Rosa Ponselle - "Divinites du Styx" from Gluck's "Alceste"

[MrCafiero]

Now days they would label her a mezzo or contralto! LOL!!

[jfsanin]

nice video

[MrSkylark1]

Compare ELIZABETH RETHBERG, NINON VALLIN, ROSA PAULY, MARJORIE LAWRENCE, ANITA CERQUETTI. Any one of these singers could match Ponselle. The

Metropolitan management and publicity is always a factor.

[goodboysv]

does anybody may whote down the lyric please?

[tarstan]

No problem with the top here but I find the wild tempo fluctuations make this almost unlistenable to. Not Ponselle's fault perhaps.

[VinylToVideo]

@tarstan In those days this kind one music was only played one way in America and to be honest that's the only way I can listen to it.

[MrFalconford]

@tarstan your not fit to pick up this womans glove

[ezcascar]

An extraordinary technique, she is one few sopranos who don't sharpen high notes in full volume, as Flagstad, Tebaldi, Nilsson and Caballe. Beautiful done! TY

[bonanplu]

@ezcascar : This is 1934 Ponselle was only 37 and three years later 1937/38 her career ended when she was only 40. Just because of high notes that were never good , in all her recorded arias of the late '20s and early '30s even all high A are not good

[VinylToVideo]

Are you saying her career ended because of a bad top? It's my understanding she didn't sign her '37/'38 contract because Johnson wouldn't let her perform Adriana Lecouvreur. In 1939 and 1954 RCA brought recording equipment to her home where several recordings were made and she was in excellent voice. She could of moved to a different company like other artists did; I'm sure San Francisco would of loved her. Perhaps during the depression though there weren't as many opportunities to do this.

[bonanplu]

@VinylToVideo I like Rosa Ponselle but in almost all her recorded arias in the '20s and early '30s I listen her voice on top does not vibrate as good as it does in her middle and low registers.I don't speak of top C only, listen well her Un bel di, Ave Maria/Otello, Pace mio Dio/Forza or Noma/Adalgida duet, her notes on A natural or Bflat are not expansive.

[VinylToVideo]

Considering at that time there were a few famous sopranos at that time who made their career without a top I don't think that had that much to do with her retirement. Sure there were some broadcasts from the 30s where she was very cautious I think she was just going through a sort of crisis that could of been (and actually was) fixed with a year or two off. Artists today and since have done this although with the singers we have today I don't know why some bother.

[GermanOperaSinger]

@bonanplu I don't really hear too much difficulty with high notes in her earlier recordings. The 'Ponselle had bad high notes' hype was due largely in part to a single broadcast of Aida in which she missed the high C in 'o patria mia'. In any case Ponselle was never a true soprano in my opinion, but a mezzo who sang soprano early in her career, much like Marilyn Horne or Leonie Rysanek. Unlike the latter two, Ponselle just retired before she made an 'official' switch to the mezzo repertoire.

[ciroalb3]

@VinylToVideo her retirement is complicated. First, she married, second, Johnson wasn't giving her the parts she wanted or as many dates as she might have liked. The pay was I think about $1,000 per performance, and half of that for say Cav., so it was no longer financially, professionally, or personally worth her while.

[ezcascar]

@bonanplu I say that high notes in full didn't sharpen, that is a good technique that few sopranos have. Ponselle had terror to high notes. Tebaldi's high notes nor were good, but it didn't sharpen volume

[suffisance]

eeeeeeeee. thank you!!

[amberzdeal]

Wonderful.  Her voice is a treasure.

[65attila]

An incredible voice wedded with a wonderful musical instinct. What a performance

[GermanOperaSinger]

My favorite Verdi soprano - but her excellence was by no means limited to Verdi, as she proves here. Lily Pons always had great admiration for Ponselle, after she saw a Met production of Forza with Ponselle as Leonora she declared she wouldn't attend a Forza production ever again - 'What's the point? I heard Ponselle as Leonora!' She never did.

[sospello]

Thanks so much for posting Rosa--I really appreciated the clarity of sound in this splendid recording of her.