Most people know that an opera\n“ain’t over till the fat lady sings”. Originating from a reference to\nWagner’s Brunhilde singing the “Fire Song”, the sight of a shrieking\nfat lady in a steel bra and war helmet seems to be the accepted image of divas\nwho sing in fat, polished tones but have less than impeccable manners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Diva!<\/em> concert poster for the one-day-only recital of the 18th<\/sup>\nof June 2006 shows a lady in a shapeless, flowing robe entwined by long, thorny\nstalks of roses. The poster promises gasping excitement of flashing temperament\nin the shape of three renowned divas and one crackling accompanist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To get a better view, I moved\nseveral rows to the front of the KL & Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall right\nbeside one of the air conditioners that insisted on droning tunelessly. The\norganisers sensibly shut it down, but not before one half of the programme had\nalready been sung. While waiting for the recital to start, I noted that Toh\nPuan Ena Ling and some other prominent Chinese business personalities were also\npresent. In fact, the audience was so predominantly Chinese that the MC made\nhis announcements and speeches in both Mandarin and English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Initially, when the recital began, I\nwas a little disappointed. First of all, there were no fat ladies at the Diva!<\/em> concert. There were three\nwell-endowed divas in flattering dresses who sang an extremely well-tempered performance\nwithout all the bad-tempered behaviour associated with divas. Then the\naccompanist was tall and thin as a rake. He made up for his lack of bulk with\nsensitive and clever piano-playing, and also by wearing a horrendous yellow\nshirt with his tails. The surprise element was a handsome diva with a superb\ntenor voice who flitted in and out to sing love and death duets with at least\ntwo of the divas. By the time the concert ended, I decided that it was one of\nthe best singing concerts I have watched so far this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jessica Chen<\/strong>,\nNancy Yuen<\/strong> and Cecilia Yap<\/strong> were the three darling sopranos at the Diva!<\/em> concert. They were more than\ncompetently accompanied on the piano by Chong\nKok-Ting<\/strong>. Armando Chin Yong<\/strong>, the\ntenor, lent an air of drama with his powerful singing and was particularly\nmoving in the encore piece “Che gelida manina”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first piece in the recital was\n“Dich, teure Halle” (You, lovely hall), a Wagner aria from Tannh\u00e4user\nabout a nice, big hall. This aria was performed by Jessica Chen from Taiwan,\nand was peculiarly appropriate as a kind of subtle dedication to the Chinese\nAssembly Hall and for its availability as a performance venue of classical\nconcerts. In fact, the MC was full of praise for the hall and its acoustics\n(for which I disagree with him on two points: noisy air conditioning and a\nclosed renovated section upstairs that somewhat dampened the upper harmonics of\nthe voices towards the back of the hall). Jessica sang it well, but I thought\nthe piece would have been more appropriate, not as the opening number but, as\nthe second piece on the programme. Her aria from Ponchielli’s La Gioconda<\/em> — “Suicidio!” — was\nboth heart-rending and beautifully balanced in emotional and dramatic\nintensity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jessica Chen also sang two Verdi\narias from Aida<\/em> that showcased her\ndramatic soprano voice. Her “O Patria Mia” (O My Homeland) was\ndelivered very steadily and with power until the very last high note, when her\nvoice wavered a little. This break in the magic spell of her voice was due to,\nI believe, a break in her concentration when a mobile phone went off in the\naudience at that crucial moment. Although the opprobrium that rippled across\nthe hall was barely spoken, its annoyance was generally felt because the sacred\nmoment of the piece had been desecrated. The death duet, “O Terra,\nAdio” (O Earth, Farewell) which Jessica sang with Armando Chin Yong was\ntouching; the scene was made even more tragic with their elegant and controlled\nportrayal of the Ethiopian princess and her Egyptian commander, both about to\ndie buried alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Originally from Hong Kong, Nancy\nYuen now lives in Singapore and has an enigmatic look on her face, not unlike a\nSingapore Girl airlines advertisement. Her voice was velvet, rich and bright.