Karen Mercedes wrote:
>
> The only aria I can think of that I'm sure clocks in at under 90 seconds
> is "Here, Queen Uncrowned" from Vaughan Williams' opera HUGH THE DROVER.
Is this the same as "Here on my throne?" I've sung that, but it doesn't
come down to 90 seconds, more like 2 minutes.
Maybe I sang it too slow! But it was a set song for a music festival
that I was in years ago, and the first competitor used the official
accompanist who played it a lot faster. I sang second, at the speed I'd
learnt it at, and everyone else was about the same speed as I was. The
adjudicator told the first singer her tempo was far too fast. She said
to me afterwards that she'd always sung it at the slower speed but
assumed as this was the official accompanist, the speed must be right.
Everyone else had their own pianists with them.
I would also have thought it slightly too mature for a 17-year-old
(though even as I type this, I realise that I also sang it for my ABRSM
grade 8 which I did while I was still 16) But it's rather heavy for an
occasion like this.
I liked best your suggestions of Summertime, sung as a proper soprano
and not crooned, of course, for this occasion, and "Ah! Quel diner" if
she can act (and hiccup) - though it would go down better, for these
purposes, in an English translation - and obviously she could
top-and-tail it since she won her round with just the first verse of the
Schubert. If her vocal quality os the card she most wants to play, I'd
go for Summertime, if it's personality, then sing the Offenbach,
Back to Hugh The Drover, I don't know the whole opera (ought to learn
it, really) but if it's the song the heroine - whose name I've forgotten
- sings as she sits in the stocks beside her lover (I _think_ by her own
choice) then why is there a different set of words, since it was written
in English in the first place?
Or is this just coincidence, and it's a different piece altogether?
cheers,
Linda
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