May I ask you, as you are quite the Steber expert, which of her two Vanessas do you think the better, and why? Just recently have I purchased her Salzburg Vanessa, which I enjoy enormously for Gedda and Elias. I feel she was slightly better in the studio recording but it is now a long while I’ve not heard it.
What do you have to say about this marvelous singer, whom I’ve only gotten acquainted with, in the last ten years.
Her Kaiserin and Minnie are very fine — I have not heard her Elsa, but am aware she sang it.

As well, at the time of the Vanessa premiere at the Met in ’58, what were the reactions of the press and public.

Thank you.
I only ask as you appear to me to know the difference between scheiss und shinola.

How utterly delicious, coming from la bocca della verita di Frego!

Where was anything about the music, how it got played, to complement what Dante did with the staging? You certainly made the case, though complimenting Kaufmann too much (but I trust more astute in judging diction of about the entire cast) that there was as much a lack of connection or focus to the whole thing, such as happened with both the Met Tosca (Bondy) and Salome (Flimm). Barenboim, with what producers he has worked with before, definitely knows better, so he is one the two involved in all this, with Lissner, who is without excuse the most.

Thank you very generously in advance, unless you have something strong enough to say otherwise, for saving my time and effort come a Sunday afternoon in March,
when I most likely will not be attending this. Any twinge of doubt I had about prejudging anything, in what I’ve written on my blog) has most certainly vanished now, as though into thin air. Your review, and I feel it haughty for me to say it, is equally as worthy as mine. I had plans, had intended to see it, but neither one of the two theaters here (Rave and Santikos) that do world opera in HD were willing to show it, whereas had I lived in Tulsa instead of Houston I might’ve had even a very easy time getting there to do so.

http://www.thedavidsoperaworldblog.blogspot.com Not that it needs it, certainly not as much as mine, but notice of review on your site will post on my blog straight away.

David S

As far as Tosca, methinks I recall Alex Ross sizing it up in one apt and rarely applied word these days, “FIASCO”.

http://www.emmadante.it

“Must the winter come So SOOOOOOOON??”

BTW, the Bayerische Staatsoper is renting out the Tosca for next summer, it seems.

Wasn’t perfect, but SO much better than many others I’ve seen over the last few decades. The FZ production had long since seen its day.

I once participated in a “trilingual carmen” but now my college days are over and I have stopped smoking Peyote.

I kind of figured Dante set herself up for booing no matter what by her smart-alecky remarks to the press in the past few weeks. A Sicilian telling the Milanese press that she has never bothered to set foot in La Scala before being employed there is going to get crucified (and she had to know that, didn’t she?)

But I’m just a loudmouthed harpy, I can’t help it.

This is a fine and literate review, but I must, Miss Gorightry, plotest the Tosca-Flop shorthand! You’ve said exactly what was wrong with it in the next paragraph, but why add into the Coliseum mentality with which productions are in danger of being judged? Anyway isn’t it rather well sold for a flop, I thought?

On another subject entirely, it is amusing to think of Schrott singing in Russian, and then get lost in non-homoerotic reverie about how maybe growing up in Baritonia or wherever he’s from, he was this huge Arkhipova fan with pictures of her in his locker, and did it as a tribute to her famous trilingual Carmen with del Monaco. I mean it isn’t impossible.

Anyway this was a swell read.

Hair pulling is easier if you have long hair.

But thanks for the report, Squirrel, I couldn’t go but it doesn’t sound like I missed very much.