Susana es una coqueta

Yes, I did go see Susana. I thought the night was worth the money ($25.00 US) even though at times I found myself wishing I was better at interpreting Spanish. That’s because Susana is quite the coquette and not at all bashful. Between songs, she flirted with at least two violinists and the maestro plus tossing frequent sly asides to audience members. They all seemed to lap it up. I have to say she is a very accomplished entertainer.

While I could not fully appreciate her humor, I cannot be too hard on myself, I realize that humor and poetry are the very last things one masters in any foreign language. I am a very long way from mastery of Spanish.

Susana has tremendous vocal range and when she sang popular songs she stayed in her lower register. So often when classically trained sopranos sing popular songs they stay in their high register and this never really sounds right. I don’t know if she made a conscious artistic choice, or she was saving her vocal cords, or what, but I liked her decision.

There were supposed to be several songs by legendary peruviana Yma Sumac according to the announcement in Diario Xalapa, but the program only noted one, and I was not even sure she sang that one (the performance and the printed program did not really match all that well). Sumac had legendary vocal range and power and could sustain a note for an incredible length of time. For some reason this is always a crowd pleaser. I wanted to see how Susana measured up because I remember listening to my sister's Yma Sumac recordings a long time ago.