RE the hall-formerly-known-as-the-New-York-State-Theater, it was definitely
designed for dance, not music, and the New York City Opera's many years
there were acoustically unhappy. I knew that theater reasonably well. It
was not kind to voices, and the singers learned rather quickly where the
"hot spots" were on the stage (as I recall, the main one was stage right of
center stage, fairly far downstage) from which they could project into the
barn-like hall, and they needed to sing forte a lot of the time, no matter
what. If they had to choose between doing the planned staging and being
heard, that wasn't a hard one. Debuts could be trial by fire, given the
general lack of rehearsal time on stage that debuting singers got. And
with inexperienced conductors who wanted everything really loud, well you
can imagine. All of the singers sounded remarkably better when the company
went on tour to Los Angeles and Kennedy Center. At the State Theater,
there was a definite lack of volume coming from both stage and pit, greatly
stressing some of the young voices City Opera relied upon, and in the
1970s, the NY Times' critics even complained about City Opera's performing
big romantic operas with a reduced orchestra, which at that time was not
true. In the audience, on the main floor the acoustics were just plain
odd, with portions of the orchestra ricocheting loudly at you from various
side spots, while other instruments were hard to hear. In short, it was a
real sonic mess, and definitely a step-child for music in Lincoln Center.
Once Beverly Sills took over, she miked the stage, which is really a no-no
in opera.
Re Dennis' reference to Elisabeth Schwartzkopf, perhaps she had just come
from my college (University of North Texas), where she had performed in
that school's barn-like large lecture hall, inaudibly and to a bewildered
small audience, in the late 1960's. Her voice was a shadow of its former
self at that point, but the big space and distant stage was no help to her
quite intimate artistry at that point. It would have been so much smarter
(and kinder) to have put her in the smaller recital hall which had
excellent acoustics, but they didn't.
Best,
John Haley
On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 6:51 PM, Dennis Rooney <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> The resolution on the copy doesn't she the flow WE double button carbon
> mice over Ormandy's head. The presence of the organ console in the pit
> suggests that the session included either the Psalm and Fugue of Arnold
> Zemachson or Weinberger's Polka and Fugue from Schwanda. I suspect it was
> the latter.
>
> DDR
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 3:20 PM, Gray, Mike <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> > For those interested in the EO recordings, this was interesting:
> >
> >
> >
> http://www.library.upenn.edu/images/exhibits/music/ormandy_minn/ormandy_minn_6_2.jpg
> >
> > Mike Gray
> >
>
>
>
> --
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