Week 1: Jamming Secton
Date: 20th March 2025 (Thursday)
Time: 3-5pm
Place: Pats Pa11
Preparation for the Meeting
As Genie and I agreed to work on opera roles and arias that Brigit Nilsson is famous of performing in our last meeting, I researched on the singer herself to start with. From her foundation website, I gathering a lot information of her career, operatic roles that she is renowned of and keen on performing, and here I have made some brief notes some major events of hers.
1946- Opera debut: Weber’s Der Freischütz, substitute the original cast in performing at the Royal Swedish Opera in 3 days of notice
1947- Got engaged, began to have International Recognition: Verdi’s Lady Macbeth, replace Inga Sundström on he role Lady Macbeth due to her illness at the Royal Swedish Opera again with short notice, performed 10 shows in 21 days.
1948- Got Married and performed her first Wagnerian Role: Der Fliegende Holländer (4 Nov, 1948), performing the role Senta
1953- Bayreuth Debut: Beeethoven 9th and Fidelio
1954- Engagement in Bayreuth Festival: Lohengrin, performing the role of Elsa
1957- Vienna Debut: Brünnhilde Die Walküre
1958- La Scala Debut: Turandot, 1st non-Italian Soprano to sing at the seasonal opening day of La Scala (It is a tradition that La Scala opens on 7 Dec, Saint Ambrose's Day )
1959- Metropolitan Opera Debut: Tristan Und Isolde, renowned as “The best show in Broadway”, the 3 Tristan tenors were all ill unprecedentedly, therefore each of them sang one act of the opera. Brigit make fun of that claiming “No Isolde has ever consumed that many Tristan in a one night”.
1965- Adapting “voice-killing” Role: Richard Strauss’s Elektra, Brigit’s is being warned that the role might shortening her singing career, but she found the role suits her voice perfectly.
1967- Performed Brünnhilde Die Walküre for the 100th times
1970- Last performance of Tristan und Isolde: Brigit claimed that that will be her last performance of Tristan as that is Wieland Wagner’s final production
1982- Last operatic performance: Elektra. At the high point of her career, Brigit declared at the final night of the Elektra production, “ This was my final performance. an I was at peace with this decision.”
1983- moved on to teaching
(More information about Brigit Nilson’s life can be found here: https://birgitnilsson.com/en/about-birgit/ )After reviewing Brigit’s operatic performing career and her major achievements, I have gathered a list featuring characters that highlights her career and then arias and musical materials that can represent these roles, shown as follows:
Weber, Der Freischütz; Role: Agathe, “Wie nahte mir der Schlummer”
Verdi, Macbeth; Role: Lady Macbeth, “La Luce Langue”, “Una Macchia è quituttora”
Wagner, Der Fliegende Holländer; Role: Senta, “Senta’s Ballad”
Puccini, Turandot, Role: Turandot, “In questa Reggia”, “Mo Li Hua”
Wagner, Die Walküre, Role: Brünnhilde, “Hoyotoho”, “Der diese Liebe mir ins Herz gelegt”
Wagner, Tristan und Isolde, Role: Isolde, “Mild und Leise”
Richard Strauss, Elektra, “Orest”
Discussion in the Meeting
Jamming Section
Our jamming section that day has certain limitation. My available time this week does not allow me to study this large quantity of materials and to process it, therefore, I am not able to narrow down the repertoire list above into motives that we will actually use in the project and learn the tunes. Therefore, we have don’t have the materials that we are working for the project yet. Another issue is that, there is only output plug at Genie’s interface, so that we can only process of our voices. However, it is more important for us to have a go of how can we interact with operatic material with electronics. To achieve so, I have used the Puccini’s opera tunes that I have in mind as materials for the jam.
