Dame Joan Sutherland. Pleurez! pleurez, mes yeux!. Le Cid. Jules Massenet.

[dmitrid1]

There are different kinds of beauty...if you like Callas spewing out venom, tragedy and revenge, good for you....that's one kind of art. But Massenet's music is lyrical, subtle and flowing. Joan's voice adorns the music.

BTW isn't the French spoken by average Breton's APPALLING??!

[raigekimaru]

@dmitrid1

Massenet is vastly underrated in my opinion. his music is simultaneously visceral and dramatic as well as lyrical and pure. this combination gives it a kind of nether worldly feel and frequently makes me think of an intense thunderstorm. dramatic, beautiful and engaging, but simultaneously melancholy, trance-like and dulling the senses.

[diuscorvus]

@dmitrid1 Sutherland's voice 'adorning' the music? Although I find moments beautiful and insightful, notably the corona at the end, and 1:06, Sutherland's chest voice sounds plain ugly and nothing like her upper register. With this aria's frequent recourses to lower notes, that's a bit problem. Nonetheless I do think that Sutherland's temperament suits Massenet better than any of the Italian composers. Callas's rendition of this aria is still, imo, definitive - musically if not in vocal terms.

[diuscorvus]

@diuscorvus I'm afraid I have to take back my comment about the corona at the end - why does Bonynge make Sutherland ecstatic when she ought to be sounding resigned, despaired, fatalistic? Whenever Bonynge conducts Sutherland, I have the impression of the blind leading the blind.

[breton2]

Her French is appalling... Callas is definitely number one in this declamatory French aria.

[meltzerboy]

@breton2 I agree that Callas is superior to Sutherland here. Also try the old recordings of Litvinne and Melba, both on YT.

[vocalissimo1]

A prodigious and torrential sound. An absolutely rock-solid technique. Go, Joan!