Glass Shatterers! 16 Sopranos face the two High G's in Mozart's K.316 *LIVE*

~The "Glass Shatterers!" series focuses on sopranos who sustain High F, or sing higher.

While in Paris in 1779, Mozart wrote the aria “Popoli di Tessaglia” K.316 for one of his favorite sopranos, Aloysia Weber. He was infatuated with her, but she spurned him and married an actor named Joseph Lange, and Mozart ended up marrying her sister, Constanze.

Aloysia must have possessed one of the most extraordinary voices of all time judging by the exquisite and extremely difficult music Mozart composed for her. This aria is the coloratura soprano equivalent of Mount Everest — very long and demanding, and notoriously ending on two High G’s (G6). See the Wikipedia entry for more details on the piece: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popoli_di_Tessaglia!

Its phenomenal demands put the aria out of reach for most sopranos — only about a dozen studio recordings have been made over the decades (nearly all of which can be found on YouTube), but this video showcases 16 soprano who dared to sing the aria live, with no chance to do a retake on those High G's!

They are presented in chronological order:
1. Erika Köth (1925 - 1989 - Salzburg 1958
2. Roberta Peters (1920 - 1937) - Salzburg 1964
3. Emilia Ravaglia - RAI c. 1976
4. Jana Jonasova - Salzburg 1977
5. Luciana Serra - Bologna 1980
6. Beverly Hoch - Sweden 1985
7. Susanna Rigacci - Firenze 1987
8. Natalie Dessay - Paris 1992
9. Valeria Esposito - Catania 1995
10. Erika Miklosa - Pannonhalma 2004
11. Liudmila Shikhova - St Petersburg 2006
12. Patrizia Cigna - South Africa 2006
13. Aleksandra Resztik - Poland c. 2010
14. Elizabeth Vidal - Saint Raphaël 2012
15. Ayako Tanaka - London 2013
16. Sabine Devieilhe - Rome 2018

Видео Glass Shatterers! 16 Sopranos face the two High G's in Mozart's K.316 *LIVE* канала songbirdwatcher