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I have admitted that I have some freakish affection to lover mirage “moments” in sound and the cellos concertos are my “specially” beloved concertos:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2630

The very same goes with voices. The screechy sopranos are fine but like violins they might be annoying. Those contemporary irritating and exasperating sopranos with teenager singing mannerism (courtesy to Netrebco and alike) are good for cheap mass-market hype but not for the meaningful and evocative singing.

Here come my beloved contraltos…

The world is not spoiled with great contraltos and most of the contralto repertoire is in the second roles, or in the music that I do not care, but.... I would like them to sing everything – I just LOVE females that can have “substance” in their tone and who know now to use that “load” artistically.

A few years ago I discover Eva Podles and since then I’m a huge her admirer. I might not completely in beginning appreciate Eva's Slav inflection in her voice but then I went over it and even I trained my Koshka to meow “in tone” with Eva Podles’ marvels singing.

I would like to open a little audio secret to you. When in my past, in 2000-2002 I was in my compression drivers crazy research and when I was going through countless compression drivers my ultimate test was to cross a driver at 800Hz and let it to play Marian Anderson’s or Eva Podles recitals… A good contralto takes all that crappie radio apart…. It was exactly why everything is gone but the S2 is left to live in my Macondo…

So, Eva Podles. From the Delos site:

Beyond a distinctive voice of staggering range, agility and amplitude, the Polish contralto Ewa Podles sings with profound emotional commitment and a lieder singer's sensitivity to text. As comfortable with Mahler and Prokofiev as the breathtakingly florid music of Gluck, Handel, Vivaldi and Rossini, she is a true original, a "Golden Age" singer for our time. Her 2000-2001 season includes debuts with the Detroit Symphony (opening the season, Music Director Neeme Järvi conducting performances of Mahler's Second Symphony), Toronto Symphony (Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky), Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (a Gluck/Handel program conducted by Nicholas McGegan) and concert with Music of the Baroque in Chicago's Orchestra Hall. She also returns to Carnegie Hall for Handel Arias with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra under Constantine Orbelian (a program she has recorded with this ensemble for Delos); makes her Dallas Opera debut, as Erda in Wagner's Siegfried; sings her first-ever Mistress Quickly in Verdi's Falstaff at the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin; and Cornelia in Handel's Giulio Cesare at the Gran Teatre del Liceu. In addition she will make a North American recital tour with the pianist Ania Marchwinska. In the 2001-2002 season she will sing the title role of Giulio Cesare for her Canadian Opera Company debut.

1999-2000 highlights include performances of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde with the Philadelphia Orchestra (including one in New York's Carnegie Hall) and Ottawa's National Arts Centre Orchestra; Kindertotenlieder with Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra; and Third Symphony with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony. In addition she performed Alexander Nevsky with the New World Symphony Orchestra in Miami Beach, Florida; offered her celebrated Rossini Arias for Contralto program with Constantine Orbelian and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra in the San Francisco Opera House; and gave recitals at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw as well as in Montreal, Philadelphia and New York. Opera engagements that season include the title role of Handel's Giulio Cesare in Oviedo, Spain; her first-ever Baba the Turk in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress at Catania's Teatro Bellini and the title role of Rossini's Tancredi in Warsaw. The preceding season she made a hugely successful European tour (Paris, Birmingham, Vienna, Amsterdam) in the title role of Handel's Rinaldo with Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music; a unanimously acclaimed North American recital tour (including Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Toronto, and opening the "Art of the Song" series at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall); five Alexander Nevskys with the San Francisco Symphony under Libor Pes?e k; a virtuosic baroque program with Québec's Les Violons du Roy under its Music Director Bernard Labadie; the Rossini Arias for Contralto program with the Edmonton Symphony and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra under Constantine Orbelian, the latter her Carnegie Hall debut; Berlioz' La mort de Cléopâtre and arias from the Berlioz's version of Gluck's Orphée with Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony; and Bradamante in Handel's Alcina at Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu.

Mme. Podles' has sung her "signature" role of Rossini's Tancredi at La Scala and the Staatsoper Berlin (and on the Grammy-nominated Naxos recording); Arsace (Semiramide) at Venice's Teatro La Fenice; Handel's Rinaldo at New York's Metropolitan Opera and Paris' Théâtre Châtelet; Dalila in Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila at Paris' Opéra Bastille; and Ulrica in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera at Madrid's Teatro Real. She has also sung principal roles at the Frankfurt Alte Oper, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Vienna State Opera, Naples' Teatro San Carlo, Warsaw's National Theatre, the Rome, Budapest and Vancouver Operas. In addition she has been welcomed at the Aix-en-Provence, Flanders and Montpellier Festivals; as well as Canada's Festival International de Lanaudière. She has appeared with the Pittsburgh and NHK Tokyo Symphonies, Hong Kong and Dresden Philharmonics, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and National Orchestra of Spain, under such conductors as Lorin Maazel, David Atherton, Gianluigi Gelmetti , Peter Maag, Myung-Whun Chung and Armin Jordan. Her many collaborations with Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre includes two Deutsche Grammophon recordings: Handel's Ariodante (winner of the coveted Diapason d'Or) and Gluck's Armide. Other recent issues include A Treasury of Polish Songs with pianist Ewa Pob»ocka, Respighi's Il Tramonto, two recordings of Gluck's Orfeo, Mahler #2 and #3, Alexander Nevsky, and a unanimously acclaimed all-Rossini disc, awarded the prestigious Preis der Deutschen Schallplatten Kritik. An especially renowned interpreter of Russian song, her widely acclaimed Mélodies Russes CD with pianist Graham Johnson earned the Grand Prix de L'Académie Française du Disque. An altogether riveting recitalist, Mme. Podles' has offered programs at London's Wigmore Hall, Paris' Salle Gaveau, Théâtre de l'Athénée and Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre and San Francisco's Herbst Theater. Recently Mme. Podles' began collaborating with the renowned pianist Garrick Ohlsson, including on a forthcoming Arabesque recording of Chopin songs. Among the international publications in which she has been profiled are The New York Times, Orpheus, Opera News and The Wall Street Journal.

Eva has a web site:

http://www.podles.pl/english/index_e.htm

and here her page at OperaCritic:

http://theoperacritic.com/singers.php?singer=ewa_podles

I own whatever Eva ever released and I juts wish it was more…

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