Cristina Deutekom - Fruhlingsstimmen Walzer (Johann Strauss) (1971)

Ever since 2019 when I discovered one of my favorite sopranos of all time, the Dutch Cristina Deutekom (1931 - 2014), there have been several recordings Cristina produced, especially in 1971, that have sadly got kicked off of Youtube from channels that might have been terminated. Because I don't want people to miss these EXTRAORDINARY recordings, I feel it's about time to recover these recordings back.
This particular piece is called "Fruhlingsstimmen Walzer", or the Voices of Spring waltz, composed by Johann Strauss II, in 1882. It was recorded on a lost 1971 vinyl album somebody uploaded in the past, but like I mentioned, it got kicked off so that's why I'm recovering it.
Unfortunately, from what I've gathered, most people dislike hotter vibratos like you can hear in this recording. But, I think it was absolutely wrong to have this recording kicked off, because to me, this vibrato is absolutely phenomenal!!!!!!!! If you hear some other sopranos' recordings of this piece you will definitely notice a much slower (worse to me) vibrato, and slow vibratos are my absolute nemesis when trying to find good hot opera singers to listen to. If we take perhaps 200 or 300 different versions of a very well-known aria such as "O Mio Babbino Caro", perhaps only 10 to 20 of these versions have good hot vibratos in my opinion. Nearly 90 percent of most opera singers have, or are taught to sing with, a terrible horrible no-good very-bad WOBBLE vibrato, and this is primarily the reason why many people absolutely dislike opera - because of the wobbles. But this version is also great, because there are some slides (Italian: Portamento) between the notes, and to me, this adds a lot more expression to the piece - even when there's vibrato on the slides. Most modern sopranos literally just hit the notes, without sliding between any two notes, and this makes them sound absolutely expressionless. Abby Becker is one soprano that immediately comes to mind.
Cristina Deutekom was absolutely best known for her scale technique, which are called "Runs" or more often "Roulades" in French terminology, or "Gorgeggio" in Italian. To be honest, you have never ever heard or will never ever hear such crisp runs (roulades) in the operatic vocal industry as those of Cristina Deutekom, unless one spends eight years working on roulades and trills as Cristina did. Yes, eight long years of very intense practicing of the roulades and trills that makes a good opera singer a good one. Even the most amazing opera singers today, like Kathleen Battle, Laura Bretan, even Denise Leigh for crying out loud!, can't even do roulades nearly as crisply as Cristina could do these, despite their properly fast vocal vibratos and their amazing trill technique. Cristina's runs and scales are so crisp that I swear it sounds like a violin playing the scales up and down. Not to mention of course, her properly fast vibrato which she has in most of these recordings. Perhaps she is doing the characteristicly healthy way of executing glottal break between two vowels as commonly heard in German, between the notes? Given that German and Dutch was Cristina's primary language and they both have vowel breaks between certain words, maybe this is how Cristina learned to do these. Supposedly, other opera singers don't seem to have as amazing runs as Cristina, perhaps because they haven't got the healthy glottal breaks mastered yet. Who knows. This is just speculation.
To hear more solo tracks by this legendary gem of a soprano, click on this playlist.
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