Search - Teresa Berganza: Falla, Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti, Schubert, Spanish Songs on DVD

BERGANZA IS WONDERFUL

W. Hidalgo Salas | Lima, Perú | 04/25/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"How great to have at least these few clips of this wonderful artist in her prime. I saw her last year in Lima: the control and the virtuosity were always there, of course she sang no longer Cenerentola or Sesto, but still had plenty to show: her 5 encores were zarzuela and Rossini's Di tanti palpiti. Only complaint for me about this dvd, the spanish subtitles. At times the spanish is wrong, at times the translation misses the mark. No matter, here we have Berganza. And the bonus! Gerald Moore accompanying Fischer-Dieskau, Patzak, Hotter and Ludwig. All these clips b&w, and the image is not always very clear, but you can get an idea of what the presence of this big artists was like. Patzak was old when he was filmed with Moore. In Zueignung his tone is as i have always heard: secure and ugly. But in the operetta song, he charms: expertise with the waltz rythm, grace, elegance, eroticism are all there. You forget the state of his voice at that moment.
Hotter doesn't move at all in his Schumann song, nonetheless his interior fire gets you, his eyes flashing. And what a voice, what an enunciation! The four songs by Ludwig catch her in her prime, a powerful voice, an expressive face, femininity, a fine figure. If only more of these people had ever been filmed!"