Guilty Pleasures

[mjwal]

To be an occasional review and/or reminiscence of vocal items on the borderline to kitsch -but still "classical" and in my opinion transcending such distinctions by the manner of their delivery on records in my collection. Of course you will all have similar treasures stored up in your "heart of hearts" and can interrupt my musings to share your feelings about them.
No. 1. "Im chambre séparée", from Heuberger: Der Opernball. I will confine myself to two recordings I consider to be non-pareil, a) Richard Tauber (I'm sure this will be on YouTube for your delectation) b) Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (probably ditto - I have not looked). While listening to these again I have smoked a solitary guilty cigarette while quaffing my post-prandial glass of Côtes du Rhône, aged in the oaken cask - I stopped smoking in 1999 but can't resist indulging every so often.
a) This is the very model of how to do it: the "schmierig" vocal style, the sleazily suggestive violin emerging from the Kaffeehaus orchestra. There is no singer in the world today who can suggest so much in the variation of tone and floated vocal line. He is there, cajoling, lubriciously wheedling even, in the full consciousness of what must follow. The lustfulness is explicit but tempered by a vaguely rueful melancholy.
b) This is more elegant, the dame du monde condescending to commit a peccadillo. She knows what she is singing, all right, but carries it off with concealed amusement. But we do not forget she has some experience - when she was the Marschallin she also condescended to turn up in a low Beisl (with its own séparée) in order to save a lover's face (not quite out of order), and may even have been there before.  Tauber, however, to compare, is singing of what he knows; we are close to the stews (in Shakespearean parlance - in 1546 the aging and possibly repentant Henry VIII had prohibited them in the borough of Southwark because of the "abominable and detestable sin"). The melancholy I spoke of, which is lacking in Dame Elisabeth's soignée performance, may be owing to his covert knowledge that this cannot last, coupled with a nostalgic memory of past performances in the field.
You pays yer money and you takes yer choice, nicht wahr?

[Guido]

I'm sometimes partial to the best musical numbers being done on operatic voices - I personally really like Kiri's deluxe Westside Story recording that got a very bad critical reception - yes it's over the top and not as "honest" as the original version, but it's very easy on the ear.

Also that Carousel number that always gets trotted out by classical stars for "pops" concerts. Frabjous schlock, but there's definitely a place for it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrhDWKrRGCo

The ne plus ultra of this (kitsch guilty pleasures) though are surely Korngold's operas. Die Tote Stadt is the most successful as opera and probably the best musically too (kitsch, but quasi-redeemed by it's generosity of ideas and beauty). Das Wunder der Heliane is completely over the top in subject matter, libretto, style and orchestration - 100% kitsch-tinsel-schlock grand opera.

Die Kathrin though is his 1930s effort at a lighter style - almost operetta-like in comparison to the sickly eroticism of the previous three operas - its just a simple love story of Puccinian warmth (and sentimentality, though here it is entirely innocent and unmanipulative unlike the verismo master) with some meltingly lovely (though slightly forgettable) passages, and at least one aria that's almost as good as Marietta's Lied. Again it's a kitsch fest but more palatable because it doesn't aim at exaltation and true depth.

[Tsaraslondon]

My own personal guilty pleasure is of Frizt Wunderlich singing a wonderfully vulgar and splashy arrangement of Lara's Granada (the DG recording). The arrangement is worthy of Mantovani, I know, but oh what a voice. You just know that Wunderlich went into the studio that day feeling on top of the world, feeling that it was the best thing in the world to be a tenor. The joy in the sound is utterly overwhelming. It never fails to lift my spirits when I am feeling down.