In January came the sad news of Dame Margaret Price's death at the age of 69. I can't lay claim to have seen her perform in her heyday or any other of her days, so my appreciation is a second-hand one, based on decades-old recordings and little else. By little else I mean that my enjoyment of her voice is purely down to the quality of her singing alone, which is as it should be. But never quite is. Unlike some singers (especially sopranos ) I've never encountered an overenthusiastic / rabid set of fans where Margaret Price is concerned and for this I am grateful*. At the end of the day it's what a singer can do on stage that matters to me, the rest is just magazine fodder. Sometimes entertaining magazine fodder, but fodder still.
But less of my pontificating, and more from MP herself. Make yourself a cuppa, grab the biscuits, and put your feet up for the next forty minutes and watch as Edward Seckerson of The Independent conversed with Margaret Price at Wigmore Hall several years ago. Conductors may want to walk on by this one...
*Okay, so they might exist - but I've never run into them.
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