Elina Garanca hangs up her pants

Elina Garanča reveals to the Kurier that she plans to give up trouser roles. "I'm 36, these roles aren't right at my age".

Instead, she wants to shift her voice in more of a soprano direction after the birth of her second daughter, expected to arrive in December.

"As I turn 40 I want to sing more Verdi, and look more at the dramatic repertoire. I dream of Amneris in Aida, that would be the summit. I have Parsifal at home right now, and I'm looking at Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde. Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana is already scheduled, and in Don Carlo is on the books for 2016."

Garanča begins her maternity leave at the end of October, but says only the new baby can decide when it should end. She breastfed first-born Catherine and didn't sing a note for five months. "This time I want to take it easy".

Comments

[Ruth Elleson]

I do hope she still sings her London recital next April...

[Ruth Elleson]

I also think it's a bit strange to think that 36 is too old for something like Octavian. Sure, it's a "youth" role, but 36 is a spring chicken in opera singer terms and certainly in full lyric mezzo terms. I could name several considerably older mezzos who I've seen as totally convincing Octavians.

If the trouser roles she was singing were things like Sesto in Cesare or Oberto in Alcina, I'd understand her point a lot better. But they're not, and... it seems strange. But her career choices are her own business, I suppose!

[Ruth Elleson]

And noting her comment that she feels she's going soprano-wards, vocally... Strauss mezzo trouser roles are HIGH. By most people's standards.

[Miriam]

So do I. I checked the Barbican site after seeing this posting here yesterday and she was still listed which presumably means she has not cancelled it yet. I can understand that it might be a bit too soon for being in a staged opera, but a one-night stand for a recital is not so strenuous.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

IM - none of those roles mentioned above necessarily suggest a move in a soprano direction. Although their composers may have designated Amneris, Brangäne, Santuzza and Kundry as soprano roles, they are as often as not sung by mezzos, Amneris almost exclusively by mezzos these days (ok, I've heard Dimitrova and Iano Tamar in the role) and you don't specify which role in Don Carlo - presumably Eboli rather than Elisabeth and Eboli is generally regarded as a mezzo role. Octavian, however, was definitely regarded as a soprano role by Strauss and was mainly sung by sopranos up to the 1960s. The Octavian of the famous Karajan recording, Christa Ludwig - a mezzo with a very secure top register - may have established the role in the minds of many as a mezzo role, but the score says Sopran. Same goes for the Ariadne-Komponist, a role too high for many mezzos.
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Intermezzo replies - It was Garanca herself who said her voice was moving in a soprano direction. Quite what she meant is unclear.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

Strauss's "mezzo" trouser roles are in fact soprano roles!

[SJT]

Quite why a singer of such exceptional skill and grace as Garanca should hanker after singing a breast-beating, barking old banger like Santuzza defeats all reason. Unless, of course, she's doing it here in our new one, in which case goody.

A small shift skywards vocally shouldn't entail much realignment of her repertoire at all given that she's always been the high, light-type of mezzo anyway, like Graham and von Otter before her. And since I'd still pay good money to see either of them sing Octavian or the Komponist even at this remove - or indeed anything at all: they are still alive, Mr. Katona please note - I don't see why the Strauss trouser roles need to be left behind while Garanca's in her 30s

[Justin Chapman]

Come, come now! Kerry Katona presumably dismissed Susan Graham, Sophie Koch, von Otter, Alice Coote and Sarah Connolly as not being up to the task before opting for, er - Ruxandra Donose as the Komponist - another superb casting decision. He really should have gone to Iceland.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

Justin - we've already had Koch - twice - and Graham in Ariadne, and I guess for a fourth revival it's not a big enough part for him to want to pay for a star. But I agree that Donose is sort of also-ran casting. It would have been better to get the next rising Komponist for the role, rather than one who has done an okay job of the part in Germany somewhere. I guess he's relying on Karita to sell the next revival - if she does in fact turn up to sing it. I would have thought Ariadne now lies a bit high for her....

[Justin Chapman]

I thought this was the third revival? I could be wrong but we had Pappano/Koch when it was new, then Davis/Graham, then Elder/Jepson (replacing Garanca who at that stage had decided the role wasn't for here) and then next year Pappano/Donose. I still think Coote/Connolly should have been given this forthcoming revival...

