THE TEN GREATEST SOPRANOS Heard Live 9 Oda Slobodskaya

This is a selection of videos of the Ten Greatest Sopranos I had the joy to hear in live performance. The order is simply when I first heard them. They are all from my impressionable student days, chosen because every one of these great singers gave performances as vivid to me now as when I first heard them. Every one was more than just a voice and they all sang, in their very different ways, so as to move, excite and enchant.

Oda Slobodskaya was the foremost Russian Soprano of the interwar years, an exact contemporary of Lotte Lehmann. Yet I heard her, for she was still singing, well into her seventies. This time it was not at Covent Garden, although she was invited by Sutherland and Bonynge in 1965 to sing the Countess in "The Daughter of the Regiment", an offer she declined with much regret.

Although Covent Garden was not to be, she was still very active as a recitalist. I heard her many times in the most riveting and entertaining recitals imaginable. Although she was fluent, as a critic remarked, in "most european languages", in these concerts she sang almost exclusively in Russian. This was not difficult for the audience, for her vivid interpretations alone overcame any language barrier. However, if really necessary, she would introduce the songs in deliciously accented English.

Her voice was in remarkably good condition. She had a formidable technique, learned from Natalia Iretskaya who was a pupil of the legendary Pauline Viardot Garcia, Malibran's sister. Her legato was steady as a rock, the line clean and supple, and her articulation and inflection of words made for vivid interpretations. She could not abide what she called "spread tone" but cultivated clarity and resonance. So her keenly focussed voice, though never massive, enabled her to sing Aida, Venus and the Walkure Brunnhilde.

Although trained in St Petersburg her career was principally in the west. She was chosen by Fyodor Chaliapin to be a principal Soprano in the company he formed to tour Russian operas in Western Europe. He wanted to surround himself with good, but as yet little known, singers, and Slobodskaya had to be careful not to attract too much acclaim when she sang Elisabetta in Don Carlos opposite his King Philip.

Her only operatic recording is her luminous, impetuous "Tatiana's Letter Scene" already posted. Even though she was fifty, it is the most youthful, mercurial version I know and captures effortlessly the character of the excitable young girl. Native Russian speakers tell me that her interpretation of the text is a revelation, unmatched by subsequent recordings.

Here she is heard singing three Russian Folk Songs collected by Rimsky-Korsakov and arranged by Ippolitov-Ivanov. The pianist is Ivor Newton.

Category:

Music

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• Ten
• Greatest
• Sopranos
• heard
• Live
• Oda
• Slobodskaya
• Russian
• Opera
• Song
• Chaliapin

[A7sogno]

fabulous..... one of my real favorites

[paulostroff99]

Sensational! Brava!  TY for posting it!

[Wagaugusto1974]

Maravilhosa, nao a conhecia.

[Cantastico]

Very beautiful singing.... such nice colors, and phrasing throughout her registration.... a haunting quality that pulls you in.... Brava!!!