Speaking as someone who is obsessed with vocal pedagogy -- this is a masterclass is beautiful singing here. See how relaxed her face is and how little she uses her jaw. She makes the sounds inside, and that's how it's done. Brava!
I am so happy to see you write this. I know nothing about vocal pedagogy but after listening to her version of Ave Maria for years, I thought it was time to look up who actually sings it, which is the first time I've ever done this with opera. Her voice is so clean that I guess even for a primitive listener like myself it translates.
This is a lesson in singing: perfect vocal production, subtle vowel modification, centered breath and a text that is clear but with a connected legato. The great soprano at age 35.
Interpretation digne de la plus grande entre toutes. Comme d'habitude, Barbara est stupéfiante de justesse, de pureté, de musicalité..... bref, excellent, Bravo!
6 years later: the more I know about vocal technique, the more I just keep coming back to this video. Efficient airflow, pharyngeal vowels, and clean adduction of the cords. All in service of making this piece sound like a slice of heaven...Effortlessness takes years of effort!
I can imagine every soprano in the choir is breathing every note with this wonderful woman - taken from an all round fabulous performance of Mozart's great C minor Mass under the supreme direction of John Eliot Gardiner.
Perfectly lovely, a joy to watch and listen to. I love a singer who uses the voice God gave her, not trying to make it something else. Just see how relaxed her face, neck and shoulders are as she sings even the most difficult phrases! What technique!
I got the feeling from the conductor's face after she was done said, "Yeah, now I can bask in the glory of her voice. Yep, I conducted that." She is amazing. One of the best voices and the most touching composition.
Had I been in the chorus, I would have fainted, no exaggeration, from the unparalleled beauty of BB’s voice and her utterly perfect stylistic and interpretive performance of Mozart. This has been in my head all week, and I can’t stop listening.
Barbara Bonney is amazing! Her voice has everything. Her voice just sparkles and every note and word is important. The best soprano I have ever heard! :)
Sublime, understated and absolutely perfectly sung, and backed by orchestral exquisiteness. One of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, sung by one of the best Sopranos to walk this earth. Heart-rending.
Wonderful and 100% perfect - sung with heart and soul - Barbara Bonney will sit one day on the side of Mozart. To sing in this quality is the best we can do. For artists like Barbara Bonney, Arleen Auger and Margaret Price Mozart has written his great Mass.
There shouldn't be such a thing as vocal perfection, or is there? Well. there is--and Barbara Bonney and Mozart achieve it. A culmination of great art, honed to simple perfection.
Agreed, McNair is a distant second because she is not anywhere near as musical as B.B., and Kathleen Battle is unique but better at the lyric coloratura repertoire rather than pure lyric Mozart.
I heard Barbara in San Francisco often in the 1990's. What a gorgeous voice! She and Kiri Te Kanawa were the two most perfect soprano voices I have ever heard to this day.
LOVED the trill she made with her voice. I've never heard an opera singer do that...or I just haven't watched enough videos of opera singers XD Barbara Bonney is awe inspiring!
Hats off, ladies and gentlemen: a real masterpiece here. Beautifully performed. The way Mozart brings us back down almost to earth in the last few measures gives me chills.
Sorry, but ONLY 85 351 people have had the wonderful chance of listening to such a marvel?! Irony apart, these 8 minutes turn easily to ages, if you let yourself flow with the beauty both of the melody and of the voice. Thank you Mozart! Thank you Barbara! FRom a guy of Lisbon who loves great music.
¡¡Qué brava que es!!how i adore her, she does it easy and beautiful. She is one of the best sopranos; how i'd like to listen to her again sul palco scenico.
She's the most enjoyable one to watch and to listen to singing this song on TH-cam. However, my recording of Ileana Cotrubas singing it is my favorite.
SugarTomAppleRoger LOL what are you talking about? There are many great American sopranos, Renee Fleming for example is also really good. She sings in full operatic voice instead of lyrical like Barbara.
***** I don't agree. Renee Fleming is best known for her Bel Canto roles. I consider her even better than Maria Callas, who was supposed to be the Bible of Bel Canto. I don't believe Barbara Bonney would be able to do Bel Canto. Barbara Bonney is best known for pure lyrical roles that do not require large volume projection, which she cannot do. She's known for sacred music and non-coloratura Mozartian roles. What I mean by doing all roles is that they LEARN all roles and can "do them" adequately, meaning fundamental basics. But in their career they will find what they do best. Renee Fleming for example, got so famous that she started to do popular songs, and she sucked, but she does them anyways. I also heard that Barbara Bonney's American popular songs were not very good.
