Taylee Beckstead - Listening #1

Casta Diva - Comparisons

Anna Netrebko: By far my favorite, both visually and audibly. If I were to put the video on mute and just watch, I wouldn't know the difference between high and low. Her emotion was easily seen and contributed well to her performance. She had a rich and full timbre. This performance inspired me to want to have one just like it.

Renee Fleming: She made pitch seem effortless.  I was able to tell, however, when she changed pitches when she's doing the ornamentation. It didn't seem hard though, which is what I really loved about watching her sing. She would often have audible breaths (a little on the gaspy side), but strangely this didn't seem to effect he ability to allow the lower body to be engaged. The poor breaths were when she was in the lower range (which is closer to speech, therefore presumably easier), and she had good deep, silent breaths before her high, more challenging range.

Joan Sutherland: She seemed to have a brassy quality to her voice, and it was more apparent in her higher register. Other than her excessive jaw movement for diction purposes, Joan too made pitch seem effortless regardless of which part of her range she was in. She also moved her eyebrows a lot to reach her highest notes.

Sumi Jo: Sumi's onsets weren't very accurate in her very first few lines. They were all under-pitch and resulted in scooping to get to the desired note. However, her diction was wonderful. I definitely don't speak Italian, but I could distinguish each word from the one before and after. Her higher register sounds very high in her body, meaning she doesn't have energy in the breath and the result sounds very flighty and a little staticy maybe.

Maria Callas: I thought that she maintained a great low laryngeal position through-out the performance. I didn't see much movement, if any. I didn't love her breathing though. It was very high in the body, and it didn't appear to be restful (as it is on the rests that you breath).  I know that Maria was just trying to get into the character, but it maybe was a bit too much for me and became a distraction to the singing, rather than an enhancement.

Barbara Frittoli: Visually, very unpleasant. Her jaw was being forced open, and there was a lot of rigidity in her shoulders. When she went higher in pitch, her mouth opened taller. I didn't really like her vibrato. I can't really put my finger on it, but it didn't seem natural, even though it sounded consistant, it sounded too heavy, with too wide of wobble, to be authentic.

Edita Gruberova: I didn't even make it into 4 seconds of listening to her actually singing before I started writing this. Intonation in just that much time was pretty rough. She scooped into her onsets, and relied on body position to change pitch. Her breathing made me very tense just watching, as it was high in the body and required her to lift her head back to get a breath in. As I continued to watch, her facial expressions were very off-putting, and they contributed to a lot of excessive jaw movement.