Mirella Freni "Oh Dieu! que de bijoux" Faust

I am french and I did understand every words... I think she's perfect and I just love her heavy voice! She's my favorite soprano with Price!!!

impareggiabile mirella freni........

You know, give me singing like this with questionable French ANY day... yes, we are coached to death, and generally people have "proper" diction nowadays, but we'd be hard pressed to find this kind singing today. Are there some wonderful voices out there...? Of course! But, now we have very few sopranos with this kind of vocal security.

her Italian is pretty bad?!? you do know that she IS Italian and that native speakers on the operatic stage, more or less, SET THE STANDARD in terms of the singing languages. Study up. Good to see that you still love her, though. She's remarkable.

dear dennisdeem if you study up a bit more you will notice that very often the standard in a language is set by non native speakers (think of french and Gedda or Kraus). It is not a sacrilege to say that a native speaker doesn't articulate enough... as long as you can appreciate that sometimes amazing singers didn't articulate much but still gave us sounds to dream for...

Have you ever really listened to Kraus' French? All in all, it's not bad, but some of his vowels are way off. Native speakers, especially Italian ones, have always set the standard for the diction of their languages. It's a simple fact.

not bad!?
Kraus made history in French repertory.
I see this discussion leads nowhere. Enjoy your music and thanks for sharing opinions.

She's my grandfather's favorite soprano, a great voice...charming actress and musician...apparently her French is bad, but I don't really care because my dumbass can't speak the language and wouldn't know anyways.

la plus grande marguerite ou presque ,,,,,,,,
j'dore

It's sooo perfect! Just a flawless voice! And she's adorable in this.