CHAILLY SLAMS ALAGNA: "SAVED BY SOUND ENGINEERS"!!!111 OMG

In today's Italian newspapers, Corriere della Sera and Repubblica (how sweet to be able to buy them in New York, too, OC is now addicted!) Riccardo Chailly, conductor of last December's unlucky Aida at La Scala, slams tenor Roberto Alagna. Here are the most damaging quotes:

"Yesterday I watched the Aida DVD that RAI will broadcast and Decca will soon sell in music stores...and it was a luminous, beautiful show, with excellent singers. Alagna also performed convincingly, and he gave life to a convincing Radames. But now he will say that he was right; He will say that he was a perfect Radames. Instead he should thank the sound engineers: because they performed a miracle, working on such little material they had in their hands and fixing all the defects in an astounding manner. Watching the DVD, one sees that it was a good idea. We worked well, and what happened seems even more painful now. He should have gone ahead with the show. It was a matter of respect".

So, no matter what Alagna said last month in one of his more unhinged moments ("Decca said they only make the Aida DVD if I am the protagonist in this production"), the DVD is indeed coming out! w00t!

Comments

[Ian]

The real question is, will Alagna's little snit be a bonus feature? Or a hidden Easter Egg?

[a.]

oc,
may i ask the significance of the 111? i see you wrote the same thing your "about". aaahh, it bothers me that i don't know what it means!

[Opera Chic]

111?

111!

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=111&r=f

[alex]

Oh man. I once worked with a sound engineer closely to mix and edit tracks for a college choir I conducted. Even though we didn't use the big guns, you can fix a lot of amaaaazing things. Heck, you can smooth out so many things even on something that's freeware like Audacity.

The kinds of stuff you can do and finesse are hard to imagine until you start fiddling with the little bells and whistles. It's unfortunate, though, that these cosmetic "fixer-uppers" are now beginning to take the place of realistic expectations, for instance with recordings.

Performances can be really hit or miss simply given the complexity of everything going on, but with immaculate recordings, people don't get used to the glitches that happen in the auditorium.

Even something as silly as buying a bouquet of flowers. I haven't bought many flowers myself, so perhaps this isn't representative. I went to a florist the other day, and after they took the arrangement out of refrigeration, they sprayed everything with a spray that not only made the leaves glisten and shine, it also *added a smell* so flowers that aren't fragrant still smell pleasant.

How is that for messing with people's expectations?

[Corey]

I wonder what night the DVD includes, the premiere only? I guess I missed that somewhere oops. I think they should include Alagna's little tantrum too as a side bonus.

I would rather listen to my old not-so-good- quality audio recordings of Pavarotti and Freni, for example, over this super enhanced DVD recording of Aida. I appreciate genuine vocal beauty and talent even in a performance where the quality of the audio recording is blah. It is one thing to digitally remove excess sound resulting from poor acoustics, or maybe to bring the audio into focus but covering everything up defeats the reality of the experience. How can we know if what we hear is real or enhanced. Not for me. I will pass on this DVD.