raccolta

Non mi dir / Don't tell me

After many months of inactivity, I've decided to continue to write in this little blog of mine. I don't write for myself anymore - only sporadically...

I've been listening to Donna Anna's aria "Non mi dir" all day today. It's from Mozart's Don Giovanni and I've obsessively listened to this aria roughly 6 times today by six different singers. I started off by listening to it on a new CD I bought yesterday of Maria Callas' masterclasses at Juilliard. The first track is of her singing the aria, then her coaching a young student about my age singing it. The student's voice was young sounding, but had hints of power and darkness in it. Maria Callas in comparison doesn't really sound in her prime - Mozart is not her forte, and her voice doesn't really like to float. After listening to Leontyne Price sing it, then Kiri te Kanawa, then Anna Netrebko, Damrau, Montserrat Caballe, and Marina Poplavskaya (my new favorite).... I've decided that NOTHING compares to this version right here:

I think my cat hates opera and I feel a little cruel that I play it at all times of the day .... Slowly she slinks out of my room when I start practicing …

But what is about certain versions of arias, of singers, that seem to transcend everything that came before them?