dial-a-diva
Something is busted on the Met’s website, but that shouldn’t stop you from applying for this week’s $25 weekend night tickets, which after all are for Fleming’s Thaïs and Angela Gheorghiu/Roberto Alagna in the new Rondine. Instructions for this week’s lottery are as follows:
Please enter our Weekend Ticket drawing by calling 212-362-6000 before 8:00 pm tonight, December 29. The available performances for this week are:
Thaïs – January 2, 2009 at 8:00 pm
La Rondine – January 3, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Then there’s that Thais with Carol Neblett from New Orleans….. Famous for the lack of costume…
I have been reading reviews on the Met database of older productions of “Thais” from Farrar, Jeritza and onwards. First of all, critics were trashing the music from the get go. I mean back in 1905 they were trashing the score. Also, it seems that Geraldine Farrar at the Met definitely didn’t bat it out of the park – the reviews were mostly diappointing. Jeritza didn’t exactly set them on fire. The role seemed to be the property of Mary Garden at the Manhattan Opera and Chicago Opera companies. Garden successfully blocked Lina Cavalieri from performing it in New York with Hammerstein’s Manhattan Opera. And she got lambasted for poor singing and starring in a piece of tripe after a while.
Most of the commercially released recordings (Sills and Moffo especially) are poor. The piece is really anything but surefire.
scifisci (#10), this is the doria recording of Thais:
http://www.crotchet.co.uk/4761422.html
Kunoslav – you are probably correct about Jeritza. But if nothing else she was glamorous and had a heftier voice than say, Fleming. She also sang Carmen and Manon and I suppose maybe some other French operas though in Vienna, at least, in the German language. I have a feeling Jeritza was somewhat like Rysanek in that Jeritza’s recordings do not tell the full story.
Rysanek was riveting on stage even when not in her best voice and Jeritza was one of the truly great opera stars of the 20th century – what Jeritza had for her was the admiration of numerous composers such as Richard Strauss, Puccini and Korngold (do not know if Janacek heard her but Jeritza did introduce Jenufa to Vienna which was the opera’s first true affirmation outside of Czech cities). We must remember that Jeritza also regularly sang some quite heavy roles, Salome, Walkuere Brunnhilde, Kaiserin, Senta, Turandot, Minnie, Aegyptische Helena, so she must have had a different type of voice for Thais than most of those we have heard recently. As, it seems, neither Farrar, nor Jeritza, Sills nor Fleming could really rescue the opera Thais and make the opera a regular repertory work, it would reflect that the opera itself is too weak (or too boring) to maintain the lasting popularity of many other French operas we have come to admire.
Regina della fate, #8, brings up something worth exploring. I expect she is referring to Rodney Milnes’ entry on Thais in the Grove Encyl. of Music, a excellent essay worth reading. He defends Thais and Massenet (as I would be inclined to do), and makes the point that the opera has yet to enjoy a really serious and definitive production. Just could be. Fleming’s vocalization is near ideal, but the persona is generalized and all smiles and she is victim to the costumes. It’s beautifully played by the orchestra, though the audience giving Mr Chan such an ovation is rather nausiating. Jeeeez!
You’d think he had done something imiportant. Oy.
Let’s keep Fleming’s lovely soprano singing and add a complex faceted impersonation, a younger more interesting and virile Athaniel and much better dancing and atmospherics — and then see if this show isn’t a whole lot more than “drivel.” And the least you can do, Feldmarschallin, is go read Rodney Milns’ comments.
Happy New Year to All.
Bette Davis would never NOT have first billing…