Search - Giuseppe Verdi, Umberto Giordano, Richard [Classical] Wagner :: Singers to Remember: Meta Seinemeyer

It's Seinemeyer for Goodness Sake!

Doug - Haydn Fan | California | 07/28/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Seinemeyer remains one of the most exciting opera voices of the twenties, and if you don't want to buy the entire expensive 4 CD set from Preiser - a very welcome fall back would be this CD.

For those unfamiliar with this great lyric-dramatic soprano the basics are pretty simple: She had a fast upward climb to the top of the 1920's Berlin music world and died tragically before the decade was over. Her rapturous voice has an other-world quality described by some as touched with the grave. (See the CD samples from Madama Butterfly and Tristan for examples of her voice at its most eriee and spooky.) More prosaically - once heard you remember it. As a singer her repetoire encompassed both the lighter roles as well as operas calling for a more dramatic soprano. Listening one hears a great fragility and purity turned to the service of the greatest passions - the frission leaves one the sense she is literally singing at the very extreme limits of her capacity to safely contain her physical outpourings of volume. Seinemeyer was never a Golden Age technician in the sense that we understand Melba; instead she is more modern in her directness and on-display emotionalism. Seinemeyer's true genius was projecting such urgent emotionalism with constancy, yet never falling into the pathos of Verisimo mannerisms. Her best records, and there are many, find her holding lovely long arching lines of beautiful carrying vocalism. Unfortunately, many of her duets are spoiled by much lesser, cruder singing - her solos are generally the way to first hear this singer.

One of the greatest lyric dramatic sopranos - not too light, but not too heavy - a Madama Butterfly, but never to be mistaken for a Turandot! Critics tend to see her ideal roles as the more dramatic Verdi heroines, such as are found in Un Ballo, or Don Carlos, and not the coloratura roles, such as Gilda. I think she hits perfect in Puccini.

A must hear singer.

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