Korngold Violanta Performance & Recording

[Gareth Vaughan]

It is indeed very surprising, particularly as there are plenty of recordings of fine singers from the past showing exactly how these roles should be sung. So it is not as if we have no examples for comparison.

[Alan Howe]

I draw two conclusions:

1. The reviewers have little knowledge of or interest in good singing.
2. Too much attention is paid to staging, production, etc. It is a scandal that these aspects of opera performances are prioritised over singing, playing and conducting in many reviews. 

[Alan Howe]

Where, oh where is there a soprano like Elisabeth Schwarzkopf today?>>>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoGQd1dsAlw

[Gareth Vaughan]

Yes, she was truly magnificent.

[Alan Howe]

The point, I think, is this: Korngold's glamorous music requires glamorous voices. Second-raters just won't do. So, when it comes to putting on his operas, put less emphasis on clever-clever staging and production ideas and more on finding the singers who can actually sing the roles, especially when recordings are planned.

The US premiere of Violanta at the Met in New York in 1927 featured soprano Maria Jeritza (here singing in Die tote Stadt):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSYZFWNkj6I -
[mind you, she ducks the high notes for some reason! She can evidently sing them - try the end of Vissi d'arte: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7usrJr6qkQ4]
...and tenor Walter Kirchhoff, here singing in Die Walküre:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q9aWNiGpPQ
The singers we have today rarely if ever match the quality of these voices.

[Alan Howe]

There's a pretty fine performance of the opera available on YouTube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZqixbEDV9g

[Gareth Vaughan]

put less emphasis on clever-clever staging and production ideas and more on finding the singers who can actually sing the roles

Oh I do so very heartily agree, Alan.

[MartinH]

I've often wondered if part of the problem with great singing, or the lack of it, is the absence of great voice teachers. Are they a thing of the past? Same thing happened in the violin schools - long gone are the Gingolds are DeLays. I'm not really knowledgeable about vocal training, and who the great teachers of the past were. Did voice teachers of yesterday know something that has been lost? 

[Alan Howe]

I'm sure that good vocal training - or indeed the lack of it - must be at the root of the problem. The fact that there aren't the numbers of great singers today that there have been in the past is surely all the proof we need.

And so back to Violanta - I mean, so far there's only been one complete recording...

[Alan Howe]

How about Dame Joan Hammond in Die tote Stadt?>>>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_56dE_qaf0

She'd sing the majority of today's sopranos off the stage...

[brendangcarroll]

The production from Turin (January 2020) will be released by DYNAMIC:

CD https://www.europadisc.co.uk/classical/146941/Korngold-_Violanta.htm

BLU-RAY https://www.europadisc.co.uk/classical/146940/Korngold-_Violanta_(Blu-ray).htm

DVD https://www.europadisc.co.uk/classical/146939/Korngold-_Violanta_(DVD).htm

[Alan Howe]

I'll be sticking with Janowski on Sony, for reasons given above. But it's good to have some competition, although I don't personally believe this release is really good enough.

[Alan Howe]

Avoid this release! The reviewer at MusicWeb is right:

It must be observed however that the casting in this new Italian recording is well below the standards set by CBS forty years ago. None of the singers here surpass their audio equivalents, I am afraid to say.
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2020/Aug/Korngold-Violanta-57876.htm