Soprano

For some reference, Barbara Hannigan is a soprano.

She does a lot of like new music, but I wouldn't, yeah, like new music that's palatable.

and conductor.

Yes.

Now, the sound on this recording was not ideal.

It was clearly recorded from the house, but it reveals an aspect of Martina Arroyo that we often forget about: her supremacy as a jugendlich dramatischer Sopran, which is borne out not only here, but in great, and I mean great, live recordings of Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder and the Strauss Vier letzte Lieder from the late '60s.

Back to the Freischütz aria, which we're about to hear.

The ease with which she dispatches the very tricky instrumentally conceived coloratura of the final section, something that sounds more akin to writing for a clarinet.

Süßer Züngelt entgegen ihr.

[applauds]

Bearing in mind Martina's prowess as a jugendlich dramatisches Sopran, we must also remember that in 1968, she was the first black singer to perform a Wagner role at the Met when she sang Elsa in Lohengrin.

I played a portion of the live broadcast of one of those performances on my Martina in duet episode a couple of years back, and now I have what was a complete surprise to me, an actual studio recording of Martina in the year 1969 singing Elsa's Traum.

And that scheduling in advance, when they started scheduling things five years in advance, just made it too hard to pin her down since she was really booked all over the world.

The Met, of course, has no comment on that very candid analysis from the Soprano about why she's not getting work from them.

But she does end up appearing by the end of her career 199 times with the company.

That was kind of a home base for her as a native New Yorker and the place where she got her biggest leap to stardom.

And right now, we're not that right now.

The Sopranos are not giving us what we need.

So

if you're DQ or if you're the locker room, And I don't know if there's an answer to this.

Here is my life.

Sopranos, join them.

Here is my life.

Here is my life.

No, I mean, simply, and then I'll get into it in a little more detail, but very simpl- uh, simply, there are four voice types.

Soprano and alto, they are women, and then there's tenor and bass, and they are men.

Okay.

There are one or two unusual categories, I won't get into those.

No, soprano is D.

Is soprano-

Soprano is higher?

It's higher.

Higher.

Soprano's higher?

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah.

And then, um, also when she kind of goes off into that like Soprano descant.

Yes.

Yeah.