***** "Fleming is certainly not most acclaimed for her bel canto. She doesn't sing it anymore" I'm not sure at which age you mean "not anymore" (she's pretty much retired) but she sang La Traviata very late in her career in Russia and London and was most definitely critically acclaimed. And La Traviata is like the queen of Bel Canto. She did get famous from singing Mozart's Contessa from Le Nozze di Figrao, but that was how she started in the 90s, that's what got her famous. And as far as I know she was pretty much only known widely for singing that role. Whereas Barbara Bonney sings a much wider Mozart role and she's mostly known for Mozart, even herself eventually restricted herself to sing Mozart in Operas. I did not say that Barbara Bonney CAN'T project, but even in this concert I could barely hear her relative to, let's say, operatic voice singers like Anna Netrebko or Sumi Jo, both have that big voice that are more stereotypical of Opera singers which lands them a lot of jobs at theatres. Barbara Bonney is know for her timbre and her smooth and effortless transitions, and her extraordinary clear voice on high pitches, like a wind pipe. All of Barbara recordings I have with multiple voices and orchestra I have difficulty hearing her relative to other people singing the same thing. But she's still my favorite, because of how she makes herself sound.
***** I said, very specifically: "LARGE volume projection" which is of course, relative. Comparing to MOST Opera singers, she cannot do the large volume projection that is very typical of opera singers. The volume of her voice is not even as loud as the opera singers in my school, and they are no where near Barbara Bonney in their overall singing quality. So no, I never said that she cannot project at all. You just didn't read what I said carefully enough. Also, saying that Verdi is coming out of the Bel Canto is like saying that Beethoven is not considered classical but romantic composer. These things are of course debated. But I have many professional musician and composer friends who DO consider La Traviata to be Bel Canto, which is a loose term to describe the period of Italian opera in from the 18th to the 19th century, of which Verdi is often considered to be the best over Puccini, Bellini, Rossini etc. Violetta of La Traviata was also one of the most well-known roles of Maria Callas. So it doesn't matter if it contained coloratura elements, so did Casta Diva from Norma. Like I said, Renee Fleming sang Bel Canto roles much later than her Mozartian roles, she's known to be a late bloomer but even as a late bloomer singing these roles in the past 10 years is still past her prime. She's also known for being a drama queen because she also said that one of her very well-known Contessa roles in the Met was one that she never wanted to see again, and she was widely critically acclaimed for that one. Anyways it's rather pointless to argue over these things since it's all subjective. But my original point was that there are in fact, MANY out-standing American sopranos other than Barbara Bonney, but they are different and do some things better than her, that's all.
For the lack of control, you may think of her particular way of placing the breaths. What I found is that she doesn't try to make them invisible, but to make they don't disturb the song - slightly different, yet very appropriate IMO. She may put a (very) little too much vibrato, but IMO she doesn't lack of control. Mon 12 Nov 2007 15:56 GMT
Sorry for making this OT sub-thread too long, and for not correcting earlier: after thinking, I think Olivier is right: whatever good reasons for both, in Abbado 1991 it is most probably Barbara Bonney singing the "Kyrie" and "Et incarnatus est" (like here with Gardiner), and Arleen Auger the "Laudamus" (unlike many other instances). Wed 3 Sep 2008 08:03 GMT
Speaking as someone who is obsessed with vocal pedagogy -- this is a masterclass is beautiful singing here. See how relaxed her face is and how little she uses her jaw. She makes the sounds inside, and that's how it's done. Brava!
Agreed. Yet so long ago. Look at J E Gardiner. Looks like a kid!
I am so happy to see you write this. I know nothing about vocal pedagogy but after listening to her version of Ave Maria for years, I thought it was time to look up who actually sings it, which is the first time I've ever done this with opera. Her voice is so clean that I guess even for a primitive listener like myself it translates.
@@ozanyapisan5965 🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾 awesome!
This is a lesson in singing: perfect vocal production, subtle vowel modification, centered breath and a text that is clear but with a connected legato. The great soprano at age 35.
BB is my role model. Almost makes me want to quit singing. But she is a standard to shoot for. I never tire of hearing this angelic voice.
This is the most beautiful performance I have ever heard of Et Incarnatus Est!
This woman's voice is divine
Barbara Bonney è veramente una cantante meravigliosa ed una persona bellissima anche umanamente. Dopo averla conosciuta la stimo ancora di più!
She makes singing this look so effortless and easy - the truth that this is VERY difficult to sing! Brava, Barbara!
