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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 พ.ย. 2024
- Here is an extended scene (Act II, scene 3) from Donizetti's opera "Maria Stuarda" with Beverly Sills in the title role and Eileen Farrell as Queen Elizabeth I.
Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587) asks Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603) for forgiveness. Elizabeth cannot hide her hatred of her cousin Maria and curses her as evil. Mary then returns the insults, calling Queen Elizabeth a harlot. Elizabeth condemns Mary to death.
In real life, these two great artists were very dear friends. A couple quotes from Sills....
Farrell was known for slipping into her dressing room with a large bottle of warm Coke. Why? She drank it to warm up her vocal equipment, via a thunderstorm of belches. Beverly Sills, an old friend, once overheard the rumblings. "Those weren't burps," Sills recalled. "They were symphonies."
With regard to Farrell's autobiography, "Can't Help Singing" Sills said: "Thank heaven Eileen Farrell couldn't help singing. I can't help loving her. I can't help loving this book. It's lusty, funny, warm, and no holds barred. It's Eileen! It's a treat."
Here's a brief excerpt from an interview with Sills on recording this opera with Farrell:
• Beverly Sills on recor...
Link to my playlist for "Farrell sings Opera": www.youtube.com...
I have many playlists of rare performances with Eileen Farrell. Please see my channel for the others and look at my channel for a link to a rare recital with Eileen Farrell & Beverly Sills!
Farrell's magnificent voice! One of the greatest voices of the century!
Sills' voice is literally one third the size of Farrell's !
I came to love the dramatic soprano voice with Eileen Farrell.
she was the consumate musical artist never excessive always musical
Farrell recounted that during these recording sessions they kept asking her to move further and further from the mike until she good-naturedly suggested, 'Well maybe I should phone it in...' BIG voice, that woman!
Two Sopranos with the most perfectly developed vocals then and recordings. Give the generations of singers plenty to live up to
We will not be able to listen to such wonderful voices very often. A true clash of the titans!
Have alway love Sills and Farrell. My first voice teacher from Louisville, Ky was a dear friend of hers. She always kept a picture of her on the piano in her studio. They had both studied voice together in Chicago and New York. She said they were still in touch regularly. this was in the 1970's. I'm ashamed I cannot remember her name. She had such a huge influence on my life. Her first name was Mary.
In one of her autobiographies Sills wrote that when Farrell warmed up, she would clear her throat so that it sounded like rolling thunder!
Farrell does sound like she’s out in the hallway. Ha! I haven’t listened to this in years. Wonderful.
haha she does too - and yet the voice still sounds huge
I remember Eileen Farrell appearing on some of the TV variety shows of the 1950's and being very funny, singing things like Take Me Out to the Ballgame. She was also one of the only opera singers I know who could completely change her voice to sing jazz. Wonderful memories. This is such a treat, two of my favorites.
2 great singing actresses.
2 great singers doing the music proud.
I heard Farrell when I was still in grade school on some variety
Show on Tv right after hearing a Flagstad recording on the radio and to my young untrained ears thought they both sounded alike. I had to wait almost 2 decades before I knew they were both totally different voices but somehow sort of similar . They were both great dramatic sopranos but both terrific and still love them both to this day!
EILEEN!!!! Good God, what a huge and glorious voice!! Who could fault this? Love them both- but wow - amazing to hear Ms. Farrell sing this- volcanic!! Thank you for posting!
Beautiful singing from these two ladies from whom you would expect nothing less. Tenor Stuart Burrows and baritone Louis Quilico are also wonderful and should have been better known. This was a golden age of singing.
This is the definitive recording of Maria Stuarda, as so many of Ms Sills' recordings are, Traviata, Lucia, Manon, Puritani and the list goes on. Bravissimi to the whole cast and orchestra as well.
Well, they sure as hell weren't holding back. This is MAGNIFICENT.
An absolutely INCREDIBLE performance by all involved, especially Ms Sills and Ms Farrell.. just incredible!!!
Farrell was simply the finest singer in the world, Bach to Wagner to Rogers & Hart to jazz standards, and here she is, shining in bel canto! She and Sills were life long friends ~ the cream rises to the top.
