Renée Doria: Iron Woman
By Father Cornelius Mattei
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
Father Cornelius Mattei
A remarkable article on a remarkable woman! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThank 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!
ReplyDeleteA 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.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, Doug. We really appreciate that comment! Edmund
ReplyDeleteThanks for the awesome remembrances, well done.
ReplyDelete