Thank you, Barbara Bonney and Sir Eliot for choosing this tempo. Finally somebody is making music here and not celebrating long and high notes.
This is the first music I'm hearing in 2021. May life in the coming months proceed as effortlessly and graciously as her singing. We deserve it.
The quality of her voice in the upper registers is ethereal and amazing
Interpretation digne de la plus grande entre toutes. Comme d'habitude, Barbara est stupéfiante de justesse, de pureté, de musicalité..... bref, excellent, Bravo!
Es una genio de la técnica vocal
This is a masterclass in perfect vocal technique!
6 years later: the more I know about vocal technique, the more I just keep coming back to this video. Efficient airflow, pharyngeal vowels, and clean adduction of the cords. All in service of making this piece sound like a slice of heaven...Effortlessness takes years of effort!
@@MayaKherani YESSS!!!
@@MayaKherani pharingeal vowels? What do you mean? Could you clarify? Thank you!
I can imagine every soprano in the choir is breathing every note with this wonderful woman - taken from an all round fabulous performance of Mozart's great C minor Mass under the supreme direction of John Eliot Gardiner.
Perfectly lovely, a joy to watch and listen to. I love a singer who uses the voice God gave her, not trying to make it something else. Just see how relaxed her face, neck and shoulders are as she sings even the most difficult phrases! What technique!
I got the feeling from the conductor's face after she was done said, "Yeah, now I can bask in the glory of her voice. Yep, I conducted that." She is amazing. One of the best voices and the most touching composition.
Look no further for an utterly sublime performance by the Beautiful Barbara Bonney.
Had I been in the chorus, I would have fainted, no exaggeration, from the unparalleled beauty of BB’s voice and her utterly perfect stylistic and interpretive performance of Mozart. This has been in my head all week, and I can’t stop listening.
You can really see that in the image of the women behind her. Truly, this is beauty par excellence. Mozart was touched by God Himself.
Barbara Bonney is amazing! Her voice has everything. Her voice just sparkles and every note and word is important. The best soprano I have ever heard! :)
Hi, here is another version! What do you think?
th-cam.com/video/s1ndEfqi6PM/w-d-xo.html&start_radio=1&t=2
Sublime, understated and absolutely perfectly sung, and backed by orchestral exquisiteness. One of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, sung by one of the best Sopranos to walk this earth. Heart-rending.
I have no words. What a voice. A gift from God.
magnifique et touchante interprétation. sobriété, intériorité, profondeur, élévation...c'est divin, c'est Mozart
merci
Her control, and the ease and subtly with which she exudes such beauty, just astounds me. Her voice is... beyond words. Thanks for posting this.
Wonderful and 100% perfect - sung with heart and soul - Barbara Bonney will sit one day on the side of Mozart. To sing in this quality is the best we can do. For artists like Barbara Bonney, Arleen Auger and Margaret Price Mozart has written his great Mass.
I couldn't agree more (and let's not forget Elly Ameling!)
This movement is trillion times better then pop songs nowadays.
+Azrin Aziz (Kiko) Just like apples are a trillion and gazillion times better than oranges...
SatanAteMySocks
lol, i laughed hard today.
I saw this video on TV when I was 15 and felt in love with Mozart and with lyric singing... thank you, thank you Barbara.
So beautiful, so clear and pure. It sounds so easy and light. Ahhhhhh. Beautiful!
Indigo Bone Must be one of the hardest to sing. Not that Mozart is easy in any way.
There shouldn't be such a thing as vocal perfection, or is there?
Well. there is--and Barbara Bonney and Mozart achieve it. A culmination of great art, honed to simple perfection.
No soy religioso, pero esta mujer no sólo canta, también reza, sin necesidad de utilizar la expresión corporal. Cerrar los ojos........Perfecta.
Beaucoup d'humilité , une voix en osmose avec l'orchestre, quelle délicatesse . Merci Barbara Bonney .
How can she sing so easily? No sign of tension or difficulties... A.M.A.S.I.N.G!!
Singing a challenging passage by heart----simply magnificent.
D'une extraordinaire justesse et d'une extrême pureté !!! une interprétation Sublime.
Barbara and Arleen Auger!! It doesn't get any better. If there is a heaven, this must be it!
greatest lyrical soprano I've heard yet far
her and Kathleen Battle maybe
pffff, Kathleen Battle is so overrated in comparison to Bonney
Sylvia Mcnair?