This has always been my favorite version of this scene EVER. Since I heard it in the 70s.
But my other two favorites are the amazing JANET BAKER (all the high notes and in English!) and the lovely sound of Ashley Putnam.
Mine too!
Caballe and gencer kicked ass in this scene as well each opposite verrett
When this recording was released critics were rather uncomplimentary about EIleen Farrell who had virtually come out of retirement to make this recording. Hearing this, so many decades later, I must admit I find her stunning in the role. Her voice is so full - providing an excellent balance to Sills' brighter and youthful sound.
Farrell is what I loved most about this recording. A Grand voice if there ever was one! She had no need to interpolate tons of high notes or raise passages up to fit into the stronger part of her voice. And she sang everything so idiomatically with such clear diction.
Critics are like... Everyone has one...
@@Shahrdad What I have found to be so exciting about Farrell's performance here (and in a way, kind of sad at the same time) is that this showed a totally different side of her great talent! This recording shows what a great artist she could be with Bel Canto singing! We had never really heard her sing this type of repertoire before, which she truly excelled at! Such a huge, truly dramatic soprano instrument, and still be able to keep it flexible for the fioritura the role demanded! By this time in opera history, we already knew that bigger voices were able to tackle this repertoire, particularly because of the advent of Callas, Sutherland, and Caballe. But Farrells huge voice out-powered all 3 of those great singers!
What I find sad is that she waited so late in her career to sing this type of role! Imagine what we would have had if she also, along the likes of Callas and Sutherland, had also tackled roles such as Norma, Lucia, Violetta and so on! It would have totally been an alternate reality for the opera world!
@@artdanks...definitely Norma...Lucia and Traviata would have to be transposed down. I'm pretty sure she couldn't handle the tessitura of Lucia and Traviata...
@@artdanks She would have sung a magnificent Lucretia Borgia and Lady Macbeth.
I've loved this recording for thirty-odd years. Sills' reading of 'Figlia impura di Bolena' is absolutely frightening. It sounds like her vocal cords are about to explode. I'm sure it's this sort of approach that shortened her career by five to ten years, but damn, it's exciting!
Thank you sooooooo much kadoguy can't thank you enough
I’ve heard this recording ever since its release, and I even saw Sills in this opera at NYCO, one of my first opera performances. It’s interesting to revisit it - Sills sings the line, ‘vil bastarda,’ with a mixture of fury, horror, and resignation - she knows it’s the end of her life by insulting Elizabeth. As for hearing her in the theater, Sills sounded very different in the acoustic of a theater where her voice had the opportunity to reverberate. The voice bloomed in the theater, but sounds small and sometimes shrill on recordings. Anyway, great scene with the legendary Farrell.
I know Farrell and Sills had a fun time making this recording. One of them said they were like two mad women running around London.
Oh that one could have been there! Thrilling :)
excellent recording!!
This is perfection!
Two great voices, one great scene. Brava! Thanks for this and all of your posts.
Beverly Sills Magnificent
no one is singing like this anymore
Amen to that! We have rapidly declined from the 'Diamond-Encrusted Rhodium Age' of singing to the 'Chipped Pottery and Cracked Glass Age of singing.
Madame Beverly Sills vous resterez a jamais mon idole...
I really Loved that!!!
In a radio interview, Farrell joked about how, while recording the ensembles for these Bel Canto operas with Sill's she was constantly being asked to back up further from the mike until she finally suggested that they might be happier if she phoned it in. Perhaps it is as a result of my having produced several classical recordings, but at Farrell's entrance above at about 3:16 it is easy to discern that she is standing further from the mike than was Sills several seconds earlier.
Sorry, I failed to notice that I had provided this same comment below, a year ago...
@@photo161 it's still interesting, even told twice!
@@photo161 When Beverly uncharacteristically lost her way in the mad scene during the dress rehearsal of Anna Bolena she tossed it off with 'Once is nice twice is better' and that applies here too! :) I LOVE that Beverly and Eileen were such truly great friends too!
@gyorgy11 Glad you enjoyed it! I hope you will explore the many playlists I have created for Eileen Farrell. Not just the one linked here on this clip. At my channel page are several playlists with her performing many many rare performances and out of print recordings. She was truly the finest singer America ever produced.
