Happy to report that my announcement of a new production company has met with truly astounding interest and support. Oh to be a fly on the wall for some of the dinners recently. You who love opera and adore it as I do would be so thrilled. With a couple of the offers I will really have to kick the weight loss into high gear. Things, literally are taking shape.
More to follow.
The great and rich voiced Maureen Forrester crossed over into eternity today. What a magnificent person she was. In The Aspen Festival for my second Verdi Requiem she and I made some really great music.
Our voices went together, the colors fit like a glove, she said, and I just loved her. She was open and expansive and very supportive. A lovely colleague.
Have yet to hear anyone live sing this beautiful requiem with the poise and beauty and velvet plush velvet she had. God bless you dear heart and thank you always/
I am so thrilled to announce the formation of my new company. Operavision, INC.
The marble is handed me, I must find the David locked inside…. it will produce projects with a sure bent towards loving opera for all it uniquely is.
No apologies. I love opera, and I want to share that love with a lot of people who feel like me.
Stay tuned.
As in all non musical pursuits, I am a little bored. I am in the midst of a transformation they tell me, trying to be the best I can, listening to music, and enjoying the breezes in life.
Really cannot wait to sing, and be in service to the music. It has been my everything…. and I am so grateful that God brought me to that world.
As always in June, especially around this second week, I remember with love and so much gratitude, my mom, who crossed over into eternity on June 9th, now six years ago.
Feels like yesterday….. Songs my mother taught me, so many. The cadence and the melody of life. Both mom and dad….. missing them so much….
Italy has always been a font of creation, beauty, design, fantasy, achievement and joy. Italy cannot abandon it’s art. It’s music. It’s people. It is in the blood. It is the left leg to the right leg of the country, it is the heart. It is in it’s very language, the melody of the Italian spoken word. It would be like England without Shakespeare, it is so interconnected.
My own beautiful but very young country has it’s own disaster of the Arts as well. Washington and the world of commerce turn away from the special and the unique unless it can carry a great sticker price at auction. Opera? It has to be cheapened and vulgarized, and bastardized to attract attention.
But if you told me that ITALY would lose faith and start bean counting when it came to protecting one of it’s most significant contributions to mankind, I would have laughed out loud.
I am NOT laughing now. The world has gone insane and now it is completely whacked. Italy closes theaters for the opera? Italy cancels performances because the government doesn’t want to give to the theaters and the unions enough to keep them going? Something has to save this……
They can not leave a world without the glory of Italian Opera seen in all it’s correctness. Every city has a gorgeous theater, a great history.
For what? Money?
That “destination”, that “fixation” with money that always transfixes and destroys men and women’s souls and in the end leaves them nothing, a void….. the evil that springs from the need of and/or the lack of.
If not for it’s ART and music, what then? More soccer? More cars? I love them and enjoy both like the next person, but Italy turning it’s back on it’s greatness and superior contributions to a special and scared world of discipline and beauty? This embarrassment is to be shouted from the highest rooftops.
An art that has survived until this very day, is to be abandoned by this age of “instant” everything? Mostly mediocrity ……
It is unconscious and not pardonable.
I am praying tonight that the culture that sprang from the sun drenched earth of Italy that transfigured a world through their composers, and artists, designers, glorious full throated men and women of the choruses, Ballet and orchestras and able men and women behind the scenes, I am “implorando Dio”….. that He will find new champions to protect the beauty and the divinity of it’s Arts, especially the opera.
To all who seek to defend her, sustain her, exult her, work for her and continue this priceless work and gift to the world, I stand with you…..
I look forward to my conversation with Mr. Gruber of the amazing Metropolitan Opera Guild and to all the marvelous thoughts and interactions of those that arrive to chat along with us.
The following day I am keenly interested in the defense of a dissertation for a PHD of a major “future” player in the Halls of Academia, and also of opera and music performance….. more on that later.
And then, and forever, the one and only Magda, who brought so much music and soul to my life and those who heard and adore her, but also who heard with her own ears the direct voices of the composers Zandonai, Cilea, Mascagni, and Giordano….. imagine.
SO thrilled to have this “direct link” honored in a day when seemingly, no one cares about opera traditions. Very exciting……
Marcello Giordani, Italian Tenor great and Metropolitan Opera’s superstar, launches his brand new Foundation here in New York City at the New York Athletic Club on May 7th.
A Great opening for this new foundation, with an eye towards the future and the RESPECT for those that protected it and got this to us in one glowing piece of truth…
I am so thrilled to have been asked to introduce via LIVE satellite feed from her home in Milano, the “direct link” herself….. Magda Olivero.
Mr. Giordani is presenting her his foundation’s very first Lifetime Achievement Award.
At the fundraiser launch, the first winners of his Foundation support will present a small recital and offer a glimpse into the way this organization thinks.
Support and courage for the future with total respect, admiration and gratitude for those great singers of the past. It is a tradition to pass from one generation to another….
Cannot wait to watch this…….. we will be part of history unfolding as we speak to history living among us in this humble, gracious, amazing lady…… and celebrate a beautiful and powerful new champion for the ARTS in the Marcello Giordani Foundation……
Bravo Marcello, Bravissima Magda…….
It is a reflection of egos of today. No young conductor comes up knowing their craft really, slowly saturating to the music, understanding beautifully that many voices can sing a role, with help, some voices SHOULD be singing the roles, and some shouldn’t be hired at all. They come quick out of school and want to be the next great…..”Santini”…..
Mozart sounds like Rossini, Verdi sounds like Mozart, and they all sound alike ; badly fitting shoes that like to walk fast to get home to take them off because they hurt.
This alarming miscalculation of time coming with a maestro of some twenty years career is a riddle to me. Where is the respect for the piece, the singers, and for goodness sakes, the Metropolitan Opera and it’s fabulous orchestra?
The men who beat time, in opera, should rehearse well, but in performance, especially with those that are artists, however quicksilver they can be and willfull, they should FOLLOW the voice. Personality is missing so much from opera today, encourage it…. inspire it….If you want to conduct something without voice, do a symphony. And learn it first, please.
Her choices are not always what I would want or do, but when she sings you know you are in the presence of a special message and a unique soul and voice, and I applaud her great courage and resounding success in so glorious a role under such a trying circumstance. Brava with only more beauty and calm to come.
and for this Byronesque handsome young man, congratulations; beauty of voice and melody always first, God took care of the rest for you.
To all my friends and colleagues in this production….. un bacio grande…… Viva Verdi, in this hauntingly beautiful, fragile, masterpiece.
