Scent of a woman
La Cieca shudders to think that Hugh Canning may be indulging in a trifle more anatomical detail than is absolutely necessary:
The few touches of colour make big statements: the hostess’s red camellia at the Act I festivities, or her scarlet and her friend’s pink one at Flora’s gambling party.
Leonie Rysanek’s Met debut was hardly a ‘Cinderella story’ featuring an unknown. She was Bayreuth’s Sieglinde a full eight years before, and had recorded Leonore, the Kaiserin and Ariadne for major labels.
Lindoro: you need to get your stories straight. Rysanek was a big European star who was scheduled to make her Met debut in the early spring of 1959. She had sung Lady Macbeth with great success in several venues including San Francisco and had already done quite a bit of commercial recording. According to her, she had been in negotiations with the Met since around 1953 but she was holding out for a contract that included Italian repertoire. When Callas canceled, she was the first singer approached as a “safe” choice, i.e., nobody wanted to take a chance on an unknown. The Met rearranged her performance schedule and brought her in a couple of months early.
Caballe was brought in for a one-off concert mostly because she had a demonstrated ability to learn music quickly. We don’t know who might have been approached before her, but I think it’s safe to say that the first calls would have gone to singers who already had sung Lucrezia elsewhere, e.g., Leyla Gencer.
Gasdia’s Scala debut was a ploy to avoid a riot in the theater: nobody, the management reasoned, would boo so young a girl. That she turned out to be a very fine singer is more or less a coincidence.
And te Kanawa, like Rysanek, was a somewhat established singer who was in New York waiting to make her debut when she got the call.
None of these are “Cinderella stories.” Just because a singer has not performed previously in New York does not make her unknown. As Madame Rose says, “New York is the center of New York.”
Edited to add: And it is not the Met’s or anyone else’s primary mission to give young people a break in the business; rather, it’s to present the best quality opera they can muster under the circumstances. “Best quality” in an emergency generally means using an experienced singer, not throwing some newbie out there and hoping for the best.
Thanks for setting me up with the stories on some of that Cieca. I had no idea of some of those back stories.
“Best quality” in an emergency generally means using an experienced singer, not throwing some newbie out there and hoping for the best.
Come on, Cieca, after some of the singing that has been afflicted on us by some of these “established stars”? Do you really want to go and say that a newbie would sometime not be better?
Again, I have said it before, I know the Met is an international house and I realize what does that entitle. Yet, I have not heard how is it unrealistic to have good locally grown singers singing roles that they can sing just as well or better than some established star. Nobody has told me, aside from the obvious “star power and ticket sales”, what (in just 1 case) does de Niese has on Oropesa as Susanna.
I guess the excuse is on the fact that being an International house, the Met is and always will be a consumer and rarely an exporter.
In the meantime, locally grown artists continue to leave the USA and go to be the bread and butter of German opera houses.
Oropesa sings Susanna at the Met later this year.
Lindoro at 67
“Patricia Wise, who was much admired in Vienna and Europe and never made it to the Met. Yet how many Sophies from outside the USA did we get to see at the Met while Ms. Wise held the Viennese in a spell?”
I don’t think one can complain too much about non-American Sophies if one adds up the performances Reri Grist, Judith Blegen, Kathleen Battle, Ruth Welting, Gianna Rolandi, Barbara Hendricks, Gail Robinson, Helen Donath, Barbara Bonney, Heidi Grant Murphy, and Laura Aikin have sung in the Merrill-O’Hearn production.
And Wise got some good exposure at NYCO. To be truthful, I saw her a number of times there, I remember Zerbinetta particularly. She was quite
good but somehow I never thought she was really
outstanding. Although other lyric coloraturas made it to the Met that I felt were not as good as Wise.
Her timing may have been off. She first came to attention in NY around 1970 when Bing was really
just marking time. And the few years after Bing with Chapin, etc. where a chaotic time at the Met. Kubleik as Music Director, now that was messy….
For anyone interested; Patricia Wise can be heard doing the title role on EMI’s 1992 complete version of Berg’s Lulu ( a live performance from Paris)under Jeffrey
Tate..An excellent alternative to the other well known Stratas version.
Clearing up a confusion: Something mentioned they did not know what the Vicar of Wakefield’s term “Not a patch on…….(presumably some singer’s name!)” as a term, meant.
Think of a patchwork quilt… if someone is not even part of that quilt, not even ‘a patch’….it means they are ,not to be mentioned in the same company as ‘such and such a singer…’
And NO! I’m not a cover for your blessed Vicar. I am much too sinful for that title.
Harry:
That recording is so out of print is not even funny. I once saw it at full prize on eBay and the seller would not even take a money order (Credit cards only).
One of these days I’ll have to ask her if she has a CD copy of it that I can copy, but I want the whole thing for my collection.
#78 Lindoro, that Lulu recording is back in print on the EMI Classics label. You can download it on Amazon.
Patricia Wise was at City Opera around the same time that Judith Blegen got her lucky break and happened into the new Fidelio production at the Met with Rysanek, Vickers and Bohm. Blegen became house singer in many of the roles that they had in common. They were both pretty girls and good singers, though I can say, after endless repetition, I did get a bit tired of Blegen’s Sophie.