Smorg's Shameless Diva-Worship Manifesto: Vesselina Kasarova
May 13 '08 (Updated Feb 15 '09)
The Bottom Line Artistically you'll either love or hate her, but there's no denying Kasarova's rank among the greats of opera. She is unique and unforgettable.
As recently as three years ago I used to avoid opera like a plague. I didn't care much for the clips I had seen of coloratura soprani screeching high notes, one after another, in their light feathery voice as if it is their lifelong ambition to imitate oversize Helium-overdosed canaries to a captive audience (to tell the truth, I still don't care much for that kind of singing now). But one winter night three years ago I turned on the television to find not a shrieking human canary, but a deep voiced mezzo-soprano who looked and acted as if she was lost in a musical world of her own... so much so that it was as if she wasn't acting at all, but was living a parallel life that I had just accidentally stumbled in on uninvited (though not unwelcomed).
Every note she sang was nothing less than the very thought in her head made audible with or without her character being aware of it. I sat transfixed until the end and actually wished that the clip was longer. Right then and there I decided that opera was something I should dig into a bit more. So... those of you who have been condemned to wade through my long rambling about various operatic performances since now know exactly who is responsible for old Smorg's happy addiction...
Her name is Vesselina Ivanova Kasarova. She first appeared on this planet at the musically rich old south-central Bulgarian town of Stara Zagora on July 18th, 1965. So musically gifted was young Kasarova that she was enrolled to state-sponsored special academy for the musically gifted to study piano at the tender age of four. By the time she had earned her diploma as a concert pianist, however, it was apparent to her and a few others that an even more magnificent musical instrument was bursting to come out of the young musician's throat.
I and many other opera fans are forever grateful that Professor Ressa Koleva couldn’t get Kasarova’s extraordinary mezzo-soprano voice out of her head after hearing her singing in a chorus and decided not only to take her as a voice-student, but to also protect her from being pushed into the dramatic repertoire that was the main staple of the Bulgarian operatic diet. A Mozart and Rossini singer, Koleva correctly deemed Kasarova to be, though I wonder if even she had realized just how uniquely commanding her pupil would prove for that repertoire so quickly after she had her international debut at Zürich Opera in 1989 (ironically, as the Second Norn and Wellgunde in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung... just about as dramatic an opera as they come!).
So, what is so captivating about this artist, aside from her remarkably rangy and darkly multicolored voice and acting ability? I say it's her originality, her ability to make well rehearsed material seem impossibly spontaneous each time she performs it, and the courage to defy convention even if her way of performing doesn't always draw applause.
There are singers today who can boast of having a more beautiful or sizable or more seamlessly integrated or virtuosic voice, but you would be hard pressed to find anyone whose singing is more communicative than Kasarova's is. She is blessed with an instantly recognizable burnish fine burgundy voice of many shades that is alluringly veiled in a smokey layer. The top notes are ringingly free while the low notes mesmerizingly androgenic. Between them is seriously sultry middle. The singer has the superb breath control and vocal agility that enable her to make mince meat of florid music from the Bel Canto and the Baroque periods, and also the impossibly wide palette of vocal colors that give her singing a lush vitality. Her vocal registers aren't seamlessly integrated (they were nearly so in the 1990's, however) and her drama-oriented conscious use of register breaks as artistic device even when singing the music that most audience of our time are so used to hearing done in a certain strict 'conventional style' gives her additional tools in separating her interpretation of opera characters from those of her colleagues.
It is true that her willingness to go against the 'currently accepted conventional way of singing' dismays some audience and critics who insist that a singer should sing effortlessly with a smooth voice. But prevailing convention isn't always consistent with how a piece of music was actually performed in the era that it was conceived. And I simply don't see any good point in this need for different singers who bring different qualities to their role to always sing and interpret the same music the same way.
Mozart's music is often performed in squeakily clean, smoothen out to the point of being tamely soothing manner today even though many of Mozart's contemporaries accused him of overloading his music with dramatic dynamic contrasts, excessive dissonance, and mercilessly true to life passion. The musicologist Hans Georg Nägeli went so far as to call Mozart's style of performing his own music "unartistic!" And what of the conventional love of seamless voice and virtuoso flares in bel canto singing? The very singers that Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini composed for were known for their dramatically interpretative singing and for the 'flaw' of having register breaks in their voice. Maria Malibran, Pauline Viardot-Garcia, Giuditta Pasta, Isabella Colbran, etc. You name it. None of them had a seamlessly flawless voice.
