Rosa Ponselle "Marietta's Lied" Die tote Stadt

Villa Pace. October 27, 1951

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Opera
• Korngodl
• Die
• tote
• Stadt
• Marietta
• Rosa
• Ponselle

[cleanears]

What beauty! A real slap in the face for this new group of microphone and dvd singers (???)!

[InBoccaChiusa]

A rare treasure. One still wonders why she retired at such a young age. Brava!

[rubi1944]

una carezza per l'anima

[MrSwifts31]

I could have posted a link to thiis Wikipedia page,but YouTube seems to dislike any prefixes stariing with W~W~W.

[MrSwifts31]

Ponselle died at her estate, Villa Pace, near Baltimore, Maryland on May 25, 1981, aged 84, after a long battle with bone marrow cancer. She is buried in nearby Druid Ridge Cemetery

My apologies that this sort of reads backwards,but if you start at the bottom and read upwards!

[MrSwifts31]

This was confirmed in 1954, when RCA Victor came to Villa Pace and recorded Ponselle singing a wide variety of songs. In the late 1940s, Ponselle became the guiding force of the fledgling Baltimore Civic Opera Company, providing coaching and voice lessons for the young singers who appeared with the company. Among those who coached with her during their Baltimore Civic Opera appearances at the start of their careers were Beverly Sills, Sherrill Milnes, Plácido Domingo and James Morris.

[MrSwifts31]

the Villa Pace, where she lived the rest of her life.

Her marriage to Jackson was rocky and they divorced in 1949. The breakup was traumatic for Ponselle, and she suffered a nervous breakdown. Although she never again appeared on the concert or opera stage, Ponselle continued to sing at home for friends, who reported that her voice was as magnificent as ever.

[MrSwifts31]

, another part with a congenial low tessitura, and general manager Edward Johnson said no); mental and physical exhaustion, after a non-stop, intense 21-year career with continual bouts of performance nerves; her marriage in 1936 to Baltimore socialite Carle Jackson; and her enjoyment of the relaxed life she now had without the demands of performing. Ponselle later said that she never missed performing after she retired. She and Jackson built a luxurious home near Baltimore

[MrSwifts31]

Why did Ponselle retire so young?

This(from Wikipedia) might offer some explanation~

Ponselle did not consciously or purposely retire after that Cleveland Carmen in 1937; she just let her career slip away. A variety of factors contributed to this: her receding upper register, which made singing her signature roles increasingly nerve-wracking; her bitterness over the Met management's refusal to accede to her requests regarding repertoire (she wanted to sing Cilea's Adriana Lecouvrer

[promptersbox]

Hard to handle such beauty. Simply astounding.

[7inga7]

What a gem this is!

[SCVoice]

I, too, have this miraculous recording. It was given to me on a cassette tape many years ago, but I can't recall who honored me with such a gift. Not only is Ponselle in resplendent vocal form, but she is also accompanying herself at the piano. (Quite a feat.) On the same tape she also performs "Adieu, notre petite table" and a "Senza Mamma" that will rip your heart out.