Voice and Repertory
Gundula Janowitz's voice is distinguished by its very bright, pure, crystalline, tremolo-free sound with tight, rapid vibrato, and by her even breathing technique. She kept her youthful, angelic tone and freshness well into her mature years. Like her predecessors, Elisabeth Grümmer and Maria Stader, who had similar timbre to hers, and like her contemporary, Elizabeth Harwood, Janowitz mastered first and foremost the high and middle register and lyrical-emotional expression. Despite her comparatively weak sound projection, she occasionally performed in dramatic roles (Sieglinde, Leonore, Elsa) or comic roles (Marzelline, Rosalinde), but she was most highly regarded as Fiordiligi, Countess Almaviva, Pamina, Agathe, Arabella, Ariadne, the Angel Gabriel (The Creation), and Countess Madeleine, and in sacred music. She was also a leading interpreter of Richard Strauss "Four Last Songs". With a few exceptions, she avoided foreign-language roles (although recordings exist of her singing Don Carlos and Verdi's Requiem and all three Mozart/DaPonte operas in Italian).
An excerpt of her portrayal of the Figaro Countess in a duet with Swiss soprano Edith Mathis features prominently in the 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption.
Read more about this topic: Gundula Janowitz
Famous quotes containing the words voice and/or repertory:
“O, I am smitten with a hatchet’s jaw;
And that in deed and not in word alone.
chorus: I thought I heard a sound within the house
Unlike the voice of one that jumps for joy.
He splits my skull, not in a friendly way,
Once more: he purposes to kill me dead”
—A.E. (Alfred Edward)
“Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players, and Tennessee Williams has about 5, and Samuel Beckett one—and maybe a clone of that one. I have 10 or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)