booty call
As we approach the new year, La Cieca is gearing herself up to revive the recently dormant Unnatural Acts of Opera. Your doyenne was thinking that an interesting theme for 2009 might be “The Greatest Pirates,” i.e., the most important and impressive live, non-commerical recorded documents of opera. La Cieca is now accepting nominations from the cher public and will open the floor to discussion of the ten most demented and therefore most indispensable of the opera pirates.
orgonasova was a terrific donna anna in chicago many years ago … would love to hear her again.
also curious as someone else was above (what a great, long thread) about bonfadelli’s current activity.
How about I Puritani with the soprano of your choice and Salvatore Fisichella? There’s a clip of him with Gruberova from Bregenz (sp?) and he is simply wonderful. Which leads to a “magnum mysterium”: apparently he did Puritani in the mid eighties with Sutherland at the Met and received rave/rapturous reviews. Given the state of tenorizing then and since how in the name of Jussi did he not have a major career at the Met? And it’s not just the high notes. If the clips on you tube are to be believed he had/has the whole package. Was it politics or did he, a la Cerquetti, just say it wasn’t worth the hassle and in his case chose a less stressful career in Europe? Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to why he just vanished from the New York scene.
And let’s add another Bjorling performance to my previous list: Manon Lescaut with Licia Albanese from the Met. The deportation scene is huge with barely a sob on his part. Great, great singing.
I don’t know if anyone actually recorded the Karajan Meistersinger from Salzburg with Janowitz, Kollo, Schreier and Ridderbusch, but I would be curious to listen to it.
If Orgonasova actually sang some R. Strauss, I would be curious to hear it as well. Apparently, she did sing the Vier letzte Lieder (at least with Chung in Paris – maybe).
I understand this is a bit off-topic, because we are supposed to vote for classic pirate performances, instead of hard-to-find ones, but the really great ones have been most of them officially released by now – such as the Mexican Aida with Callas Karajan’s FroSch with Rysanek and C. Ludwig etc.
BTW, since we are speaking of hidden treasures, I believe both the Royal Opera House and the Salzburg Festival should be praised for their projects of releasing the gems in their archives, while theatres like the Met don’t bother to release anything (but for the new stuff on DVD).
Florez has also a lot of officially unreleased video stuff. For instance:
Torino, 2001, L´Italiana in Algeri, directed by Alessandro di Marchi with Mark S. Doss and Luciana D’intino. This video is AWESOME.
Las Palmas, 2004. I Puritani, with Mariola Cantarero and Simon Orfila. This is a MUST, since Florez very seldom sings Arturo.
There’s also a terrific Ägyptische Helena (1956?) with a young Rysanek in wonderful voice.
There is a recent unearthed pirate of Grob-Prandl’s Isolde on the Walhall label conducted by Andre Cluytens. Georgine von Milinkovic was Brangäne, Kurt Böhme was Marke, and some veteran by the name of Rudolf Lustig was Tristan.
How about “les Troyens” from Covent Garden with Jessye Norman? I think it’s available somewhere. Does she sing “Cassandre” or “Didon”?
La Cieca, why not consider the Chrisrian Ocier terrific suggestion (146)about Tristan and Isolde with Grob-Prandl. Her Isolde with Rudolf Moralt, unfortunately only the second act,is amazing.
Yes La Cieca, I think that the Cluytens Tristan would be fantastic, if only to hear some good documentation of Grob-Prandl’s terrific Isolde. I know that you will have three Tristans including this one by the time the Cluytens is added to UAO, but I could imagine that it would be a truly awesome performance, considering that her only other complete Isolde is preserved in awful sound albeit her awesome partnership with De Sabata, Cavleti, Lorenz, and Nilsson.
Also, what do you think of any of Malfitano’s work? Her Salome perhaps, or even her Tosca, her Mahagonny, or her Begbick?
Gundryggia, why is Sills a SUNT? Explain please.