Cardiff Singer of the World 2013

[Tsaraslondon]

This week I have been enjoying the heats of the Cardiff Singer of the World on BBC 4, and am looking forward to the final, the main Opera Prize tonight.

Last night saw the final of the Song Prize and I'm afraid I think the jury got it terribly wrong. Jamie Barton, the American mezzo who won, has a terrific voice and is evidently a great communicator. Her programme choices were mostly intensely operatic and dramatic, evidently chosen to show off her dramatic talents, but this is the Song Prize, and a true recitalist has to do so much more than this. He, or she, must draw the listener in, put together a programme that makes a homogenised whole, and, to my mind, the only singer to do this last night was English tenor, Ben Johnson. Clearly, the panel of experts, both on television and radio agreed with me because they all chose him as the outright favourite, and then had to eat their words when Jamie Barton was announced as the winner.

Barton is also singing tonight in the Opera Final. Maybe I'm just being cynical, but did she win the Song Prize, because they have already decided she won't win the Opera Prize? If that's the case, then it rather makes a mockery of the Song Prize being a separate competition.

Well, no doubt we will see tonight. Going on what we have heard so far, the main contenders would appear to be Barton and the glamorous (and more easily castable) Argentinian mezzo, Daniela Mack.

[cjvinthechair]

Yes, a terrific week's viewing...and quite agree with you about Barton. She's not a lieder recitalist, & I'm afraid, despite everyone's gushing about her general star quality, I prefer listening to Mack, Tokar and indeed Celeng.

[Tsaraslondon]

Well of course Barton ended up winning the main competition too, and I have to admit she was very impressive in a pretty wide ranging repertoire. On the night I think she was a deserved winner.

That said, I still hold that she should not have won the Song Prize. It would seem that the audience, the general public, agreed with me because the audience prize was given to Ben Johnson, who was easily the best Lieder singer of the lot.

[knight66]

Coming in late here, i agree to an extent about the song prize. But i simply did not take to the sound the tenor made. It was intelligent and it was indeed a proper lieder programme and it did not sound like a scaled down opera programme, but i would never think of paying to hear him.

Overall, I am a bit annoyed at how narrow the choices can be, not in composer, but in style. I think that every singer should have to get through a Bach round, he is never performed, yet his music along with Handel and Mozart is extremely testing and it exposes any chinks in technique. You can get away with a fistfull of lesser technique in the broad strokes of some opera arias, but the grounding you need for a long career sits in the three  composers I named.

I also get the feeling that not only has it become an opera competition, but it is attracting older singers who already have careers. I prefer that, but it does mean I am less forgiving of the clearly shallow technique evinced by some singers.

I thought the right singer won the main prize, and encouraging despite the fact that she was not "the full package" there are a number of opera roles no house will presently engage someone of her size to perform.

Mike

[Tsaraslondon]

I also get the feeling that not only has it become an opera competition, but it is attracting older singers who already have careers. I prefer that, but it does mean I am less forgiving of the clearly shallow technique evinced by some singers.


Mike

I agree with you here, but I don't prefer that it's become a competition for older singers. Karita Mattila, who won the first ever competition was just 22 at the time, and she went on to have a pretty spectacular career, and it was thrilling to see and hear someone so young on the threshold of a great career, Ditto the year of the baritones, when Hvorostovsky and Terfel vied for the prize. Both were in their 20s and neither of them were yet contracted to any house, and, I think I'm right, had yet to appear in any professional opera house.

Recently it seems to have become more of a showcase for semi-established singers, rather than an attempt to find the stars of the future. And indeed some of the singers this year, though hardly young anymore, evinced little of the mastery of certain singers of the past, when they were a similar age. Take, for instance, the Italian soprano who sang "Un bel di". She is the same age now as Scotto was when she recorded the role under Barbirolli, but showed none of Scotto's vocal mastery; I thought her performance penny plain compared to that of Scotto.

I must say that, though I enjoyed the week, I feel that the competition has lost sight of its original goals.

[knight66]

I take your points and I suppose what I was recalling was the last competition when the Russian entry was frankly embarrassing due to the immaturity of technique. But that does not stop a country from sending someone through who is special, though not fully trained. Such people will be watched by those looking for developing talent. A lot of singers though don't get real mastery of their technique until their late 20s and would have been overlooked had they been put into competition At 22. There do not seem to be competitions for emerging singers of say 30 years of age. So, I think we miss out.

Mike

[Tsaraslondon]

Perhaps nowadays we tread too carefully. I'm all for not pushing singers into roles too heavy for them too early, but many of the greatest singers emerged in their twenties. Callas was singing Norma at the age of of 25 with a technical mastery beyond that of most singers a good deal older than her. I suppose many would aver that she was singing big roles far too young, and that was why her voice gave up on her so early. I'm not sure I would buy that. Listening to some of those early performances, it is the security and ease of the singing that is so extraordinary. I doubt anyone then would have foreseen her career would be so short, though no doubt Callas is, as ever, exceptional.

There are, however, plenty of other singers who made their mark young, but had surprisingly long careers. From a bygone era one thinks of  Adelina Patti, who made her operatic debut at the age of 16, and sang for the last time in public in 1914 at the age of 71. Of the post war generation, we have Victoria De Los Angeles, who sang her first Margeurite at the Paris Opera at the age of 26. Mirella Freni also made her operatic debut in her early 20s and was singing at La Scala and Covent Garden before she was 30.Both Pavarotti and Domingo were already singing at major international opera houses in their early 30s. Kiri Te Kanawa was only 27 when she sang the Countess at Glyndeboure, the role that started her international career (long before she sang at the Royal Wedding). One of your own favourite singers, Gundula Janowitz was only 26 when she recorded Pamina for Klemperer, and Janet Baker, who, in these surroundings, might seem like a late starter, was only 31 when she recorded the Angel in The Dream of Gerontius for Barbirolli. Do you see what I'm driving at?

Many of the singers in the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition were older than those mentioned above, and yet we are still talking of promise. Surely by this stage in their careers, that promise should already have been realised.