Diana Damrau "Queen of the Night" from The Magic Flute ANALYSIS by Opera Singer

[Music] welcome back to the charismatic voice and to my choice tuesday today we're going to be taking a look at what is considered by many to be the most iconic opera aria of all time this is the queen of the nights arya their by mozart from the magic flute now if you're like i don't think i know about arya you probably do it's been placed in so many films it's that one where a really high voice that gets that same note over and over again and then goes up and down and up and down in seemingly impossible vocal fireworks and i've never sung this arya myself but i have sung another rule in the magic flute many times pamina palmina is the daughter of the queen of the night and the queen of the night sings this arya to pamina so for over 50 performances i've been on stage while being yelled at by the queen of the night and i have opinions about this and in my opinion dionna damrao's performance of the queen of the night is the best now if you have another performance that you love please link that in the comments below there are many great performances out there but for me dionna domrow just nails it so we're going to take a look at her performance at the royal opera house and i'm going to talk about what makes it so dang good let's get to it [Music] [Laughter] [Music] oh [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so right away here is one of the reasons this is the best performance for me and it's because dionna domrow is scary af she is terrifying and in this aria she is telling pomina you have to go kill your father or i will disown you and you will not be my daughter anymore so it's this like major parental custody battle almost jealousy vengeance all of the things so queen of the night hates pomina's father and is like daughter you have to kill him or you're not gonna be my daughter anymore just awful but look at the way she's moving her eyes in this like ah wow it's crazy look at that the oh like the bright-eyed moment there and poor pomina is like what there's a dagger here and you're telling me to go kill it kill dad what how can i do this but she's such a force that you feel like there's nothing pombina can do but accept that dagger and go kill the roster it's just amazing there's so many times i've seen a queen of the night uh stand and almost park and bark this that's where somebody just stands put and sings notes but doesn't necessarily give it tons of feeling just as technically very very sound in this case dionna domrow is so perfect technically but she's taking it further and she said no no i'm going to infuse this arya with the meaning that it's supposed to have and it's it's such a huge difference when you see queen of the night act like this oh let's go back to the beginning watch how scary she is [Music] [Laughter] hamilton [Music] is the accents of each of those little hideouts are like little stabs of pain i love her consonants at the end if she has a t like you can guarantee that the first row was splattered and spit which is exactly how it should be when you're scary like that i also love the way it sounds so open to her her vocal tract got just a beautiful openness where it doesn't sound like she's got lots of tongue tension involved in the sound or anything like that it's just flowing and do note she has no amplification there are microphones to pick up the sound so that they can make a recording but there are not uh amplifiers that are pumping out that sound to the audience there is a full orchestra below and then her voice which is crazy she's very very loud in this instance even if in the mix it sounds like she's a little quiet that's probably because the microphone is a little bit further away very very impressive let's keep going here comes the best part [Music] [Applause] okay that is so hard to do when you're going this is going up to high f by the way a high f it's insane most people are like yeah a high c that's high no this is going up four four steps higher okay high f all the way up there and in order to make that sound consistent sopranos need to do some modification of the vowel as it goes up so it sounds like the same sound but look at her mouth she's going like ah the whole time this is the example that all sopranos need to watch for vowel modification it's insane so just in this arpeggio moment [Music] [Applause] i've seen i've seen this coach many times talking about that file modification on top it is shifting it through different parts of that upper head voice register and it's really really tough just it's just tough okay and often you have combinations of o ah ah even sometimes when people people will go towards like an e or e ish vowel so there's all kinds of vowels they can choose in there she has done this perfectly to maintain uh a semblance of the same sound going up if she'd tried to keep it just in one vowel it would have sounded really really funky so she has to modify to make it sound as if it were one vowel let's go back one more time this is so impressive [Music] so clean the other thing that's really hard here is that these are all on sets there's takadi so little plucked notes in there and on setting a high note is more difficult than on setting a low note an onset is that moment when your vocal folds come together and they go whack a whack-a-whacka right and if you do a perfect onset that means the vocal folds start vibrating the moment that the air starts to come through them now if you try to get those vocal folds going before the air is really ready to come through you get a hard onset that kind of sound almost sounds like a glottal attack really and if you have too much error before those vocal folds start going you tend to have a soft onset that sounds like an h like a ha right so finding that exact perfect onset where you have just a cleanliness no harshness or extra h at the beginning of the sound that is very very difficult to do particularly on high notes because high notes are vibrating very fast they're so much faster than low nose there are exponentially faster vibrations in your vocal folds to sing a high note than for a low note so onsetting a high note and getting those vibrations to start exactly at the right moment is very very tough it requires tons of coordination tons of practice and not too much breath pressure too so very very impressive here let's go back again listen to the beautiful staccati cleans tecate here [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] wow wow wow so that very very top note often is like it it is hard to hit hard to be precise on it and often i see sopranos do like a little moment where their body will go up with it and instead diana's support is like it is almost like a barrel chested kind of support it's very centered here and it almost feels like it's going out of her hips as well so this combination of she is centered and she is low and so she's relying on that super super low support to make it so that breath pressure doesn't come and slam against her larynx at that very very top note that's how she's able to sing this role over and over and over and by the way she is famous for doing something at the metropolitan opera which is like mind-boggling to me in the same production run she actually sang