El lunes pasado Reverter, en su programa de radio, dedicó una de sus secciones a la soprano Rosa Ponselle, a la que yo conocía solo de nombre . De los comentarios de Reverter y de las citas de otros cantantes sobre ella se deduce que ha sido una de las más grandes, con diferencia. Me sorprende lo poco que se la cita en el foro cuando hablamos de las más grandes. ¿ Qué me podéis decir de ella?, ¿ era tan buena ?

si lo era. Por que te sorprende que se hable tan poco de ella, es que en el foro se habla de la Stella, la Capsir, la Cigna, la Stignani???? por mencionar a algunas... Se han "mencionado" pero nunca nos hemos ido por las ramas, y hubo ocasion hablando de las voces de una epoca, yo ademas puse en "mis dominios" muchisimas arias, joyas puras, de cantantes entre 1900-1930.

No se habla mucho de la Ponselle porque pertenece al pasado del pasado, y pocos escuchan o tienen sus discos. Tambien porque el audio, en comparacion a hoy, deja mucho que desear, y solo unos pocos gozan todavia de estas voces. Yo personalmente tengo varias arias, tambien sale cantando Carmen en un DVD "The art of singing"...

En fin, tenia sus peculiaridades como soprano y mezzo, era una gran actriz en escena, y para su epoca era de lo mejorcito.

Pues sí, era una de las grandes. Como muy bien dice Agatarco, la mala calidad de las grabaciones no ha hecho mucho por difundir su talento. En cuanto a la Stella, participa en una gran grabación de Il Trovatore con Corelli y Bastianini.


Il frate

jejeje.... mmmmm.......gioia provai ch'agli angeli solo provar è concesso....

Me sorprende porque sí que hablamos mucho de los tenores contemporáneos de esas sopranos.

si, por que siempre hay mas sopranos que tenores y los valoramos mas.LO que oido siempre de la PONSELLE, (LAS GRABACIONES )son como digo yo (:rascan ).y no las disfrutas

Comentarios de músicos, críticos, cantantes y actores sobre la Ponselle ( desgraciadamente en inglés) :


HAROLD C. SCHONBERG wrote in his October l6, l983 column in The New York Times:"Rosa Ponselle, who retired in l937, was simply, the greatest voice in any category this listener ever heard. No voice has had such color, such resonance, such sheer physiological beauty of sound. None had the voluptuous, perfectly controlled column of sound that emanated from the throat of Rosa Ponselle."

On the occasion of Miss Ponselle's 70th Birthday, Mr. Schonberg wrote:
"Rosa Ponselle has the low notes of a contralto, and a knock-out high-C. And there were no artificial registers in the voice--it went from bottom to top in the smoothest, most seamless of scales, with no shifting from chest to head. And that trill: that articulated br-r-r-r- which no singer today is able to come near matching! And the emotionalism of her singing, combined with good taste! And the power when she let loose! And the delicacy of her pianissimos! And the flexibility in coloratura work! And the accuracy of intonation! And the handsome figure onstage!"

MARIA CALLAS, in talking to her friend, the English critic, IDA COOK, said:
"I think we all know that Ponselle is simply the greatest singer of us all."

TULLIO SERAFIN
Conductor for both Rosa Ponselle and coach/conductor for MARIA CALLAS, had conducted most of the great voices of this century, told WATER LEGGE of EMI-Angel records that in his long life, he had encountered only three authentic vocal forces of nature--three miracles--ENRICO CARUSO, TITTA RUFFO and ROSA PONSELLE.

WALTER LEGGE
"She turned into the purest gold everything she touched. We shall never hear her like again. She never ventured into high-voice trapeze parts--she was always much too intelligent to echo tootling flutes and warble imbecile Mad Scenes--levity was not her forte--but her coloratura surpassed belief. Each of a succession of notes marked staccato was genuinely separated not by a coup de glotte or an intrusive H; they were like rows of equally matched pearls with a glimpse of light separating each one without a trace of attack on any of them. Legato scales and chromatics up or downwards ran like golden ball-bearings as smoothly as though invisible oil. The voice was in one piece, so even from top to bottom, that changes of register--if she made them--were inaudible. There was only a slight and gradual darkening of colour as she moved down to the lowest notes. Imagine Rostropovich playing with a circular bow on one string covering Ponselle's full compass and there you have Rosa's legato, and on top of all this she had words and specific emotions to express, which she did without ever producing a sound which was not in itself musical, beautiful and meaningful."

ELISABETH SCHWARZKOPF
"The first records my future husband (WALTER LEGGE) played to me were by Rosa Ponselle: 'to teach you the meaning of bel canto'. Thirty years later, while he was replaying her records, I found myself repeatedly commenting, 'This is ultimate perfection'."

LUCIANO PAVAROTTI
"It was a voice that made her The Queen of Queens in all of singing. Ponselle, almost more than any other singer, had the unique combination of voice and musical profundity to advance operatic interpretation by decades, simply by the sheer genius of her artistry...She is also among the most copied of any singer in history...She is an ideal, an almost mythical figure in opera singing. Whenever young singers ask whom they should pattern their singing after, I always respond, 'Make a sincere study of the recordings of Rosa Ponselle.' To every young singer in any age--ours, or some distant one--this will always be excellent advice."

MONTSERRAT CABALLÉ
"My favorite singer? Rosa Ponselle! I devour every recording I can find of her singing."

