Seeing a clip of her doing the top of the Immolation scene from the commercially launched Chereau manufacturing, which the BBC noticed match to incorporate in an excellent documentary about divas, transformed me to opera on the spot. Over time I’ve explored each utterance of hers that’s accessible and I believe this Immolation scene, from her first full Ring (Bayreuth, 1975) is maybe the perfect, at the very least vocally.
Perhaps for some this may already sound over-ripe, however for me that is Wagner singing at its best – the voice is wealthy, full and safe in all registers, there’s magnificence and heat within the timbre, and she will be able to do each phrase precisely how she’d prefer to with no compromises. I don’t know that anybody else ever had each single one among these attributes come collectively in such a gratifying manner, and naturally Dame Gwyneth herself couldn’t maintain it at such a degree for very many seasons – by the point of the business launch of the Chereau the center is hollower, the highest is barely thinner, and the vibrato is crossing the road in the direction of a wobble. So I significantly love this efficiency as a doc of an actual candy spot in her singing, the place she was actually nice, bringing the beautiful timbre and facility from her youthful Verdi singing to the beginnings of her Hochdrammatische days.
