I don’t believe it, I’ve actually reviewed all the Proms with singers in, well I haven’t heard Soile Isokoski in Prom 42, I’ll have to Listen Again to her if it’ll let me, they really need to sort that out. And Ian Bostridge is singng Wagner tonight, still can’t quite imagine that. But for now I’ve caught up.
This Prom was supposed to have Felicity Lott in who’s a soprano but she was indisoposed as they say (I like to say hangover instead but I get told off if I say stuff like that even though I don’t nesacarily mean nothing, I mean I don’t mean that they were drinking but anyway some people just can’t take a joke.) Anyway she was replaced by mezzo Denyce Graves singing the same music, Ravel’s Sheherazade. It was cool of her to do it at short notice especially since Flott is really really famous and Denyce is less famous, that’s what usually happens when you’re a mezzo, blame the composers. I’m kind of surprised anyone was singing it at all though as it was on last year and the year before, not sure about the year before that but Vixen says Bernarda Fink did it last year and Katarina Karneus did it the year before. It’s an okay piece I suppose but there are loads of song cycles that are just as good that haven’t been done at the Proms for years. It would have been interesting to hear a soprano do it instead of a mezzo I suppose but as the soprano was replaced by a mezzo it didn’t work out. Denyce sang it really well, I don’t always like her because she honks a bit and she did sometimes in this but mostly her voice was really cool, all these smooth dark tones, really exciting and sexy kind of like Sheherazade must have been if I’m thinking of the right bird, she was the one who told stories so she wouldn’t get killed right?
They did some other Ravel too, Rapsodie espagnole but that was a bit boring I thought, no offence to the BBC Philharmonic and Yan Pascal Tortelier who was the conductor but there’s not a lot of Ravel I like. The Metaboles piece by Henri Dutilleux was weird too and so was the Roussell symphony, the singing was the best even though it was by Ravel. Not a bad Prom but for someone with tastes different from mine really.
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