Rosa Ponselle: 1937 CARMEN Live Performance in Restored Sound
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ส.ค. 2024
- The legendary soprano Rosa Ponselle (1897-1981) began her singing career in vaudeville and by playing for silent films in theaters. She made her debut at the Met in 1918 singing with Caruso in Verdi's LA FORZA DEL DESTINO. She later sang the title role in Bizet's CARMEN and succeeded Geraldine Farrar as "the" Carmen of the era. The live performance presented here dates from April 17, 1937, and turned out to be her final operatic performance on the stage.
Digitally transferred from sources made from the original acetates with applied Magix audio restoration software to reduce noise and add a mild stereo effect in the mid-tones. There is no added reverb or artificial ambiance.
This is great. My mother (born in Cleveland in 1940) is a concert pianist, and she took piano lessons with Ms. Maska who was also Thelma Votipka’s piano teacher. Ms. Maska told Thelma to study singing, because she had a great voice. My mother went on to save the Carmen production when Boris Goldovsky came to Cleveland when my Mom was 15 years old; the pianist was sick, and my mother stepped in and sight read the entire opera that night. We still have the letter Boris sent to my mother to thank her and to tell her to come study with him when she finished high school.❤🎉❤
I had read the negative reviews of the time... when I heard a Boston performace I was stunned, she is PERFECT in the role, seems to have been written for her.. will listen to this performance right away. Thanks for sharing this Mr. Fells !!!
Rosa Ponselle will always be the greatest!
Rosa was surely the greatest Carmen of the 20th century, overall. I wish we had got to see her 'immortalize' the role onscreen in the MGM film that was planned for her (and sadly scrapped). She is both girlish AND womanly at alternate points in the story, which is exactly how I think Carmen would be - and I love how we are treated to both the soprano and contralto dimensions of her voice. Singers who try to maintain an "even tone" right throughout are not only boring, but are outright misguided. There was also a different sense of "rhythm" back in the day - I know that Peter Callahan criticized her before, but listen to Emma Calve from a few decades prior......she was considered the greatest Carmen of her time by some, and yet I feel almost certain that a lot of musicians today would find fault with her. Rosa Ponselle's French is on the whole WAY BETTER than I thought - preferable to Robert Merrill and his horrid American diphthongs, and also preferable to Rise Stevens and her equally Americanized French.
I don't mind the nitty gritty realism that Rosa lends the part in climactic sections such as the final duet. Bizet intended for the opera to be performed WITH SPOKEN DIALOGUE at the Paris Opera-Comique after all.......it was AFTER Bizet's death that his friend Guiraud interpolated the recitatives instead, and tried to make this some kind of "grand 19th century opera" for Vienna. Just because most people - ESPECIALLY AMERICANS - are used to Guiraud's version does not mean that Rosa Ponselle needed to adhere to Victorian conventions (which frankly, Bizet was trying to challenge). I really don't mind the tenor making "ugly" sounds towards the ends of Acts III and IV either - because I don't expect Don Jose to sound like Rossini's Count Almaviva or like Handel's Jupiter. Maison REALLY takes his audience on a journey, and embodies Don Jose's *METAMORPHOSIS* from a would-be romantic hero to a borderline madman. Bizet's CARMEN is a bridge to the Verismo era, and although I am NOT a fan of most Verismo operas (give me Handel's "Semele" any day!) - Rosa Ponselle and Mr. Maison are on track here. They are NOT doing anything so out of context.
And singers were allowed to take more liberties at the time than current singers are - especially if they were of Rosa Ponselle's stature. But whatever Rosa Ponselle brings to the opera on her own is still in keeping with Bizet's overall musical landscape, and also with the libretto. If there is ONE operatic performance from the 20th century that I would want to go back in time to see, it would surely be RP's Carmen (with Maison as Don Jose). The same way I wish I could go back to the late 19th century and watch Dame Nellie Melba play Gilda in her younger years.
Rosa Ponselle the greatest Carmen of the twentieth century? If that is true, it was only until Rise Stevens showed up to take over.
Thank you so much !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Carmen..................Rosa Ponselle [Last performance]
Don José................René Maison
Micaela.................Hilda Burke
Escamillo...............Julius Huehn
Frasquita...............Thelma Votipka
Mercédès................Helen Olheim
Remendado...............Giordano Paltrinieri
Dancaïre................George Cehanovsky
Zuniga..................Louis D'Angelo
Moralès.................Wilfred EngelmanConductor - Gennaro Papi
Thanks
Would love to hear the 1/9/1937 MET broadcast with Carmen. It's a slightly more interesting performance.
