Today, I listened to Caruso's "Rachel quand du seigneur" for the first time
since I heard Neil Shicoff singing this part in a radio broadcast of La
Juive from Wien. It had not struck me then how Shicoff emulated Caruso. But
I must now tell that I have never heard such an identification of one singer
to the tone, diction, phrasing and emoting of another!
Even Shicoff's mistakes in French diction come directly from Caruso, as if
he had taken him as a French language coach. But the wrong sounds also
belong to his and Caruso's vocal choices - for example, his opening of the
[i] toward /E/ (French "è" or "ê").
Shicoff's tone has always that plaintive "quality" in it. But in that
broadcast, I was surprised by the sobs he introduced in the main aria, after
singing the whole part with his usual dramatic involvment but more vocal
dignity. Actually, his sobs come directly from Caruso.
The whole dramatic structure of the aria is also surprisingly the same in
both renditions.
This is all the more striking if one has Vezzani's Éléazar in one's ear as a
reference. Vezzani's is a fantastic voice, but his incarnation is much more
classical, "beautiful" in a classical sense and somehow restrained
dramatically.
| Alain Zürcher, Paris, France
| L'Atelier du Chanteur :
| http://chanteur.net
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