Just a thought: "Question 17" Which pets did the Mozarts keep?

End of January and so many incidents in daily life! (like ordinary drawbacks and missed occasions of doing the right things according to the situations).
That is why it is useful to have an open door on to another life, a mixture of 'utopian'territory mainly through music and the few blogfriends who happen to connect with me and give me plenty of happiness. There is the daily information very often distressing and sad about what is going on here and around.
This mixture makes a balance which can be tolerable, even when dreadful news reaches me like the increasing number of losses in Afghanistan or the sudden illness of dear friends.
Up to now here, in our house, which is 112 years old, apart from some tiles which were blown away in the last gale, on Jan 7th with a great orchestral crash in the yard, life is getting on rather smoothly!
Music is helping a lot. There was a magnificient Verdi's Requiem in Montpellier on the 15th.





Maestro Muti I saw for the first time there was as smart as his photos always show him.
I was terribly impressed by Olga Boridina's intonation and voice in her solo parts and duets with Tatiana Serjan. Both were very moving.
But tonight, I am going back to my memories of Saint- Gilgen, where I spent a day in late August to try to imagine what sort of landscapes little Wolfgang was accustomed to see when he visited his mother's family, the Pertl from Saint-Gilgen, not far from Salzburg now, a very pleasant coach ride up the mountains, certainly much more adventurous and longer in 1756, the year Wolfgang was born, on the 27th of January.
Now, being the 28th here (Provence, 20 kms away from Aix) it is time to try to imagine the chimes and music played for his christening at the Salzburg Cathedral at 10.30 a.m, with his lovely older sister Nannerl by his side, and of course his beloved Mother Anna Maria daughter of a court deputy prefect, Judge Wolfgang Nikolaus Pertl.
Papa was here too, and was so proud of this baby son born five years later than Nannerl.
During my four days in Salzburg, I had decided to only follow the Mozart Trail: the two houses where he lived, the places where he gave his first performances, and the Cathedral where he was christened, then Saint-Gilgen, because his Mother and Nannerl lived there. (he did not)


'Joannes Chrysosthomus Wolfgangus Theophilus'.

This is his full name, the first two names because today the 28th, is this Saint day.
What I enjoyed a lot while visiting Salzburg is this book I bought at The Mozarteum Foundation 'Next to Mozart'. I discovered the happiness of the family. The children enjoyed the company of a 'songbird' (canary?) and a little Fox Terrier named Pimperl!
From this book I learnt Mozart kept a starling in Vienna and noted the music he sang. When the bird died, he had a genuine sorrow and wrote a poem. The internet allows us to
read all about it just in a click !
Here is the illustration of this happy family:
"P33 Question 17 from " NEXT TO MOZART
Answers to 111 most common questions."

'Bolt-shooting target, designed by Ingrid Ramsauer in 1995, depicting Nannerl at the keyboard with the family pet, Pimperl.



Back in the yard, today the 28, day dearest wolfgang listened to his first organ concert in the cathedral in his home town so many years ago, my Corsican Helleborus niger are in full bloom for this fabulous event!
The purple ones had a white offspring last year which I planted separately.

Celebration of a great mezzo: Rita Gorr.

I often listen to her voice. I always have done. Perhaps because I discovered this artist almost at the same time as I started to appreciate voices by myself, comparing with what I could hear at home from a coloratura and a baritone'Martin'(named after a singer whose voice was able to reach higher notes than an ordinary baritone, I have also seen it called a kind of 'lazy' tenor...).
So, my favourite voice became what I have always liked to think of as a 'cello-voice'. Madame Rita Gorr will remain my favourite mezzo, and I am trying to increase the missing links in my collection of her great roles. Unfortunately, she did not record everything she sang. I still have discoveries to make, from live recordings in the USA,(Opera depot) and also from her Wagner performances in Bayreuth.

I have the live recording of Lohengrin where she was an outstanding Ortrud. (orfeo1959). There are more recordings of this period and I plan to enlarge my knowlegde of her repertoire.