I assume this was excised from a Saturday Matinee broadcast hosted by Milton Cross?
Yes.
The cast, please? Many thanks
Carmen - Rosa Ponselle, Don José - René Maison, Micaela - Hilda Burke, Escamillo - Julius Huehn, Frasquita - Thelma Votipka, Mercédes - Helen Olheim, Remendado - Giordano Paltrinieri, Dancaire - George Cehanovsky, Zuniga - Louis D'Angelo, Morales - Wilfred Engelman; Conductor - Gennaro Papi. Matinee broadcast, Public Auditorium Cleveland, Ohio.
Hopefully it will be awhile before the Met has YT pull this.
Actually, the Met doesn't seem to have pulled any of the vintage broadcasts of the 1930s and 40s from YT. There are quite a lot of them here.
Thanks - that is good to know
If they were more recent they certainly would've done that already. They're absolutely insensible and pull videos and even entire channels down even for long forgotte broadcasts that they never release and that will never give them any profit after so many years.
But where was it?
Cleveland, OH. This would be Rosa's last appearance in a stage opera but she didn't know that at the time.
I love Ponselle and her voice sounds great in this music but I find the re-writing of history and general ignorance or those who are proclaiming she’s great “just because” kind of startling. She makes all sorts of musical and textual mistakes here (one only needs to look at a score to see how she’s all over the place rhythmically and half the notes she sings in the second half of the final duet are essentially of her own making), her French is bad frankly, and her whole approach to the role is insanely aggressive and one-note. Her charisma is evident and allows her to pull it off but her idea of the role as truer to the novella doesn’t mean a thing for Bizet, whose opera is an at best liberal adaption of the source material and is as tonally different from the source material as can be. I realize legends are apparently beyond criticism and in no way am I saw Ponselle wasn’t fully deserving of her status or that she wouldn’t have been a great Carmen. But her approach to the role is IMO unmusical and dramatically misguided and I think even as a purely listening experience it’s pretty evident why it didn’t go over.
An interesting assessment. The Arts, like many aspects of life, suffered greatly during the Great Depression. I see this performance as another victim of the era.
Ponselle's "Carmen" was a box-office success but a critical failure, based on the verdicts of the major New York critics: "Miss Ponselle depicted the gypsy baggage [as] a Tough Girl of old-fashioned vaudeville ... a singer of her attainments hardly would make such sad work of the 'Seguidilla'" (Pitts Sanborn). "Vocally, there was much to admire in her vibrant and plenteous low tones, but I could not help noticing a slow tremolo in her upper register, in forte especially" (Samuel Chotzinoff). "Miss Ponselle's method [of characterization] has produced some good results in some instances; in this one, however, it has produced an impersonation of an impersonation" (B. H. Haggin). "We have never heard Miss Ponselle sing so badly, and we have seldom seen the part enacted in such an artificial and generally unconvincing manner" (Olin Downes)
On this recording Ponselle's high notes are terrific and rock steady; recordings magnify vibrato issues, so I believe Mr. Chotzinoff had a tremolo in his eardrum.
Critics. What would we do without them? Ponselle was one singer who was mostly beyond criticism, vocally anyway. Actually, from the same book section ("A Singer's Life") we often find contradictory criticisms. One critic finds a developing tremelo, another does not. One likes this or that, another doesn't. Downes may very well have been nursing a grudge over a concert fee dispute, etc. The paying public loved it and in the end it seems to have been no more nor less controversial than many other Carmens.
Poor Rosa. :(
I believe the phrase "fuck the critics" is very much appropriate here
@@mmjhcb: Almost all of the reviews of Ponselle’s performances (including those from her vaudeville career) are included in my second book, “Rosa Ponselle: A Centenary Biography” (Amadeus Press, 1997). My first biography of her, to which you refer, was heavily edited by her personal representative and estate lawyers to such an extent that one of her close friends said that the book made her life “read like the average nun’s.” For that reason I wrote the centenary biography to recount the events of her extraordinary life and career precisely as she and those close to her had told me on tape, almost all of which was borne out by the documentation from which I quoted extensively and cited fully in each chapter’s endnotes.
The good ,the bad ,and the ugly .
This is an excellent transfer . Thank you .
Now for the bad and the ugly .