Agreed, McNair is a distant second because she is not anywhere near as musical as B.B., and Kathleen Battle is unique but better at the lyric coloratura repertoire rather than pure lyric Mozart.
SteveL2012 for me Mcnair has the most heavenly soprano voice I’ve heard, Barbara is the distant second
she just makes it look so effortless! amazing.
No words to say, just WOW O___O What a voice!!
I heard Barbara in San Francisco often in the 1990's. What a gorgeous voice!
She and Kiri Te Kanawa were the two most perfect soprano voices I have ever heard to this day.
I love her interpretation! Very good trills!
Bravissima! What a wonderful instrument! She's also a beautiful person and teacher! God bless her!
This exceptional soprano at her best! And a young John Eliot Gardiner. Thank you for posting it.
Ja, sie singt wie ein Engel - es gibt keine bessere Version...göttlich!
Best performance ever!
she sounds so perfect wonderful sounds of angelic voice's!!
I knew she was fabulous, but I didn't know she was American. Bravissima!
LOVED the trill she made with her voice. I've never heard an opera singer do that...or I just haven't watched enough videos of opera singers XD Barbara Bonney is awe inspiring!
Hats off, ladies and gentlemen: a real masterpiece here. Beautifully performed. The way Mozart brings us back down almost to earth in the last few measures gives me chills.
Hi, here is another version! What do you think?
th-cam.com/video/s1ndEfqi6PM/w-d-xo.html&start_radio=1&t=2
Sorry, but ONLY 85 351 people have had the wonderful chance of listening to such a marvel?!
Irony apart, these 8 minutes turn easily to ages, if you let yourself flow with the beauty both of the melody and of the voice.
Thank you Mozart! Thank you Barbara!
FRom a guy of Lisbon who loves great music.
Truly Lovely. One of my favorite pieces.
We are being shown here how it is done! Beautiful singing - amazing.
The best performance ever! Breathtaking! It's so pure so beautiful as it has to be :3
❤Голос звучит прекрасно ,тембр очаровательный.Браво ооо.❤❤
Amazing,my favourite rendition of this,thanks for posting this.
Simply stunning!
Najpiękniejsze wykonanie❤
wtf how is she so perfect
¡¡Qué brava que es!!how i adore her, she does it easy and beautiful. She is one of the best sopranos; how i'd like to listen to her again sul palco scenico.
What control! what a voice.
She is AMAZING!
It's a sort of miracle of pure beauty
This is so beautiful
that made me cry. so beuatiful... as pure as mozart wrote it i believe...
She's the most enjoyable one to watch and to listen to singing this song on TH-cam. However, my recording of Ileana Cotrubas singing it is my favorite.
Magnifique ! très belle voix
Imagine if every suffering soul in the world could take in the absolute beauty of this at once. Heaven would bloom.
John Elliot Gardiner, Barbara Bonney and Mozart. Say no more. 💎💎💎💎💎
That cadenza! What a genius Mozart was.
The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,the pinnacle of reality!Oh and the singing is suited for the beautiful words.
So beautiful!!!
Sin duda la soprano estado unidense mas extraordinaria de la historia una voz simplemente impecable, divina.
De acuerdo en que es algo supremo, pero por favor no elvides a Arleen Auger, incluso con su interpretacion de esta misma pieza musical.
Ame tu comentario
Sorrow and nostalgia touch my feathery heart. Unimpeachable performance！
Qué manejo de la voz, hermoso simplemente y delicioso de escuchar.
Yes, this is truly one of the most difficult arias to sing...I've done it myself and the breaths are appropriate and necessary. CLR
Perfect.
All such performances of this sublime work are to be judged by the Bonney Standard - the fine Bonney standard!
Simply: the perfection of Ángels is that.
Sublime👏👏
PURE PERFECTION
If I hadn't watched this video while listening to this song, I would have guessed that an unknown beautiful instrument created this sound.
Thank you. This is what I love about youtube. Good information. I'm off to the library or record shop :-)
This is really Mozart in perfection.
Superb. Certainly the best soprano (recent) to come from the US. Americans should be proud of her. Another American jewel is Leonard Bernstein.
SugarTomAppleRoger LOL what are you talking about? There are many great American sopranos, Renee Fleming for example is also really good. She sings in full operatic voice instead of lyrical like Barbara.
*****
sure, all world-class singers can do all roles. Barbara Bonney just does lyrical much better than others.