\nThe audience roared in approval when she finished “Song to the Moon”\nfrom Dvorak’s Rusalka<\/em>. What I really\nliked about the singing of this aria was the perfect control Nancy had on the\nhigh B-flat note that soared with dramatic intensity and yet, had a quality of\nincandescence about it. In lesser singers, this note is normally problematic as\nits descent requires technical mastery. The accompaniment by Kok-Ting was\nremarkably well paced and he played beautifully with a softness of touch that\nseemed to shimmer even as the last sung note disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two middle-aged Chinese ladies\ngiggled school-girlishly throughout the singing of the love duet “Viene la\nsera” (The Evening Comes) from Madama\nButterfly<\/em> while Nancy and Armando acted out the scene of Pinkerton and\nButterfly’s wedding night. While the singing was gorgeous, my enjoyment of the\naria was seriously marred by the nervous laughter and excited whispers of the\ntwo crones behind me. No amount of glaring from me or from the gentleman who\nsat beside me made them stop. I wondered if they were laughing in cathartic\nrelief because they understood Italian and the full import of veiled irony in\nthat aria, or laughing because they have never seen a love-scene on stage come\nso close to consummation, that crying would be unbearably prudish, or sterile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Butterfly, Nancy was demure,\nhesitant and shy. As Violetta in “Sempre Libera” of Verdi’s La Traviata<\/em> (in which a courtesan\nresolves early in the opera to be “forever free” only to surrender to\nlove in the next act), her singing was searing and almost wild. This was\nNancy’s best aria in the recital. She sang with such ease and with a brilliance\nof tone that reverberated across the hall. Her mastery of all the intricate,\nswift passages with an extremely high tessitura distinguished her as prima\ndonna of the evening. Her encore duet “Che gelida manina” (This\nlittle hand is frozen) from Pucinni’s La\nBoh\u00e8me<\/em> with Armando was a moment of pure musical delight, as both sang in\nmeasured passion which built up to a very moving climax. Armando sang best of\nall when paired with Nancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Merce, dilette amiche”\n(Thank you, dear friends) from I Vespri Sicilianni<\/em>\nby Verdi was a coloratura aria that was sung with great technical surety by\nMalaysian, Cecilia Yap who was in her element that evening. I felt that the\nquality of her voice was a little too bronze and heavy but there was no doubt\nabout the vocal mastery with which she handled all the melismatic runs in the\nhighly acrobatic piece. However, her best piece was the duet with Jessica Chen\nat the end of the recital. The very difficult duet “Morta al mondo e morta\nal trono” (Dead to the world and dead to the throne) from Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda<\/em> (which was banned back\nthen for depiction of royalty on stage) saw Cecilia as Queen Mary Stuart of\nScotland and Jessica Chen as Queen Elizabeth in a spat of gargantuan\nproportions over a man. In this grueling duel of a duet, Cecilia sang and acted\nwith flashing fury against the cold and calculating Jessica. The singing by\nboth singers was filled with heightened tension, and only with a sure vocal\ntechnique could this demanding piece be performed with credibility. I felt that\nCecilia did remarkably well in the singing of this piece, and when she had to\nsing a segment of “Vissi d’arte” (I lived for art) from Puccini’s Tosca<\/em> as part of her encore, her voice\nsoar with such beauty and power, that I felt it was a shame that she did not\nsing the whole aria as part of the recital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was a lot of clapping at the\nend of the performance. Many in the audience stood up, yelling their approval\nof the concert. There were many, many flowers too, and in an almost\noperatically absurd way, even the MC joyfully received a bouquet of flowers for\nhimself. Chong Kok-Ting, the accompanist deserved the accolades he received\nthat evening for ensuring a platform of performance for operatic and classical\nthrough his organisation, Artists\nPlatform<\/strong>. Armando Chin Yong, Malaysia’s best operatic tenor, gave very elegant\nand beautifully interpreted performances of the duets he sang with the\nsopranos, never overshadowing them, as this was the divas’ show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When will these singers be asked to\nperform at the Dewan Filharmonik Petronas with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ~~~ <\/p>\n\n\n\n Lisa Ho is back! <\/p>\n\n\n\n First Published: 04.07.2006 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most people know that an opera “ain’t over till the fat lady sings”. Originating from a reference to Wagner’s Brunhilde singing the “Fire Song”, the sight of a shrieking fat lady in a steel bra and war helmet seems to be the accepted image of divas who sing in fat, polished tones but have less […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,3537,3569],"tags":[4281,3637,2831,1025,268,924,4279,4278,40,4280,263,49],"language":[7523],"writer":[7622],"class_list":["post-27779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-music-2","category-review","tag-armando-chin-yong","tag-artists-platform","tag-cecilia-yap","tag-chong-kok-ting","tag-classical","tag-concert","tag-jessica-chen","tag-kl-selangor-chinese-assembly-hall","tag-music","tag-nancy-yuen","tag-opera","tag-review","language-english","writer-lisa-ho"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27779"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39138,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27779\/revisions\/39138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27779"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27779"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}