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Mon, 20 May 2002 23:20:52 -0400 |
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Christopher Webber wrote:
>In truth, and as Quasthoff himself will discover when he knows a little
>more about it, the main reason the words can't be heard in the opera
>house is the prevalence of insensitive conducting - and loud orchestras.
>
>Modern orchestral technique (especially for strings) is all about achieving
>maximum volume of tone to fill the absurdly large barns that have become
>the operatic and concert-hall norm. Many conductors do little to curb
>this, being more interested in moulding an impressive orchestral wash than
>in getting the text across.
Maybe the fault is in modern orchestral technique but I have always had
trouble following opera texts in languages I know. (Strangley, I have
less trouble following texts in Italian, which I don't know!) I recently
acquired a DVD of Previn's *Streetcar Named Desire* and if I hadn't known
the story I'd only have been able to follow its broad outlines from the
text sung in English. (Unfortunately the DVD did not come w/ a libretto.)
I had a similar problem much earlier in life when as a college student
who had had a year of intensive Russian instruction, I couldn't follow a
word of a recording of Prokoffiev's *Alexander Nevsky*. It didn't make me
feel any less frustrated when I later discovered that they were singing in
English.
Walter Meyer
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