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Sunday, April 26, 2015

Renee Doria: Iron Woman






Renée  Doria:  Iron Woman
 

By Father Cornelius Mattei

     She sang over 2500 performances during an onstage career of more than forty years; 76 rôles on stage, 125 rôles on radio broadcasts:   she recorded over a period spanning one half century. Let  us honor in this blog the living legend...here the term in not abused...still among us at  age 94, Mme. Renée Doria.

       Born at Perpignan on February 13, 1921 to a musical family, she studied both piano and voice, making her professional début as a singer, age 18, in concert. A protegée of composer and conductor Reynaldo Hahn, she stepped onto the operatic stage for the first time as Rosina in the Barber of Seville at Marseille in 1942. Not long ago there surfaced an air-check of a performance from Radio Provence late that year: she sings Constanza’s ¨aria di salita,¨ under Hahn’s baton, following their performances of ¨Abduction¨ at the Cannes Casino. Let’s hear it:


       A lyric ¨soprano d’agilità,¨ Doria was soon singing in theaters in wartime France under the stressful conditions then prevalent on both sides of the line of demarcation, eventually making her Paris début as Lakmé at the Gaieté Lyrique in 1943, the same rôle serving for her début on October 20 1946 at the Opéra Comique. From a contemporary radio broadcast, here she is in that calling-cardrôle, with André Pernet as Nilakantha:


Other rôles followed: Rosina, Olympia, Philine, Manon, Leïla, Violetta. On January 4, 1947, she made her début at the Opéra as the queen of the night in The Magic Flute, a rôle which she dropped permanently after two performances only, thereafter preferring Pamina, another of the eleven Mozart roles which figured in her répertoire, often in both the original language, and sometimes in multiple French translations! Mme.Doria performed at both Paris theaters until the dawn of the 1960s, amid an intensive and extensive career in the then still very active theaters throughout France as well as Belgium, in Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Britain. Listen to this unusual rarity from a RadioNetherlands broadcast, circa 1947:


Renée Doria was the last ¨historic¨ Ophélie in Thomas’ ¨Hamlet,¨appearing with that American prodigal son, Endrèze during his farewell to the rôle. She also sang, if memory serves, two performances of Don Pasquale with Tito Schipa, that artist’s only staged opera performances in Paris.

       Married to the recording producer, vocal connoisseur and collector Guy Dumazert, Mme. Doria recorded extensively, almost always those things she sang on stage or in concert. One of the things which needs be mentioned here is that through her recording of Thaïs...another of her successes onstage... she had an impact on many, if not most, sopranos who listened to the following scene and have thereafter attempted the high pianissimo...twice as long as the note in the printed score:


       As with LauriVolpi’s extended high B at the end of ¨Nessun dorma,¨ or Vickers’ emendations in ¨Peter Grimes,¨ the tailoring of the score to the talents, preferences and style of a distinguished interpreter has an inevitable impact when it creates a memorable effect, as here.

       The other subject which needs, in my opinion, to be mentioned, is the subject of vocal timbre. Although recorded ab extenso. Mme Doria’s voice was, as with many crystalline soprano voices, from Melba and dal Monte to Luciana Serra, not very faithfully captured by recording technology: the simple, clear sound has never been favored by either horn or microphone. The rich aureola of harmonics which surround such a sound...in the theater… a sound whose very top tones are set upon a solid integration of chest resonance throughout the entire vocal range, thus ensuring stability, longevity and retention of the top tones through a long career. What sounds like a hard, shrill quality, to those who know such voices in person, results from distortion excited and exacerbated by the microphones’ favoring of dark or ¨rich’ sounds, the cultivation of which has demonstrably shortened the careers of a number of prominent soprani,abridging their high tones and introducing a ¨wobble¨ as a result of cutting the ¨head¨ resonancefree from anchoring in the ¨chest.¨  Here is Renée Doria, in a rôle which she did not perform onstage, but recorded to critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic-- Fanny in Massénet’s ¨Sapho¨:


 

       That was in 1978, and was her last complete opera recording. Continuing to sing in concert after her farewell to the operatic stage in 1981, as late as 1993, she was still recording. Let’s sample one of those last sessions:


Why ¨Iron Woman?¨ Well, Renée Doria, over the course of her career, performed feats of endurance which bear testament to her skill, determination and ironclad technique: three Manons and three Mireilles during the course of single weekends at the Opéra Comique (Friday and Saturday evenings, Sunday matinée)... her scheduled performances and covering for indisposed colleagues. Two other memorable occasions of heavy lifting also deserve mention: once, following a Thursday night Rosina at the Comique, she sang Violetta at the Opéra on Saturday night, hopped on a night train to Strasbourg and sang ¨Thaïs¨ en matinée the following afternoon. On another occasion, she began her week singing two ¨Manon¨ in Geneva, passed, once more through Strasbourg, singing all three heroines in ¨Hoffman,¨ and rounding off the calendar week in two ¨Lucia di Lammermoor¨ appearances at Rouen. Children, don’t try that at home!  Lets bid farewell, but not goodbye to her, as Louise :


Subtle, discreet. A deeply felt performance free of eccentricity and self indulgence.


                                             

                                                         Father Cornelius Mattei                          

5 comments:

JD Hobbes said...

A remarkable article on a remarkable woman! Thank you.

Edmund St. Austell said...

Thank you so much, Mr Hobbes! Always such a pleasure to see you checking in! You are absolutely the most faithful of fans! Have you ever missed a blog in 5 years?? This piece today by Fr. Cornelius is a real beauty, isn't it? I know of no other place in the US where this kind of information on French singers is so consistently presented--at this level of quality--. I feel very privileged to be able to present it on my blog. Thank you so much, Father!

CurzonRoad said...

A wonderful article on a lovely and wonderful artist whose recordings are a new revelation, stopping me in my tracks... as similarly your eloquence! Many thanks and kind regards to you, Father, and our host Edmund.

Edmund St. Austell said...

Thank you so much, Doug. We really appreciate that comment! Edmund

Unknown said...

Thanks for the awesome remembrances, well done.