Even though LA GIOCONDA is my favorite Italian opera, I skipped this season's revival at the Met because I thought that the cast - for the most part - was uninteresting. I did get to see part of a rehearsal of Acts III and IV in which the main attraction was the dancing of Gillian Murphy and David Hallberg. But I really regretted not getting to hear Ewa Podles sing the first-act aria "Voce di donna" (in a Beatriz Schiller photo above: Podles as La Cieca with Olga Borodina as Laura).
Now Dmitry has now given me a recording of the first act and so I've been able to hear the contralto's unusually moving rendition of this famous aria. For all the power and depth of tone at her command, Podles is a very subtle singer and she tranforms "Voce di donna" from a contralto bon-bon into a self-contained drama with her mysteriously resonant tones and dynamic gradations.
Watch Podles performing the aria here in a performance from Barcelona 2005. As La Cieca, the old blind mother of the title-heroine, she gives a rosary to a masked noblewoman who has saved her from a mob bent on murdering her for witchcraft. The rosary leads to all sorts of complications.
Dmitry also put on the CD for me an interview with Podles who comes across as warm, good-hearted and very sure of herself - which of course is an essential attribute in a musical career. And she reveals that she is sixty years old, which I hadn't realized. Hopefully she will be back at the Met in the near future.
Podles has made a name for herself in the last two decades as a virtuoso. Listen to her here in something vastly different from LA GIOCONDA: "Cruda sorte!" from Rossini's L'ITALIANA IN ALGERI from a 1998 televised concert in Wroclaw, Poland. [This is for my dear friend Jan].
podles at her recent concert for the chamber music society said afterwards that she was 56 -- that's what i heard her say in response to a fan.
i have met her after concerts/recitals twice now and she's not terribly patient, friendly or gracious. she seems a bit afraid of strangers and wants to get out of there as soon as possible. maybe she just doesn't feel comfortable with english (i understand her french is flawless though).
Posted by: Herald | November 21, 2008 at 01:48 PM