*****
I don't agree. Renee Fleming is best known for her Bel Canto roles. I consider her even better than Maria Callas, who was supposed to be the Bible of Bel Canto. I don't believe Barbara Bonney would be able to do Bel Canto. Barbara Bonney is best known for pure lyrical roles that do not require large volume projection, which she cannot do. She's known for sacred music and non-coloratura Mozartian roles.
What I mean by doing all roles is that they LEARN all roles and can "do them" adequately, meaning fundamental basics. But in their career they will find what they do best. Renee Fleming for example, got so famous that she started to do popular songs, and she sucked, but she does them anyways. I also heard that Barbara Bonney's American popular songs were not very good.
***** "Fleming is certainly not most acclaimed for her bel canto. She doesn't sing it anymore"
I'm not sure at which age you mean "not anymore" (she's pretty much retired) but she sang La Traviata very late in her career in Russia and London and was most definitely critically acclaimed. And La Traviata is like the queen of Bel Canto. She did get famous from singing Mozart's Contessa from Le Nozze di Figrao, but that was how she started in the 90s, that's what got her famous. And as far as I know she was pretty much only known widely for singing that role. Whereas Barbara Bonney sings a much wider Mozart role and she's mostly known for Mozart, even herself eventually restricted herself to sing Mozart in Operas. I did not say that Barbara Bonney CAN'T project, but even in this concert I could barely hear her relative to, let's say, operatic voice singers like Anna Netrebko or Sumi Jo, both have that big voice that are more stereotypical of Opera singers which lands them a lot of jobs at theatres. Barbara Bonney is know for her timbre and her smooth and effortless transitions, and her extraordinary clear voice on high pitches, like a wind pipe. All of Barbara recordings I have with multiple voices and orchestra I have difficulty hearing her relative to other people singing the same thing. But she's still my favorite, because of how she makes herself sound.
*****
I said, very specifically: "LARGE volume projection" which is of course, relative. Comparing to MOST Opera singers, she cannot do the large volume projection that is very typical of opera singers. The volume of her voice is not even as loud as the opera singers in my school, and they are no where near Barbara Bonney in their overall singing quality. So no, I never said that she cannot project at all. You just didn't read what I said carefully enough.
Also, saying that Verdi is coming out of the Bel Canto is like saying that Beethoven is not considered classical but romantic composer. These things are of course debated. But I have many professional musician and composer friends who DO consider La Traviata to be Bel Canto, which is a loose term to describe the period of Italian opera in from the 18th to the 19th century, of which Verdi is often considered to be the best over Puccini, Bellini, Rossini etc. Violetta of La Traviata was also one of the most well-known roles of Maria Callas. So it doesn't matter if it contained coloratura elements, so did Casta Diva from Norma.
Like I said, Renee Fleming sang Bel Canto roles much later than her Mozartian roles, she's known to be a late bloomer but even as a late bloomer singing these roles in the past 10 years is still past her prime. She's also known for being a drama queen because she also said that one of her very well-known Contessa roles in the Met was one that she never wanted to see again, and she was widely critically acclaimed for that one.
Anyways it's rather pointless to argue over these things since it's all subjective. But my original point was that there are in fact, MANY out-standing American sopranos other than Barbara Bonney, but they are different and do some things better than her, that's all.
superb
her face is so relaxed
Бесподобно! (russian: matchless, excellently)
sublime
From heaven...
For the lack of control, you may think of her particular way of placing the breaths. What I found is that she doesn't try to make them invisible, but to make they don't disturb the song - slightly different, yet very appropriate IMO. She may put a (very) little too much vibrato, but IMO she doesn't lack of control.
Mon 12 Nov 2007 15:56 GMT
Fabulous !!!!
Wunderschön und by heart!
Just like Callas was the ur-dramatic soprano, so Barbara Bonney is the ur-Soubrette. Simply incredible.
The most beautiful woman on earth ❤️
becoming attracted to her voice..... the guy in the background looks SOOO serious ;)
....like an angel.....
That's right :) internal pitching mechanism. not producing from outside. glad someone knows what they are talking about. Greetings from Australia.
wonderful!!!!!
Arleen Auger y Barbara Bonney son las dueñas absolutas de esta joya del genio WAM
This and Sylvia McNair's renditions are UNREAL!
Bravissima!!!
Sorry for making this OT sub-thread too long, and for not correcting earlier: after thinking, I think Olivier is right: whatever good reasons for both, in Abbado 1991 it is most probably Barbara Bonney singing the "Kyrie" and "Et incarnatus est" (like here with Gardiner), and Arleen Auger the "Laudamus" (unlike many other instances).
Wed 3 Sep 2008 08:03 GMT
An angel on earth!