karena,
yeah, you know what i'm talking about. it is funny we should be
discussing this at the same time some of us are remembering john haber. i
was mentioning to lloyd that i had always been upset by my fellow students
that didn't appreciate john. now that i think about it, they were the ones
whose sole concept of opera was an oppurtunity to show off their beautifully
spun legatos, even in staccato passages.
it may be just a vanity thing. just as there are people who only care
how they look, there are people who only care how they sound (i'd rather
listen to louis armstrong than samuel ramey anytime for that very reason).
the advantage the amateur has over the professional is they are free to
like, listen and do what and however they wish. they are not bound by the
standards of concencus reality. it is the rare professional who can
overcome this obstacle. that is one of the things i always liked about
teresa stratas. having built a reputation for herself as being a whacko,
she was free to do as she pleased. if she screwed up, she could always
write it off as one of her oddities. and, she was not in it for the long
haul. borrowing a line from the movie 'breaker morant' she seems to
subscribe to the philosophy "live each moment as if it were your last and,
one day, you're sure to be right".
mike
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