Joan Sutherland - Esclarmonde (3)

Joan Sutherland singing a beautiful aria from Esclarmonde by Massenet

D'une longue torpeur je sens que je m'éveille...
Ah! Je me souviens! Honte sans pareille!
Le prêtre! Les bourreaux! Roland perdu pour moi!
Les esprits à leurs mains cruelles m'ont ravie,
me ramenant vers l'île où je reçus sa foi!
Puis d'un profond sommeil je me suis endormie...
Hélas! En retrouvant la vie et la pensée,
je te retrouve, ô souvenir
d'une félicité passée
qui ne doit plus jamais revenir!
Ah! Plus notre hymen avait de charmes,
plus je dois répandre de larmes
sur le bonheur que j'ai perdu.
Hélas! Hélas!

Joan in good company: Tulio Serafin, Franco Zeffirelli, Gianni Raimondi, Marilyn Horne, Birgit Nilsson, Silvio Varviso, Regina Resnik, Ania Dorfmann, Bidu Sayao, Nicola Moscona, Jennie Tourel, Thelma Votipka, Robert Merrill, Alfredo Kraus, Nicolai Gedda, Placido Domingo, Lucine Amara, Teresa Zylis-Gara, Pilar Lorengar, Grace Bumbry, Montserrat Caballe, Luciano Pavarotti, Alexandra Danilova, Florence Eldridge, Maria Callas, Renato Cioni, Giulietta Simionato, Noel Coward, Kiri Te Kanawa, Angela Lansbury, Alfred Marks, Stafford Dean, The Queen Mother, Carlo Bergonzi, Andre Montal, Cornelis Hopthof, Tonina Dorati, Norman Ayrton, John Alexander, Clifford Grant, Michel Roux, Franco Tagliavini, Giacomo Aragall.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Joan
• Sutherland
• Esclarmonde
• Massenet
• French
• Opera
• Aria
• Aragall
• Bonynge

[ChrisStockslager]

Also, who's the guy with the ummm... bulge... at 3:36?

[sutherlandfan64]

The tenor Giacomo Aragall, as the knight Roland, in an Esclarmonde production with Joan in San Francisco in 1974

[bellini7verdi]

SUTHERLAND ES SIMPLEMENTE ......Y ADEMAS MUY SIMPLEMENTE........LA VOZ ...MAS INMENSA Y PORTENTOSA...QUE NADIE SE HAYA IMAGINADO..........LO SEGUIRE DICIENDO HASTA EL DIA D EMI MUERTE.......EL MAYOR TESORO SONORO.....QUE NADIE HAYA ESCUCHADO........UN SER HUMANO INIMAGINABLEMENTE ESPECIAL........

[dmitrid1]

why, judging from one other video of the Dame in Esclaramonde, the outfit and man wearing the same clothes up close and farther away, with the pronounced bulge, was Placido

[esclarmonde1]

@iriisblue. I am only repeating what Joan said.

[blktenor]

Wow she photographed with everyone. I just saw Angela Lansbury!

[primohomme]

@iriisblue

I've heard those performances, Joan never had the low register to sing Lucrezia Borgia...I mean, she was able to produce the low notes but never able to project them in a dramatic way...it just came out as suffocated. Specially her Bolena where Bonynge REWROTE so much of the vocal line in order for her to completely avoid the low register, and then in the final cabaletta she transposes down to sing the note in alt and in the middle sounds wobbly as hell. Not Assoluta.

[iriisblue]

@esclarmonde1 She said it was her favorite recording, not her finest role. She considered Norma her greatest role and understandably so--although her Lucia and Lucrezia are peerless. The same can be said of Esclarmonde, although she only performed it in three engagements.

[iriisblue]

@primohomme You obviously haven't heard the 1970 Lucia from the Met and Hamburg, or the 1980 Lucrezia from Covent Garden, or the 1972, 1982 Norma from San Francisco or the 1985 Bolena. On her best day, Callas couldn't begin to approximate the musicianship or vocal intensity of those performances. By the time she was 40 she sounded like a tired old church hag. If that's your idea of assoluta, so be it.

[esclarmonde1]

Joan Sutherland considered Esclarmonde to be her finest role and she was magificent.

[TraVoiBelle]

Sublime! And very cool pictures set :))

[babydrane]

She is just the best in this entire opera. I had the cd and made a point of listening to it everday for about two weeks. Massenet is also a genius.