Any requests? Maybe I have something you’ve been looking for.

@@promptersbox Wow! You dear man! Well, I can't imagine the treasures you have. You have surprised me many times. I love Leonie Rysanek. I really loved Scotto before the "accident"! Leonard Warren and Merrill are favorites. Troyanos, for sure. FRENI!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I really like Obratzova. Any Verdi makes me happy as well as Puccini. I lean to the romantic operas, 19th C. and some R. Strauss. Elektra makes me wild! But, already i have enjoyed your selections very much! Thank you!😘😘

@@josephcollins6033 Got it!!!! So happy you’re loving all of this.

You're welcome!

Listening to these early 70s tapes makes me wonder if her demise came a season or two later than we have thought.

@@promptersbox it is interesting. I heard her with The Nashville Symphony exactly one year later. I didn't know much then about singing or opera, but I could hear that she sounded nothing like recordings I had heard. Finally, when it became rather obvious, and on the way up to some very high note, she faked this huge fainting thing, grabbed the conductor's podium (Thor Johnson). I had been on the professional stage since I was 10, and I knew bad acting when I saw it. He took her in his arms, all very dramatic, and she grabbed her head and did this and that, finally saying she would continue. Well, after THAT the audience was on her side. Very clever. I believe the decline would have begun around '71, '72. I do hear it here in her first aria, not much control and having to cheat a bit, etc. But, wow, she had been spectacular.

Hi! You are so kind to Moffo. Yes, she does the scoops here. Listen at 27:20. The voice is beginning to show a "hole" right before the lowest tones (her lower passaggio); that is, one hears air and an effortful pushing. Even her high A's (or probably Ab's) sound so very much higher and to the limit. This is some difficult singing for her. Also, listen to what the voice is "telling her" on the words "come gentile" (sorry if spelling is wrong; I should get out my score!); it is not happy, so to speak. The sound actually stops. It cannot take the pressure because of the "hole", the weakness due to pushing the voice for years. The vocal folds are like elastic; they can fray if pulled too much this way or that. If you took a piece of elastic and rubbed it hard back and forth over a table edge you would eventually see fraying of the elastic somewhere in the middle. That is where you have strained it on the table edge. Singing things not natural to a particular voice, trying to sing in another Fach, pushing, etc. can cause this fraying in the passage areas. She pushed for years. Can you tell I love to talk about the science of the voice?!!! 😘

Me, again, dear lady or man! Is "sanger"for man? I think so; "sangerin" is female? Sorry. I have forgotten. Listen around 57. Oh, that voice does NOT want to do this. Strained to the limit. I can't imagine going through that on stage.