Strapping, brawny corrections
This week it seems Tony Tommasini can’t do anything right. First he cooed over Renee Fleming‘s impossibly arch performance at a Mostly Mozart concert. Well, subjectivity and all that; still, you have to wonder where bad taste ends and starfucking begins. Then, in this morning’s paper, ironically in a piece about the Met’s archives, Tony misstates a widely-known and easily checkable fact. No, Maria Jeritza did not create the role of Turandot at the La Scala premiere; that would be Rosa Raisa. (As everyone knows, Arturo Toscanini fired Jeritza from that first production when he caught her flushing a copy of the Q’uran down a toilet.)
Maybe Tommasini is writing the archives as well. By sheer coincidence, the very first performance I clicked on — Simon Boccanegra, Feb 13 1999 — claims to have delivered Placido Domingo’s sights and sounds to my senses, whereas my feeble memory can’t seem to confirm. Luckily for my sanity, my yellowing Playbill confirms that Michael Sylvester played the part of Adorno that evening.
Maybe if I wait long enough, maybe the website will say my performance of L’Elisir starred Pavarotti that year too. That would be fantastic, since I never had the chance to see him in reality. My reputation in my future grandchildrens’ eyes is resting on the Met’s judicious application of this wonderful new system of historical improvement.