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strinasacchi
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« Reply #30 on: 12:45:22, 07-06-2008 » |
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What recordings of Dido would the Dido fans recommend?
Hello MrY, and welcome. I'm afraid I'll have to pass on your question, though. I only have one recording of the piece (English Concert/Pinnock), and I haven't listened to it in ages. I seem to remember it has some very beautiful moments, but sometimes lacks urgency and contrast. I'd be curious to hear about other recordings myself... |
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richard barrett
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« Reply #31 on: 19:23:09, 07-06-2008 » |
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I think the Pinnock recording is very well performed, as you'd expect, but the scale of the instrumental ensemble is somewhat inflated, using oboes, double basses and multiple strings per part. Andrew Parrott's recording is more realistic in this regard, but I find the singing in it a bit contrived and polite. There's a more recent recording directed by Hervé Niquet which I have been planning to investigate, having been very impressed with everything I've heard from him. All this talk of the piece is making me want to hear it, but I still haven't finished with this bloody highly interesting thesis yet.
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strinasacchi
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« Reply #32 on: 18:45:18, 09-06-2008 » |
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A question for the assembled company:
It didn't happen in the performances I just did, but I have played Dido when the sailor (and chorus in the subsequent, um, chorus) adopts a cod West Country accent. When and how did this tradition originate? How common is it? Would it have made any sense in Purcell's day to change accents for different characters? (Presumably the actual accents would have been very different from how they sound now?) Does anyone else find it faintly embarrassing and unnecessary? Or does it actually help the characterisation of a very brief, very exposed moment?
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richard barrett
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« Reply #33 on: 19:11:45, 09-06-2008 » |
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I have played Dido when the sailor (and chorus in the subsequent, um, chorus) adopts a cod West Country accent. That wouldn't have taken place on September 19th would it? |
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #34 on: 19:26:42, 09-06-2008 » |
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A question for the assembled company:
It didn't happen in the performances I just did, but I have played Dido when the sailor (and chorus in the subsequent, um, chorus) adopts a cod West Country accent. When and how did this tradition originate? How common is it? Would it have made any sense in Purcell's day to change accents for different characters? (Presumably the actual accents would have been very different from how they sound now?) Does anyone else find it faintly embarrassing and unnecessary? Or does it actually help the characterisation of a very brief, very exposed moment?
It's certainly a moot point. The only written-out examples I can think of aren't from the English repertoire, but in Cavalli - works in which noble and aristocratic characters speak in "Roman" Italian, but their saucy servants banter amongst themselves in Neapolitan dialect (clearly, ehem, aimed to please the balcony, since most of Cavalli's later works were written for Naples). (For example, in STATIRA, PRINCIPESSA DI PERSIA, Statira's servants chat in Neapolitan in her absence, whilst the Princess herself sings in Roman Italian). This is one of the few C17th cases where you can really "see" a linguistic distinction being made between masters and servants. I think it's important that the sailor is credibly not a runaway from the Eton Chapel, but that doesn't mean it has to be absurd wurzel-chomping blather either  |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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strinasacchi
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« Reply #35 on: 19:30:08, 09-06-2008 » |
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I have played Dido when the sailor (and chorus in the subsequent, um, chorus) adopts a cod West Country accent. That wouldn't have taken place on September 19th would it? No, I can't remember specifically when - not recently, but definitely more than once. And I've heard people mentioning the use of a (overdone) West Country accent as if it's not unusual. Weird. (But not as weird as that fairy tale on the watch and listen thread - shudder!) |
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richard barrett
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« Reply #36 on: 20:11:22, 09-06-2008 » |
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... only if it had been on September 19 of any year there would have been an additional reason for the accent. |
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #37 on: 20:16:16, 09-06-2008 » |
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...oh, and I thought you'd said "apprenticed to a pilot"....
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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MrY
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« Reply #38 on: 20:39:16, 09-06-2008 » |
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I only have one recording of the piece (English Concert/Pinnock), and I haven't listened to it in ages. I seem to remember it has some very beautiful moments, but sometimes lacks urgency and contrast.
I think the Pinnock recording is very well performed, as you'd expect, but the scale of the instrumental ensemble is somewhat inflated, using oboes, double basses and multiple strings per part. Andrew Parrott's recording is more realistic in this regard, but I find the singing in it a bit contrived and polite. There's a more recent recording directed by Hervé Niquet which I have been planning to investigate, having been very impressed with everything I've heard from him.
Thanks already for these suggestions! |
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #39 on: 21:15:59, 09-06-2008 » |
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I think it's important that the sailor is credibly not a runaway from the Eton Chapel, but that doesn't mean it has to be absurd wurzel-chomping blather either The problem is that in attempting to sound like the latter, the English tenor invariably ends up sounding like the former putting on a silly voice. I remember a Proms performance of King Arthur a few years back in which the chorus tried to sing in Mummerset. It was really quite embarrassing. |
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #40 on: 10:01:21, 10-06-2008 » |
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the use of a (overdone) West Country accent as if it's not unusual. I am writing this from my home town in Devon. I have never had a Devon accent. "Putting on" accents is faintly patronising, although maybe my dislike is profound snobbery on my part. I found Sam Weller, the arch cheerful cockney chappy in Pickwick Papers, very irritiating with his dropped aitches and v for w. The poet in Rossini's Matilde di Shabran has his words written in an obvious non-standard Italian, Neapolitan I imagine. |
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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David_Underdown
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« Reply #41 on: 12:06:07, 10-06-2008 » |
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Well Bristol, Falmouth and plymouth were major ports in the 17th century, but then so were Southampton and London whose sailors prsuambly wouldn't have had any sort of west country accent.
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--
David
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Kittybriton
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« Reply #42 on: 14:54:52, 10-06-2008 » |
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Same point I was about to make, thank you David. But Reiner is also right, that the "wurzel-chomping blather" effect is a real danger too.
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Click me -> About meor me -> my handmade storeNo, I'm not a complete idiot. I'm only a halfwit. In fact I'm actually a catfish. |
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richard barrett
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« Reply #43 on: 15:05:42, 10-06-2008 » |
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"wurzel-chomping blather" Sooner or later someone's going to post a link here to a youtube of Adge Cutler. It won't be me though. Really, it won't. |
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