[Feldmarschallin]

Why not get Daniela Sindram who did an excellent job here singing Komponist and Rosenkavalier. Since she is also just starting to get international engagements her fees aren't that high yet. Vocally her Venus was also superior to Meiers even though Meier brought a glamour to the role that Sindram just didn't have. Mind you she is a fine looking woman but Meier is an catergory completely.

[SJT]

Ariadne isn't high-lying at all. The general tessitura is middling-low, almost Marschallin territory. It starts out in the soprano's boots for both "Wo war ich" and thereafter the range doesn't extend beyond a solitary high B flat on "HERmes heissen sie ihn" in "Es gibt ein Reich". It's the general low weight of the role that kept the likes of te Kanawa and Fleming away from it for so long. In which case it should suit Mattila at this stage of the game admirably (and indeed Garanca herself somewhere down the line).

[inter mezzo]

Daniela Sindram made her ROH debut in 2008 and hasn't been heard of since. Not sure why.

[Barbara]

She is several years younger than Joyce DiDonato who is certainly not slowing down in the trouser role department. The voice determines the role.

[inter mezzo]

Not at all - the singer has to feel comfortable with the role too. That's why Netrebko has said she won't touch certain roles she feels temperamentally unsuited to.

[Francis]

IMHO, Garanca is tired of trouser roles and is yearning for roles that show a Latin temperament (which she doesn't have). It's not a new idea, as witnessed by some of her interviews and her song recordings of the last few years.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

It's precisely that B flat that I am worried about chez Karita. And it's a very exposed B flat. I've heard several fine Ariadnes nearly come to grief on it.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

Feldmarschallin - she was an excellent Venus at the recent Proms performance conducted by Runnicles. I have seen her Komponist and Octavian, both in Munich and both were, as you write, excellent. Meier still looked amazing as Waltraute/Zweite Norn in the Proms Ring, too - and sounded pretty good, if not what she was ten years ago. Her Fidelio at the Proms with Barenboim a few years ago was not so hot. Is she still singing Kundry? I know she did Isolde last year some time. I'm not sure she has the low notes for Klytaemnestra, but I see she is doing it now, and she would be wasted as Herodias. I wonder if she can do Kostelnicka - that would surely be a wonderful role for her. I must look up her age - she has been singing for decades but she clearly started young.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

What role did she sing, IM?

[Nikolaus Vogel]

Sorry - my mistake, Justin. You are right, there have been three series - Koch in the first, Graham in the second and Jepson in the third. Yes, Coote or Connolly would have been better choices, but as per usual the RO chooses to ignore what is going on under their noses at ENO. It's nothing new - Barstow, Tinsley, Evans, Eaglen all waited for years to be taken seriously at Covent Garden, despite having huge successes at ENO.

[John]

Don't forget the soaring high B flat at the end of "Es gibts ein Reich"! I really don't think the top notes are Mattila's problem these days - there is footage of her on YouTube singing "Pace, pace mi Dio" earlier this summer and it confirms my feeling that her problem these days is the middle of the voice. It takes a looooong time to settle and can sound woofy and out of control for long periods. This might sound indelicate, but perhaps it's the menopause?

[SJT]

Yes, I do know: the one on "Du nimm es von MIR". And there's another in the preceding
"Ein schones war" sequence as well, as it happens. Big deal. Three B flats. We're not exactly talking Elektra here, or Kaiserin. But Herr Vogel is correct. I myself have heard two incomparable Staussians go to complete pieces on the note (Janowitz and Schwanewilms). I'm afraid I think it's psychological rather more than physical, the Teutonic equivalent of Aida's C at the end of "O, patria mia" on which I've catastrophes galore, usually from sopranos who have already sung the fuck out of the far more demanding Cs in the Triumph scene. Go, as the Americans say, figure..

I heard Mattila last year here singing the Vier Letzte Lieder, and much of it, frankly, was painful to listen to, the voice lost in clouds of clotted fluster which only cleared in long-held high notes. I don't know enough about female physiology/psychology even to pretend to understand what effects your "indelicate" reference may bring about vocally, though I know it's a topic of much-impassioned debate (even if I do suspect it's an enormous red-herring, so different from woman to woman as to be effectively meaningless as any kind of diagnostic determinant).

[Feldmarschallin]

I love Meier but heard two of the three Isoldes this past March and think it is time to give up the role The first one was horrible and the second one much better but still not close to what she used to be able to give in that role.