She really was brilliant. I heard her sing at Philharmonic Hall at the end of her career. Always loved her.
Una scena epica!
AMERICAN singing geniuses!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Farrell is wonderful, would she had been around in recent years to sing this opposite Netrebko; she was not generally associated with this repertoire--someone really missed the boat not to have her explore this stuff earlier in her career, as good as she was in the things she did get to do
Most of what ensued with Farell's operatic career was her own choice. She felt she wasnt cut out to be in involved in the operatic circuit and above all wanted to spend her life at the side of her husband (who was a NY Police Officer). Her modesty is part of her vocal charm. Apart from the voice being able to sing virtually anything from lyric to dramatic with such credibility and lack of strain, she always managed to make her singing sound so incredibly natural and sincere - and I dont think she ever learned how to do that - it was her special gift. It is wonderful how she is revered here on YT - and at the same time sad that she wasnt able to experience the respect people are still paying her today.
@@acacia-bloom True, but there were so many fine singers back then. Tebaldi, Milanov, Price, Freni, Sutherland, Nilsson, Moffo, Crespin, de Los Angeles, Steber, Kirsten, Tucci, Caballe, Callas, Gencer…..
I love this, but I wonder how Sill's small voice would have sounded like singing next to Farrell's gigantic voice. Here it sounds like they had Farrell standing much farther away from the microphone than Sills.
Shahrdad Sills sang this opera onstage with the great Welsh dramatic soprano Pauline Tinsley. Sills more than held her own against Tinsley, whose Brünnhilde, Turandot and Elektra were legendary.
Shahrdad I actually saw Sills perform this opera in the theater, one of my first opera going experiences. Sills’s voice was very well focused, she had no trouble being heard over an orchestra or other singers. It was one of those voices that needed a theater to reverberate; she doesn’t sound good on recordings, very small and one/dimensional. The engineers never figured out how to capture her voice. Same as Nilsson, who sounds like a trumpet on record, if you like that sort of thing. In the theater her voice was much warmer.
Sills voice was much larger than people seem to think. I heard her several times in theatrical performances, including Traviata, Thais, and Norma. Although it is a light in quality [i.e., silvery rather than golden or bronze] it was beautifully produced and filled the large houses in which I saw her perform, including the Met at Lincoln Center.
Sadly I can't claim Pauline Tinsley as Welsh although many roles in Wales with WNO she was born in Lancashire and is still with us@@jasonhurd4379
@@barneswriter I'm certain I read somewhere that Tinsley is of Welsh blood, regardless of her birthplace. Might be worth looking into.
This version is the best until you hear the live onstage version where Leyla Gencer is just out of this world with almost unearthly singing !
and farrell never sang brünnhilde... what a loss...
who's the tenor?
Stuart Burrows
I know that she recorded the Immolation scene, but I don't know if it's on utube. It was the first thing I ever heard her sing, when I was a kid. Needless to say, she made a long lasting impression on me!✨⚡
Here you are hearing a great instrument masterly played and a quite ugly one also quite well played. Sills sound is sheet metall, Farells gold. Im sorry but here its so obviuos.
It looks as though Eilleen Farrell n'est pas enregistrée dans la même pièce que Sills. Strange!
A quick peek at the 'recording session photos' of the libretto that is enclosed with the vinyl recording reveals she was indeed in the same room and very close to the other singers.
in the same strudio but standing back a couple of feet from the mic
You would not hear Sills, if Farell stood as close.
Auch, wenn es aus berufenem Mund prädestiniert wirkende Kritiker gibt, Farrell war vielleicht über den Zenit hinaus, warum nicht früher aufgenommen, ihre üppige Stimme, singulär, ist ein Hochgenuss, die Kombination mit der speziellen Stimme der Sills, ein unwahrscheinliches Vergnügen!
Falsch, unglaublich!
Lasst uns alle dieses Vergnügen genießen!!!!!
A parte il direttore d’orchestra terribile la Ferrel una dizione terribile,, anche se una voce piena e bella
Non e vero! IDIOTA.