Ponselle's own verismo contributions , and they are many ,don't improve Bizet's music one bit .I understand Santuzza was her best role but somebody ought to have told her this isn't a 20th century rewriting of Cavalleria Rusticana . Her Carmen has little appeal , one cannot help but wonder why is this Don Jose so fascinated by her to the point of renouncing his career ,his girlfriend ,and his social life for her . The tenor sounds like he's having indigestion .Maybe this was his idea of acting out his torment in the final scene . Ponselle's idea was in the line of Santuzza's "A te la mala Pasqua" repeated over and over again .As a rule I am sympathetic toward both leading characters of this opera but not this time . Sorry, but this was supposed to be a 19th century opera , not a late verismo blockbuster written ca 1930's .
music fa
Lei sta parlando delle voci che non ha sentito mai dal vivo .
Sovente una registrazione può essere una bellissima sorpresa e viceversa, tutto dipende dei tecnici del suono e il loro materiale tecnico per poter trasmettere una recita dal vivo .
Purtroppo non esiste ancora un microfono capace di registrare la vera bellezza artistica di una voce lirica .
Questa è la triste realtà.
il vecchio
@@bodiloto Apple and oranges .I talk about the stylistic deficiencies ,you talk about vocal production .The recording process has no trouble with the singer's style,and captured the vocal production well enough unless you had a brilliant voice ,which Rosa didn't have,and Rene Maison even less (both had large but not brilliant voices ). I am sorry but both singers are as vulgar as it gets .Carmen is supposed to be French Grand Opera,not pagliacci in French. Perhaps Rosa was believing herself on the vaudeville stage of her youth .She certainly sings so
after the harsh criticism,she lost
her confidence and retired,still
young at age 40 in 1937. ponselle
was a very nervous person and
tool everything very hard to herself
every criticism was a battle.20
years of carrear was enough!!
and she decided to retired to
her splendor mansion villa pace.
Alfredo Loyola Fact check, please!
I think money played a part in her retirement as well, a big part.
The Met only paid $1,000 for performances of their top stars, and
put her in several "half" roles like Cavalleria, which would probably
have paid just $500. In addition, she was always a nervous performer.
Simpler to retire and marry.
Met productions were also a shambles in these years, old scenery
often left out in the rain, few rehearsals, poor choral support...
@@ciroalb3: As her biographer I can tell you that she became wealthy not from her Met performances (especially after the pay cut was put into place during the Depression) but rather from her concerts before and after the Met season, and her performances on radio. Her manager, Libbie Miller, negotiated a fee of $2,500 for every concert Ponselle gave, and $2,500 or more for every appearance on radio programs. By the late-1920s, Ponselle’s net worth was $2.7 million and her wealth increased during the 1930s. (Her manager’s as well as her secretary’s estimates were $3 and $4 million respectively.) By putting all of her stock into bonds, she lost almost nothing when Wall Street crashed and made more money during the worst of the Depression by reducing her Met performances and filling her schedule with autumn and spring concert tours and year-round radio appearances.
@@jimdrake-writer I never thought of her as much of a concert singer, too nervous, but that is certainly where the money was. Thomas and Crooks probably did close to 90 concerts a year. Same problem with radio broadcasts. I think she would only do one, rather than repeating it for West Coast
I have the Boston performance, but this one finds her more in a soprano voice with a couple of beautiful high notes. I found listening laborious but of course of a great level. Mr. Downes blamed Miss Ponselle but it may be just an ensemble situation; the tempi tend to turn Carmen into a grand opera and grand opera role rather than the pert, changeable, lively, mental, funny character Carmen can be. It is heavy and bulky, and speaking of that Mr. Downes did say that the salient thing about Miss Ponselle was that she was 'heroically reduced" conversely thin. Things were serious at the time, in Germany, Russia, Italy, and so on, in Europe and Miss Ponselle was becoming something of Hollywood Dame, with students such as Joan Crawford consulting her. Maybe, she needed to be out of it for that time and those after, for despite the wars and change of her debut time, WWI and so on, there was still a bit D'Annuzio's Italy at the Metropolitan.
@Kendrick Jacocks: Grace Moore wrote that during a skiing vacation in St. Moritz to which Ponselle had invited her, she (RP) had said that she would soon turn 40 and had never had time for fun. When I asked Ponselle if she recalled what she had told Moore, she replied, “I don’t remember that specific conversation, but that was exactly how I felt.” She added that “Vestale” and especially “Norma” had required so much preparation vocally but were not “acting roles” like Violetta, Carmen, and Adriana, the role she had all but counted on the Met administration to revive for her but which then-general manager Edward Johnson vetoed.