I have a weakness for the razz-matazz. Much as I'd like to think of myself as a sophisticated listener of classical music, lyrical pieces like Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words or Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, I'm more often drawn to pieces that require technical virtuosity - fingers that "fly across the keyboard."
My go-to music is instrumental, chiefly piano, and also violin. But I have no trouble defining the human voice as an instrument, as well, and this especially holds true, it seems to me, for singers with exceptional talent and well harnessed raw powers - singers like Pavarotti or Joan Sutherland, to name just a couple of my favorites.
When it comes to showing off at the piano, Liszt comes first to my mind. But there are many others: Chopin, Prokofiev, Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit.
But I want to focus here on what I think must be the most difficult piece ever writtten for a coloratura soprano, credit going for Mr. Mozart himself. I'm talking about that challenge not only to the voice box but to the lips and tongue and cheeks as well: "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen (The Vengeance of Hell boils in my heart)" from The Magic Flute. It's kind of a rite of passage for coloratura sopranos to attempt it, so there is no shortage of performances to listen to. For me, the leader of the pack has got to be Diana Damrau. Here she is all gussied up on a costume that does justice to her magical vocal skills, a gown suggestive of a bonfire and a wig that looks like she's wearing a Victorian sofa nestled in an electric fan. Pure theatricality to give form to what's going on here on stage: a mother, known as "The Queen of the Night" telling her daughter, Pamina, that she has to put a dagger in the heart of Sarastro. Not because he has been holding Pamina hostage, but because he has robbed her, the queen, of her powers. "Do it," says the queen, or "you will be my daughter nevermore!" A heavy trip to lay on an innocent kid.
Opera is by nature histrionic, but nowhere more excessively dramatic than in this aria, which is part of opera lore, and not just in German-speaking countries, where they call German operas like The Magic Flute not by their Italian name, but by a German name, a "Singspiel" - a song play.
An example of how much fun German speakers can get out of this over-the-top piece of music can be seen in the jazz takedown by Bodo Wartke, Germany's cabaret artist and musical satirist par excellence. To help you follow along (and why wouldn't you?), here are the lyrics in English translation and in the original German:
[I hope I haven't crossed the copyright lines here. If so, I will take this down immediately, of course. But just so you can follow Bodo's performance...
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