Patricia Racette and Il Trittico
Great interview. She did Il Trittico in San Francisco and now at the Met. I haven’t had the chance to hear her live. But that’s on my list for 2010 if she comes back to the Bay Area. She could easily become one of my favs. I’ve tried and tried to become a fan of Renée Fleming and I just can’t seem to get past the “cover” in her voice, if that’s the right way to put it. Her tone, for me, is never as clear as I’d like. She’s got lungs, though. She can belt stuff out just like the best of them. But I’m not hearing that penetrating purity of tone that others have had.
You’ll probably think me mad, as in “insane”, but for me Leontyne Price, even toward the end of her career, had such a wondrous tone. I remember seeing her during her quasi-farewell tour. She was singing Poulenc. She was pretty far up there; I’m thinking around an A.
I was about 20 rows back, a little off center-right. I could feel the tone boring into my chest as though it were a laser beam. Probably a full six beats or more.
Oh. Did I not mention? The note was pianissimo.
Snap! I’ll never forget it.
