Not old standards but…

What about Le Cid – hasn’t been done in decades (except Eve Queler did it in concert years ago) and it’s a terrific opera.

And no one has done Guntram (Wagner) or Siberia (Giordano) – maybe not great operas but moments are quite wonderful and they deserve to be done!

She had so much wit and charm (even as Flora!!!!)

That last bit was worthy of, even perhaps surpassed, the Vicar Himself!

At the time I felt as if Amina was a mistake for her, however, and in light of all that has floated down the river since, I wish I had been able to stay to see the finale wherein she may have really pulled a rabbit out of her chapeau. Also, I plead guilty to coming to the opera with the bells of Sutherland and the acrid accuracy of Callas in my ears.

It’s a shame I wasn’t able to truly “listen” to what she had to offer.

She seemed headed for bigger things from the beginning and me and my friends cheered her on when she got a Hansel, cherubino, Siebel or Nicklause. We were her earliest fan club and she always put us on her guest list to come backstage at the Met after the performance.

After her three year journeyman stint she went to Europe and made a bigger splash. When she returned to the Met a few years later, she sang only leading parts
in MOSTLY carefully selected repertory.

The Norma didn’t work out well (but there were more than three I think). Hunter was out of sorts and sang
less well than she supposedly did in San Fran. Corelli created drama by a will-he-won’t-he sing Pollione thing. And Von Stade sort of faded into the wall. She
was wispy next to Hunter and she didn’t boom like some other Adalgisa’s had done in the preceding few years.
Von Stade decided Adalgisa wasn’t for her. (It really could have been with the right partners) and never did it again.

Von Stade’s other Met experiment was as Octavian. She was concerned about sounding sort of lightish in the role and never sang the full role in the house. She experimented on the Met tour, I saw her in Boston with Soderstrom (see Soderstrom thread!) with Battle. I absolutely loved all three ladies. But Von Stade was very sensitive to criticism and didn’t want to seem underpowered in a role sung by more robust voices.

I don’t remember which role it was but I recall hearing
that von Stade heard something like “she looks too old for that role” recently and quickly dropped the part.
I guess she has remained very sensitive to criticism, and careful of what she does.

Well why not. she had a long, successfull career which is still in it’s final stages. She’s come a loooong way
since she sang the humming chorus in Butterfly as a solo role very very early in her career.

I was happy to see two of my three choices–rather expected Huguenots, but was surprised by how well Armide did. I might have thought of a Met Freischuetz ten years ago, when Voigt & Heppner were still in good voice, but now…who would you get for Max? (Actually, I think Griffey would make a good Max with a sympathetic conductor, but not at the Met.)

I have only seen Norma live once, and that was in 1978 with Caballe and Bumbry, so it was big guns all the way. Pollione (Pedro Lavirgen on that occasion) didn’t really stand a chance … Vicar John of Wakefield will be delighted to hear that Elizabeth Bainbridge was a Clotilde for the ages, probably effacing memories of Commonwealth artist Joan Sutherland’s epoch-making appearance in this key role.

*Con rispetto*, I would not call Zajick, great in many things, remotely a great Adalgisa. DiDonato should be wonderful, more like the greatest Adalgisa I’ve ever heard ( better even than Verrett), Susanne Mentzer, who did it in Paris opposite Vaness and was absolutely heartbreaking, plus fresh and lyrical in timbre as opposed to the Obraztsova/ Zajick steamroller model.

DiDonato has such wonderful Italian diction and phrasing and is such a good actress that her performance will surely not flatter Gruberova’s efforts.

“Sir John in Love with the Boatswain’s Mate”

Besides, l’Africaine is available to one and all via the very good San Francisco Opera production with Verrett/Domingo/Swenson.

Poor Robert le Diable, though–maybe ABT or NYCB would do a dancing dead nuns ballet some day??