Raina, ritornata
Legendary diva Raina Kabaivanska, who announced her farewell to opera her two years ago as the Countess in Queen of Spades, has changed her mind. The soprano has accepted the leading role in Nino Rota‘s opera buffa La scuola di guida (The Driving School), as a woman who falls in love with her driving instructor. The opera premiered in Spoleto in 1959, but has not been performed since. The production will play in July at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena.
As our doyenne recently said about another situation, “This does not bode well.”
speaking of us, retired legendary divas, la bumbry had been announced as the countess for vienna, wasn’t she? and now she’s slated for treemonisha.
http://www.bu.edu/today/2010/01/26/opera-star-grace-bumbry-returns-bu
I wouldn’t rush to judgment on this.
She is scheduled to teach at the Academia and the summer program looks to be of a high caliber. Without knowing the circumstances ( what type of a role is it, will it be used for instructional purposes, is the performance in work-shop format, etc) there seems to be no reason for alarm.
Raina is much beloved in Italy – I’ll never forget the reception in Verona when she “retired” the role of Butterfly ( the audience seemed to be overwhelmingly Italian)
If one is sick of the many Tosca versions’ around……just listen instead to Raina’s version. It is full of insightful touches that other sopranos missed.
Yes, how true. The Met missed a lot by neglecting her. She was (and still is) incredibly beloved in Italy, singing almost everywhere. La Scala, on the other hand, also neglected her considerably. In the late 80s and throughout the 90s she formed a strong artistic partnership with Daniel Oren, and together they gave so many great performances of Tosca, Manon Lescaut, Butterfly. I also saw her in her prime as Donizetti’s Fausta (a killer role, and another one of those angry scorned women I love so much) and in Roberto Devereux. She was a charming Hanna Glavari, too. Italians like to boo, but I very rarely turned against her. The only time she tried Traviata in Bologna, she got a few hisses. In several interviews she has mentioned her big regret for not being able to sing the role again. She would always say how much the role belonged to her, and that “just a few measures” in the first act prevented her from singing it again.
I’ll be in Italy in July. I’ll try to go see this “Scuola di guida”.
By hook or crook I’m getting to Siena this summer.
A performance of ‘Jenufa’ at Teatro San Carlo in Naples about ten years ago
was the most cathartic of my life. La Kabaivansha was the Kostelnicka.
During the second act I became annoyed when I thought they had turned on
a noisy air-conditioning system. I soon figured out that it was dozens of
people sobbing in a manner that could only be described as uncontrollable.
One woman was carried out in hysterics. At the opera’s end there was
pandemonium and twenty minutes of applause from the slice of the audience that
remained. Raina was doubled over in tears during this tumult.
Her performance was art of the greatest distinction.
She played the Kostelnicka as an intellectual, eschewing any folkloric identity.
Her dream for her beloved stepdaughter had gone asunder. Insanity prevailed.
I have never seen anything like it. Taking a line from La Cieca –
she left blood on the stage.
I owe her a lot and look forward to a pilgrimage to the city of St Catharine.