I hardly ever saw her on stage. She took part in a gala concert in Marseille Opera House and sang Samson et Dalila arias alongside José Luccioni and Adrien Legros. I was under the charm of these amazing voices and intense dramatic presence: these memories became family stories and now I even think they belong to our family legend of opera, and I am the only survivor...

I would never even have dreamed of travelling to Paris in those days. I had my share of opera singing at home and at Marseille Opera House (the programmes were richer than today... One day I will list the operas I am sure that I heard because my father took part in them... it is amazing compared with our current six productions a year).

In the early sixties Rita Gorr became the first on my Treasure Island with the LP of French opera arias, including Gluck 'Divinités du Styx' which I adored!
It meant I would play it nearly non-stop, especially on Sundays, having to be careful not to scratch the record.

Finaly, I was able to sing along with her, as my rather low singing voice was naturally in tune with hers! The image of the artist was not a problem in those days. I think that opera lovers with limited budget, which was our case, used to listen to radio broadcasts. Operas from Opera Garnier were broadcast, and new records when they came out were criticised, analysed, on the radio on Sunday afternoons by a famous team of reviewers around Jacques Bourgeois.

Only Rita's voice and its inflexions plus the knowledge of the story mattered to me and she sounded so powerful and moving, either with strong, martial accents or sorrowful, desparate ones.

Her rich voice, equally at ease at the top and low range, always puts the right weight on words. She belonged to the old school of singing, which is really concerned with the utterance of sung words. She was Belgian, therefore was a beautiful French speaker. I am sure the young generation of singers will listen to her renditions carefully and learn a lot about the French repertoire: Massenet, Gounod, Lalo, Saint-Saëns and Poulenc, where she illustrates the main mezzo roles. She also sang in German and was the first non native-speaking German mezzo to take part in the Wagner operas in Bayreuth. (Italian too of course).

I went to Brussels at the beginning of September to attend Médée.(Cherubini) For quite a while now I have spent my leisure time on the net; I only knew this aria sung by Rita Gorr from this opera. (I am borrowing this extract from the uploader RITA GORR , and I am very grateful to be able to use it to celebrate this great mezzo, here showing how overwhelming and tragic her voice could be. She was my discovery of Charlotte and Amnéris. And then came 'Les dialogues des Carmélites' with her stunning Marie. I will spend more time listening to her Wagner renditions which I do not know very well, apart from Lohengrin.
I keep her on my Treasure Island even more today.


Rita Gorr is celebrated on internet here:
WIKI
last year 'Happy birthday'from Opera Fresh.

youtube channels illustrating the love of her art of singing among passionate uploaders:
LyricXIII Lied Von Erdre Gustav Malher.
Classicvynilbiz: wonderful work on the major arias.
Major link too: Cantabile -Subito

The News from Belgium, in French LINK
Le Soir: LINK

My favourite opera quote for 2011:

This was a most enjoyable performance of Tosca and at the same time it provided my favourite opera quote for 2011! (Tosca performance)

"Tosca is one of my favourite role because... I'm playing myself... ehehe... Even if you only hear the music it's like a soundtrack of a mowie. Puccini, with Tosca, he .. he did a masterpiece!!".

Bryn Terfel as Scarpia is absolutely amazing, owing to his immense talent and faith in the music 'It's all in the music' .... Of course when Sir Antonio Pappano is at the head of the 'music' it is also superlative.

Even Jonas Kaufmann convinced me totally. His Mario is intense and fits him better, in my view, than Werther. But to my surprise (not in the first act where she is still the same Angela) I was caught up in Angela Gheorghiu's voice and dramatic involvement.

Really, this link from Intermezzo was a real treat, as the BBC does not allow us aliens to watch their programmes... So much generosity and time spent for us deserved my first post of 2012 with my very best wishes to Intermezzo and the smile of the Diva!