both pamina and the queen of the night i believe i might be wrong but i believe she started as pamina and then switched to queen of the night can you imagine the vocal shift it would be necessary for that pamina is lyric and sweet and i'll usually a lot warmer in the sound as well so being able to flip between the two that is just insane i i could never manage that that's my just i'm amazed by her so okay back to this amazing performance of queen of the night uh let's go back just a little bit look at how scary she even is with these takadis and then notice a beautiful lyric line that she interposes between the two it's like morning scary jabby so hard [Music] just gonna talk about those eyes one more time we don't see those eyes when you're in a huge auditorium but you bet she still has them giving it that kind of energy to pomina to react off of being scared is it's so important it propels the plot forward it is crucial and she does it so well [Music] another thing that's really difficult about this aria is that it has a bunch of these octave jumps and it it requires this soprano to continue emitting a similar volume on the lower note now this is written in such a way that only the very very highest of sopranos will sing it so it's going to be a color a torso panel for sure sometimes you'll have a light coloratory it's really meant to be a dramatic colorator so dramatic colorators usually have some more oomph in that bottom note and it is required for this soprano to try and emit as much sound on that lower f as the higher f in this instance it is difficult to do that you have to kind of drive through the sound a little bit it can be very tiring and it's very easy when you're driving through that lower portion of the sound to get too much weight in the sound so that the high notes then become much more difficult and since there are so many high notes in this aria that is detrimental that's like death you won't get those high f's if you have too much weight in the lower notes so um she's doing a really good job of focusing that lower note down in this way she's still pumping some sound through it but she's focusing it almost forward so that it's not thickening up in the sound but instead it has ring which will carry out over the orchestra look back a little bit [Music] oh [Music] this section it's triplets and they're very fast triplets and most of the time a queen gets to this and it's just like oh my goodness i gotta get all the notes all the notes are going by they're going by gotta get them all and tiana makes this like it's in sorcery it has so much phrasing it has like almost lilting in it as well and it really makes you feel like she's casting a spell over pamina here so beautiful for such a technically difficult section you wouldn't think from watching her sing this that that's [Music] difficult [Music] i love the way she's using her mouth to shape it here too she's really pulled back the dynamic you see her mouth being a lot more close and then when she gets above the staff she does open her mouth up more for a little bit more of that bowel modification there as well one more time [Music] scary [Music] i'm so sorry uh she knew where her camera is this is again mind-blowing because here's the thing opera singers aren't normally performing for cameras right you're usually performing in an auditorium out to the audience so if there's a live stream that's just that's not very common in opera it's becoming a little more common now but i think this is i want to say they published this in 2017 i think it's recorded before um so she looked straight at her camera in that point it's so smart she's brilliant she's a very very smart lady so i've i will tell you i have worked with her before as well at la opera she came in and was singing antonia and i got to cover her in that role and she's so sweet and so gracious and so smart about every single performance move so just so you know she might be really scary in this and she is so wonderful and gracious and um generous in person let's go back again [Music] [Music] okay one more thing here check out when she does get down on on the bed here she's still really keeping her torso straight she's still making sure that her breathing apparatus is able to really expand and keep that centeredness going so even when she bends down at one point to pick up pamina's chin you see her do that and then get back into that open torso for her breath right afterwards uh here we go [Music] scary [Music] oh [Music] amazing confidence there [Music] oh all right that is the last note that she's going to sing right there so is on a lower note for the queen and it's very difficult to deliver a convincing ending you have this big note which is actually i think it's only a b-flat so not even a high c is where that final really long extended high note is it's able to pack a lot more weight and dramaticism into it whereas that top little peak f can't really do that so this b flat is able to pack in more drama you hear i love the drama she uses in her body too with her arms and you hear some really nice vibrato it's even it's sustained and she has a lot of drive on that note uh but then right afterwards finishing the aria on is like oh man but can i i'd really like to finish on a high note mozart and instead he writes a slightly lower notes and i i know i've heard queen of the knights but like ah man getting that note out and getting enough volume out so it feels like a decisive ending is difficult she gets enough volume up and she is able to really give more impact by using really strong consonants so i really appreciate um the rolled r at the end of this look at this all together now that you know about the details within [Music] [Music] wow [Music] scary and there you have it scary af diana damrow performing the queen of the knights arya i am blown away every time i watch that by the utter perfection of her performance now if you do like another performance or singer that does this let me know there are some really great other ones out there for sure this one is just my personal favorite and i'd love to hear who your favorites are so post those in the comments below and also let me know if there are any other opera arias you would like to be reviewed or any other songs in general i love hearing what you would like to see on this channel and i absolutely look at those recommendations i tally them up so yeah go ahead make tons of recommendations please and if you want to come talk with me live sometime i'm here every monday tuesday and friday at 8 a.m arizona time and you can also find me on patreon and if you want to learn more about singing in any style not just opera i have a course on that intensive it is at thecharismaticvoice.com or you can learn about music appreciation there as well i hope to see you somewhere soon bye you

Channel: The Charismatic Voice

Views: 214,689

Rating: 4.9356828 out of 5

Keywords: queen of the night, diana damrau, the magic flute, diana damrau queen of the night, reaction video, the magic flute (opera), queen of the night opera, queen of the night the voice, diana damrau reaction, diana damrau queen of the night aria reaction, the charismatic voice, elizabeth zharoff

Id: QIEYFpEzTB0

Length: 20min 48sec (1248 seconds)

Published: Tue May 25 2021