Vis singing Mozart because it's good for your technique:
I've been told a number of times that Mozart wrote something appropriate
for every fach. Yeah, right. I'm still waiting to find that special
Mozart aria just for me - dramatic contralto with limited coloratura
ability. The arias that are in the right tessitura are few and far between
anyway, but for argument's sake, let's look at the Mitridate arias. Well,
sorry Wolfgang, but I ain't no Ewa Podles or Marilyn Horne. Except as an
exercise, coloratura like that is pointless for me to spend much time on
because I won't ever perform it. I am NOT a Rossini contralto - I'm a
Verdi/Verismo contralto (or more accurately, a Mussorgsky/Rimsky-Korsakov
contralto).
So I'd be interested to hear what other people think is just the right
Mozart aria for a contralto whose current "best audition pieces" are
Cilea's "Acerba volutta", Liubava's aria from Rimsky-Korsakov's SADKO,
Massenet's "Va! laisse couler mes larmes", the mother's arias from
Menotti's THE CONSUL, and Katisha's aria from THE MIKADO. I've thought
about possibly undertaking Elettra's aria from IDOMENEO; yes, she's a
soprano, but a soprano more in the tessitura of Santuzza, which is another
aria in my "short list".
Thoughts?
KM
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My NEIL SHICOFF Website:
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/shicoff/shicoff.html
My Website:
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html
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We're sitting in the opera house;
We're waiting for the curtain to arise
With wonders for our eyes,
A feeling of expectancy,
A certain kind of ecstasy,
Expectancy and ecstasy....Sh's's's.
- Charles Ives
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