Hagen: we breathlessly await your transcription of last night’s interview where Voigt stated that Gelb said he would fire here if she didn’t have weight reduction surgery.

And yes. Sciscifi, there are good singers today who may be compared with those of the past. I think Soile Isokoski evokes the same musicianship and vocal allure as a Gruemmer for example. The recent Arabella I saw in Vienna with Schwanewilms and Kuehmeier brought back memories of Janowitz with Popp (or della Casa and Gueden/Rothemberger). Klaus Florian Vogt is a most interesting tenor in the mode of Julius Patzak. Laszlo Polgar’s Gurnamenz in Budapest last week was stupendous – maybe not erasing memories of Gottlob Frick or Kurt Moll but of that level. The wonderful young tenor Szabolcs Brickner in Budapest may well be the next Wunderlich.

I saw 4 Onegins recently in 6 weeks with totally different casts – all the Tatianas were really fine in different ways, Karita Mattila, Eva Batori, Tunde Franko (as glamorous as Netrebko for sure), and Tamar Iveri – all first class and we have still Fleming and Netrebko who do the role – maybe none as thrilling as Welitsch in the letter scene (on recording) or Benackova who essayed the role though never in NY but all 4 in different ways lent something truly positive to the role. It is so that I cannot think of any Verdi baritones or sopranos who thrill me at the moment – few Sieglindes can lure me into the house as those as varied as Jones, Rysanek, Janowitz etc might have. Yet a Tannhauser in Budapest, Janos Bandi, sang thrillingly and certainly erased memories of all those horrid Tannhausers we have had in the recent past. Botha sings it in Vienna next season and vocally he should have no trouble with it but Bandi truly acts and can blast forth like no other though at times I wish he would moderate the voice a bit more. And here we are only talking of things seen in the last weeks. And I agree we did not have a Bartoli in the past (though surely I might have preferred the legendary Teresa Berganza who eluded me on the stage for the most part – just not in the right place at the right time). I think Garanca’s Octavian was as good as any I have seen since Trudeliese Schmidt who was one of the best after Seefried/Jurinac. It is rare that one has one’s socks knocked off by a new unknown voice (as I was by Margaret Price in her first Donna Anna in Koeln or Benackova in Vienna) but we do have some very fine voices around now – just maybe not as many all in one place at the same time. And maybe it will take a long time before we can again hear a Nilsson, Windgassen, Hotter Tristan or the same in Walkure with Rysanek added on or a Verdi opera with di Stefano, Corelli, Berganzi, del Monaco with a rich Baritone, a Stella, Milanov, Tebaldi, Price, Callas or a strong mezzo like Simionato. Or the wonderful basses, Siepi, Ghaurov, Christoff etc. But as some of the younger readers may envy some of us older folks ( I shan’t name names, Mrs. Claggert) for what we may have seen or heard, we surely can also be envious of you younger guys who have 50 years of listening pleasure ahead of you.

And, by the way, wasn’t the difficulty that Lotte Lehmann had with her top notes more after 1935 or so. She sang Sophie when she was young and many other roles which required a strong upper register (Turandot even though she thought Maria Nemeth, her alternate in Vienna, was more suited to the role).

As far as Mozart and Rossini are concerned, we don’t how the singers of those eras sounded and therefore we can’t make a reasonable comparison with today’s singers.

At any rate, opera to me is Verdi and Wagner, and therefore I’m out of luck.

Singers at that time were booked for so many weeks, so many performances from a list of roles. The selections were then made from week to week depending on box sales, reviews, etc.

I remember seeing Tebaldi’s first contract some years ago and it specified her debut in Otello by a given date followed by a number of performances with the latest by a certain date. Also availability for rehearsals so many days before debut. And if I recall correctly, one matinee broadcast. Roles that she would be available to perform were (again, to the best of my recollection) Desdemona, Violetta, Mimi, Aida, Maddalena, and Tosca. Don’t remember if the Forza Leonora was also included.

Talk about flexibility. I understand that even the subscriptions sometimes ended up with repeat performances of some works.

And not being afraid of any damned can of worms, I say that the highly vilified Bartoli, Terfel, Mattila, Hvorostovsky, Hampson, Vargas, Florez, Fleming, and Netrebko need bow to none WHEN THEY ARE CAST PROPERLY. Shicoff may be over the hill, but he and Gruberova are not minor artists.

