much-needed one, between the hounded Marguerite of Valentin’s death scene and the completely bonkers Marguerite of the Prison Scene.

So, let’s listen again — only to the final one minute of the clip –and listen to how Tebaldi begins sane but sad (sobbing for Valentin’s death) and ends insane but demented (not too choked-up over her brother’s death anymore, it seems)

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Wow, that gives me goosebumps! After Tebaldi’s hysterical Marguerite in Act IV, scene 2, I wouldn’t be surprised if that girl didn’t end up insane and in jail for murdering her baby!

Renata Tebaldi — u so crazy

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Tebaldi’s 1st-Butterfly Curse

January 19, 2005

A fellow fanatic with a Wi-Fi Ouija board alerted the NYC Opera Fanatic to a spooky coincidence: the three principal singers of Renata Tebaldi’s first studio Madama Butterfly have all died in close proximity (6 weeks)! [more . . . ]

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