Lady goes up to eleven

This, dear readers, is wrong, just wrong. On so many levels.

To begin with, the John Lennon glasses are kind of distracting, don't you think? But whatever, trying not to be superficial here. The whole Wagnerian attitude (both in her gestures and her voice) is a real problem however. It's a piece about an increasingly desperate father trying to save his son, not the musical score for the final boss fight against the Flying Dutchman, lady. And a whole orchestra, instead of a simple piano accompaniment? Was that really necessary? (especially when considering that her voice, I admit that much, is pretty strong.) Maybe she just needed all of them to distract the audience from the fact that she's not really getting her lyrical characters right. (I'm working under the assumption here that the story in the translation is developed more or less parallel to the German text.) (Oh, right. They've translated it into Japanese. Did you notice?). For example, when she's singing the Erlkoenig persona, she kind of looks as if she is air-a tergo-ing the dying kid. Singer, ask thyself, is this really what you wanted to convey? There are even cymbal crashes at the conclusion of the most dramatic lines. That should be enough to convince you how corny this is, right?

Right?

Then why do I actually like her interpretation so much? Guess I have to file it under weeaboo.


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Enough of this. Let's have a young Fischer-Dieskau (or maybe it's Orson Welles?) version as an antidote.