Ninon Vallin News
French singer (1886-1961)
- soprano
- classical music
- France
- opera singer, stage actor, writer, vocal coach
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2024-03-25
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2020-04-09 07:25:34
Exquisite sketches: songs by Reynaldo Hahn from Anastasia Prokofieva & Sergey Rybin on Stone Records - L'heure exquise
[…] teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, Massenet.The CD booklet includes an excellent essay by Richard Stokes which provides plenty of background on the songs and their texts, but in fact gives us no hint of the criteria for selection, or for arrangement. Certainly Prokofieva and Rybin ignore the published order of the songs, selecting individual songs from collections, but then everyone does.Hahn was renowned as a performer, there are recordings of him accompanying the soprano Ninon Vallin, but also he was notable for accompanying himself (you can hear a selection on YouTube), and he made enough recordings to fill three CDs (once available but now no-longer). He had a small but useful voice, and listening to him perform makes you consider what is the most important factor in these songs. A number of singers quite clearly enjoy luxuriating in the sheer beauty of some of Hahn's melodies.Prokofieva and Rybin tend not […]
2019-12-10 22:00:00
GOUNOD: FAUST GEDDA - HARPER - GHIAUROV - GAVAZZENI - TEATRO COLON 1971
[…] charge of the main roles. But the history of Faust at the Teatro Colon was a rich and varied one. As it happens, it was a performance of Gounod´s opera at the old Teatro Colon, in 1866, that inspired poet Estanislao del Campo´s famous drama "El Fausto Criollo". At the new Teatro Colon, the first perfomance took place in 1914, conducted by Tullio Serafin. It was starred by Alessandro Bonci, Nazareno de Angelis and Linda Canetti. Two years later Ninon Vallin was in charge of the role of Marguerite, a role she sang again in 1921. The role of Faust was sang by great tenors such as Giovanni Martinelli (1921), Georges Thill (1929) and Mario Fillipeschi (1949). As for Mephistopheles, the list is no less spectacular: Marcel Journet (1916, 1918 and 1929), Vanni Marcoux (1919), Adam Didur (1921), Ezio Pinza (1927) and Nicola Rossi-Lemeni (1956), besides the aforementioned Boris Christoff. The 1971 season was the 12th season in which […]
2018-04-04 07:55:22
Planet Hugill’s roving music correspondent, Tony Cooper, reports on Berlin’s Festtage
[…] to deliver the score of Saint Sébastien in time for the work’s première on 22nd May 1911. It was good going, really, as he only accepted the commission in February of that year. The première took place at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and was of Wagnerian proportions lasting more than five hours.As so often is the case problems occurred at the rehearsal stage and chorus director, Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht, suggested on hearing Eugénie (Ninon) Vallin, that she take over the role of the celestial voice as Rose Féart, who had been engaged for the part, fell well short of the rehearsal time. Therefore, Vallin sang the role and Debussy insisted on her singing it in the fully-staged production, presented by the impresario, Gabriel Astruc. Such was Vallin’s relationship with Debussy that she continued her association with him and gave the première of his Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé in […]
2017-02-20 14:06:36
C’est la chanson des rêveurs qui s’étaient arraché le coeur
[…] some incisiveness was lost. This may have something to do with a change in the articulation of sung French that occurred in the 1950’s. If one listens to pretty much any French trained singer before the Second World War one hears a purling, beautiful “song accent”. Vowels are very forward and slightly modified, consonants are handled very carefully. Yet every word is both clear and beautiful. Much of the magic of singers such as Ninon Vallin, Irene Joachim, Emma Luart comes from an unforgettable treatment of the language. However, after the war, this “singer’s accent”, also used by actors and public speakers, was identified with the Nazi allied Vichy Government. The accent was condemned not only as affected but as “Fascist” and singers trained in the 50’s and after began to use an accent closer to spoken French. The “twang” of many vowels was kept, consonants were pronounced in a […]
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