misc

"(Magda?) Olivero on Mario Del Monaco:

When Del Monaco and I sang Francesca da Rimini together at La Scala he explained his whole vocal technique to me. When he finished I said, “My dear Del Monaco, if I had to put into practice all the things you’ve told me, I’d stop singing right away and just disappear.” The technique was so complicated: you push the larynx down, then you push this up, then you do that—in short, it made my head spin just to hear everything he did.

We recorded Francesca excerpts together. Francesca has a beautiful phrase, “Paolo, datemi pace,” marked “piano,” and then Paolo enters with “Inghirlandata di violette,” which also should be sung softly, delicately. Instead, Del Monaco was terrible—he bellowed the phrase [she imitates him and laughs]! When he listened to the playback he exclaimed, “I can’t believe it! After that soft poetic phrase I come in and what do I sound like—a boxer punching with his fists!” He recorded the phrase again, but the second attempt was more or less the same because he was incapable of singing piano. He was furious with himself because he wanted to. He tried everything, but his technique would not permit him to sing softly since it totally was based on the muscles."