But if there are no Wagner and Verdi singers, then don’t do Wagner and Verdi.

I was thinking that even with the dearth of good Wagner singers around these days, Vienna, Budapest and most of the major German opera houses manage to put on Parsifal all at the same time during Easter week. Last Sunday I saw a spendid one in Budapest – all the singers except the Klingsor were top notch – and Vienna had a good cast also. A pity the Met no longer sees fit to present a few Parsifals at this time of the year with any regularity.

I have to disagree with these 2 names. The other ones were flashes in the pan and i thought they were completely forgeattable. Irina Mishura did a Bang of a Carmen in Cincinnati shortly before her met debut. Trust me, this woman was not something you could easily forget. I had her arms around me at the beginning of Act 2 and she WAS Carmen.

Diadkova was the saving grace on LOC’s Ballo in maschera several years ago. Schicoff was at this point variable to bad and Villaroel was overparted as Amelia. Had it not been for Diadkova and Maria Kanyova the night would have been an unmitigated disaster.

Yes, I agree. And Leiferkus really is a great artist and singer – bit ONLY in Russian rep, in which as I recall the Met offered him only one role: Rangoni. Fiend was too hung up on Dwaynebo to offer Leiferkus Onegin, and then Leiferkus fought with Gergiev and so we had the B/B- Putilin, who also stank things up as Iago and Amonasro. Let’s not forget the staggering awful Italian roles of Vladimir Bogachev.

Mishura was indeed not a Kirov artist and she always sang well even when in somewhat too heavy a part. She still sings beautifully and would certainly still be a better Met Maddalena than Viktoria Vizin, a Gelb cover babe type mediocrity who is doing it now.

Olga Savova is another GOOD Kirov artist whom one hopes will return.

Gualtier (and I appreciate your posts):

Was this really a series of one-on-one confrontations between Peter and Ruth? I would think this would be handled by Gelb’s myrmidons and Swenson’s agent. The image you create is Gelb rushing into the ICU pushing her oncologist (our beloved Turandot) out of the way and thrusting a contract in her face.

Regarding Stottler, by the way, I heard her shriek her way through Turandot, sadly, and assume her absence is a function of basic unsuitability to the rep she was singing. She got to the phrase “quel grido” which is where you can tell how the rest of the evening is going to go, wiped out hard on whatever that note is, fled it, and limped through the rest of the evening in fear of the highish through high notes that constitute the majority of the role.

Well, let’s see. When Netrebko was sick with a bad cold and conflicted whether she should risk a bad performance on a live telecast versus canceling and leaving the Met in a very big lurch, which one of us called that “drama queen” behavior? I think it’s pretty obvious who’s the obnoxious one around here.

As for this:
“Of the rest of the Russian invasion only Hvorostovsky was really a grade A singer which is why he’s still in demand everywhere and the rest of them are … I don’t know where they are.”

I would say diadkova is a grade A singer. Quite a thrilling voice. Same with galouzine, and gorchakova.

This conversation is brilliant. I’m going to throw a match on it and say that Gelb is also not only fatophobic and homophobic, and I heard he was going to franchise the Met merchandise to Disney. Also, Pepsi are going to be a major sponsor and as part of their deal every production of Traviata will have the Brindisi aria sung whilst swinging Pepsi around (ditto the various ‘champagne’ arias). Miley Cyrus is slated to do her first ‘Lulu’ in 2011, with Zac Efron doing Alwa. They’re young and pretty, so obviously Gelb is all over them.

And how thrilled I was to see the Commonwealth Mafia rear its head again! For god’s sake, the Good Ship Billinghurst has been resident in the US since the early 70s, so any lingering commonwealthaphilia is tenuous at best.

Swenson is the one who blabbed to the press about her health issues and how she was being discriminated against for being fat and old and sick. Essentially she lied when she implied that she was never returning to the Met, because she must have known that there are dozens of singers (many of them more important in the annals of opera than she) who were away from the Met for a year or more, only to return and resume triumphant careers. (Mirella Freni was gone for more than a decade before her return in the early 1980s, and Gheorghiu and Alagna returned only a couple of seasons after their very ugly public firing by Joe Volpe.)

I might also point out that you have now changed your position from “RAS was a valuable and vital artist who was fired because she was fat” to “RAS was a pitiful sick woman whose dying wish was to sing one more time at the Met.” You can’t have it both ways (though Ms. Swenson has certainly tried to play both those cards in her desperation.)