FRANCIS ROBINSON
"For those of us who came along too late to hear Caruso, we may console ourselves. We heard Ponselle! Hers was the way of the great Italian painters!"

GERALDINE FARRAR
"When you discuss singers, there are two you must first set aside: Caruso and Ponselle--then you may begin to discuss all the rest." After a Ponselle La Traviata, LOTTE LEHMAN said to GERALDINE FARRAR: "How does one get a voice like Ponselle's?" GERALDINE FARRAR replied: "There's only one way: by a very special arrangement with the Lord--and then you must work very, very hard!"

IDA COOK
"It is, of course, easy to say at this distance of time that no gramophone record gives anything like a full idea of the Ponselle magic. But I can truthfully aver that when we could still hear her in person we put aside her records because we could not bear to hear such a pale shadow of the reality. She is a curious mixture of absolute simplicity and absolute authority. It is endearing, often touching, and breath-taking...A magical pianissimo which used to sound exactly the same in the front row of the stalls as in the back of the gallery."

OLIN DOWNES writing in The New York Times, January l930, after a performance of Don Giovanni:
"...roused her audience to demonstrations of enthusiasm which recalled the legendary days of the opera gods of a past generation. Such singing as she accomplished in a role far removed from the vocal and dramatic style to which she is accustomed, was something of a revelation even to her most ardent admirers...Last night she consecrated herself wholeheartedly to the essence of the Mozartean tradition." (As Donna Anna)

WILL CRUTCHFIELD writing in The New York Times, October l985, reviewing a recording: "And finally there is the big Traviata scene from l935, with Rosa Ponselle and Lawrence Tibbett. Words fail this one, simply be- cause if the right words were reserved only for such performances, then daily criticism would be a drab thing while waiting for them. Let me put it in this unpoetic way: If all the recordings of the scene were ranked from l to l0, with this one as l0, the very best of the others would be clustered somewhere between 4 and 7."

GLORIA SWANSON
"The joy of joys for me, who had once thought I would be an opera singer, was to hear the world's great voices from 'The Diamond Horseshoe' at The Met: Galli-Curci, Martinelli, Chaliapin, and--as often as I could because she was the greatest singer-actress of them all--Rosa Ponselle."

MARILYN HORNE (speaking with Edwin Newman in OPERA NEWS, December 22, l990)
"You rarely hear a voice and say, 'Oh, what a gorgeous quality!' or one that can stand out and you say, 'Oh, that's so-and-so singing.' You hear Ponselle on the radio, and you know immediately...She was the queen of legato!"

BURT LANCASTER
"As a student in New York City, I stood in the gallery to hear Ponselle's CARMEN which was billed in the New York Times as the 'hottest ticket in town.' In the 'Card Scene', from Bizet's CARMEN, to see Rosa Ponselle flinch away and cover her face with her arm in anger and terror on the final 'Toujours la mort!', has never been forgotten by me. It was Ponselle's vocal artistry and interpretive genius as a singing actress that left an indelible impression and inspiration on me as an actor."

EJEM... ...yo la he citado muchas veces (cómo no siendo una cantante que podría ser mi tatarabuela! ) y en aquel hilo que tú abriste, querido Bramante de "¿Cuánto pagaríais por una representación?" creo que llegué a ofrecer un riñón por escucharla en vivo. En cambio, cuando subí su "Ave maría" de Otello para el juego de las versiones, nadie la votó (o sólo uno, no me acuerdo)...

Yo tengo bastantes grabaciones suyas, y me parece extraordinaria, una gozada tras otra y quien mejor ha cantado los papeles de soprano de Verdi. Quien quiera muestras, que avise (aunque por mi vieja casa aún pulula -o debería pulular- su "La vergine degli angeli" de la Forza junto a Pinza)

Me encanta la Ponselle, tengo varios discos de arias y canciones y desde luego es "un chorro de oro", como dicen los críticos.

Lo que más destaca es su ausencia total de vibrato y ese "lirismo" que le da a cualquier pieza.

Por lo visto se casó con un millonario que la "retiró" y sólo cantaba arias en el baño, de ahí su corta carrera, pero no tan corta vida.

No os la debéis perder, es más, no podéis.

Hombre, yo no ofrecería un riñón por escuchar a nadie pero las pocas grabaciones que tengo de Ponselle denotan que, sin duda, era grande, muy grande.

PD: Opino que las grabaciones antiguas son más injustas con ellas que con ellos salvo que uno lo escuche con los oídos de El Idiota que son de otra pasta.

PD1: Este fin de semana pondré a punto mis oídos para escuchar los 7 cd's made in Agartarco. Tendré que hacerlo con los cascos puestos, los de audio para escuchar mejor, el de albañil porque en mi casa si escuchan estos sonidos me tiran lo primero que tienen a mano, sin miramientos.

Yo de los tesoros de Agatarco como el de Wagner ninguno...

Wagner??? que tesoro tengo yo de Wagner?

Alguien tiene esos tesoros en Mp4? para que otros disfruten... a ver si en algun dominio me los poneis, sino me toca pasarlos todos otra vez por el horno....

Yo no sé en que formato lo tengo pero cuando llegue a casa lo miro y si hay que colgar....se cuelga. No problem.

Por cierto ¿qué tesoro es el de Wagner que estoy intrigado?

Saludos

Wagner dirigiéndose a sí mismo.

Yo también tengo varios discos de arias cantados por la Ponselle (de Nimbus, creo que son) Completa tengo La Traviata ¿Alguien sabe si existe alguna otra grabación de una ópera completa?