Like all these artists, Kasarova is great not for lacking any 'flaws' or 'personal quirks', but because she dares to use the 'flaws' or 'quirks' to her advantages. Kasarova is one of the most convincing musical story tellers to ever grace the operatic stage, whose sense of priority dictates that she uses her skills to highlight the arts rather than to highlight her own technical mastery. She isn't afraid to sound downright ugly or grotesque when the dramatic situation requires that from the character she is portraying even if it would give her dissenters something to object to. To experience Kasarova is to be transported from the mundane reality for a while into the land where Ruggiero flies the globe on a hippogriff, where beautiful Marguerite waits by the window for her bedeviled Faust, or where Helen of Troy flirts with Paris as the whole of Sparta pretends not to look. You close your eyes to listen to her and wonder if you didn't just miss Romeo jumping out of a window up ahead after his tryst with Juliet or if Farnace is waiting to ambush you at the next street corner... And on reopening your eyes you are convinced that the scents of Alcina's magical garden that Ruggiero so loved is still lingering on in your nose! When Kasarova is on the stage the mythological, historical, and fictional characters that she plays are so vividly alive that it is hard to imagine that they don't exist in real life. That is something only a true artist can do for you!
So how addicted I am to this mesmerizing singing actress? So addicted that I flew all the way to New York City to catch her only performance on this side of the ocean in 2006 at Carnegie Hall on Election Day, and back on the earliest flight available after the concert was over. Got so sick in the process (thanks to my eastbound plane being in constant turbulence from St. Louis all the way to the Big Apple) that I practically puked out everything I ate since 10th grade and landed back in San Diego on the next day after the performance feeling like a long dead (and buried) catfish... and would still repeat the trip again in an instant for another chance to experience this artist live (not to mention having hunted down all but one commercially available recordings of hers... that Muti CD of Schubert Mass in E Major is still proving too elusive for Smorg, but I'm not giving up yet!).
Here are a few sample clips to help you get a taste of Kasarova's talent for making whatever she sings her own:
Baroque: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnmXfdvYCRw (as Handel's Ariodante), www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx5Snp0b3iY (as Handel's Ruggiero)
Classical: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlVOKSKQiew (as Mozart's Pharnace), www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSxMYkJ87Qc (as Mozart's Sesto)
Bel Canto: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvaWNTPi3Us&fmt=18 (as Bellini's Romeo), www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPEM_-Ij4WQ&fmt=18 (as Donizetti's Leonora)
French: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMo04f1BP9I (as Gounod's Sapho), www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ICL86-qG3w (as Offenbach's Helen)
German: www.youtube.com/watch?v=duCLxR6tIIw&fmt=18 (as Richard Strauss' Octavian)
Verdi: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKw6HRsKJps (as Princess Eboli), www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq8EXcvdwa8 (in Verdi's Requiem)
German Lieder: www.youtube.com/watch?v=28q8x1WWMVo (Brahms' Von ewiger Liebe), www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4111JlyMaE (Brahms' Die Meere)
The Bulgarian folks are known for their soulful melancholic music that enchants and inspires. From the mythical Orpheus to today's musical legends like Anna Tomowa-Sintow or Nicolai Ghiaurov... to live up to such distinguished musical tradition is a tall order. But living up to it Vesselina Kasarova does, all the while remaining one of the most sane and approachable person off the stage. In the age of self-destructive young pop divas, Kasarova and many of her operatic colleagues are living proofs that, with well grounded personality and the right support (thanks to their family and friends), fame doesn't necessary have to come at the expense of sanity or lack of maturity.
If you ever get the chance, why not try to catch her in a live performance somewhere? I'm afraid her website is not quite up to date, but her unofficial fan blog (http://vesselinakasarova.blogspot.com/) is quite good at coming up with her schedule. Luckily, even though we are stuck on the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean, I and other opera fans have RCA Red Seal label to thank for her many CD recordings:
Reviews:
CDs: Suter: Le laudi di San Francesco (1991), French Song Cycles (1995), A Portrait (1996), Lied-Duett/Wir Schwestern zwei, (with E Gruberova) (1996), Mozart Arias (1997), Rossini Arias & Duets (1999), German Lieder (2000), Love Entranced (French Opera Arias) (2002), Bulgarian Soul (2003), The Magic of Kasarova (2004), Bel Canto Duets (With Vargas, Mei, Florez)(2005), Das Bayerische Staatsoper: 1997-2005 (2006), Belle Nuit (2008), Sento Brillar (2008).
Opera CDs: Alcina (Munich 2005), Beatrice di Tenda (Vienna 1992), I Capuleti e i Montecchi, La Cenerentola (Munich 2005), La clemenza di Tito (Munich 2006), Dom Sébastien (ROH 2005), La Favorite (Munich 2000), Mitridate (Salzburg 1997), Oberon, Tancredi, Werther
Opera DVDs: Il barbiere di Siviglia (Zürich 2001), La belle Hélène (Zürich 1997), Berlin Opera Night 2003, La clemenza di Tito (Salzburg 2003), La clemenza di Tito (Zürich 2005), La damnation de Faust (Salzburg 1999), Orphée et Eurydice (Munich 2005), Pique Dame/Queen of Spade (Vienna 1992), Il ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria (Zürich 2002), Der Rosenkavalier (Zürich 2004)
Live Performance: Dom Sébastian (OONY 2006)
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