Together again for the first time
When La Cieca’s wrong, she’s wrong. She really had no idea until today that Leontyne Price and Luciano Pavarotti shared the operatic stage any time besides that one-off Aida in San Francisco. But when confronted with proof in the form of an mp3, well, she’s going to be the first to admit her error.
Here, for your entertainment and La Cieca’s penance, is the final act of Il trovatore, as performed at the Wiener Staatsoper on May 8, 1977.
Leonora: Leontyne Price; Azucena: Christa Ludwig; Manrico: Luciano Pavarotti; Il Conte di Luna: Piero Cappuccilli. Herbert von Karajan, conductor.
Ah, “The Pirates of Penance.” Thank you.
This is true..I can’t believe I forgot about this or it didn’t come to mind since I actually own the entire performance. There is also a live Requiem from the late 60s with Pavarotti and Von Karajan…not the version for the DVD though and I think they sang Requiem in Chicago.
The Verdi Requiem DVD is released by Unitel/DG, performance is from 1967 at La Scala (Price, Cossotto, Pavarotti, Ghiaurov, Karajan)
The initial claim was mine. The LP/LP SF AIDA was the only onstage operatic performance in North America. I left off that last clause. Mea culpa. Anyway, that comes to 4 onstage operatic performances in all, He and Sutherland and he and Scotto sang together A LOT.
I don’t think Pav was meant to be a bad collague in 1967, when HE was teh least know member of that great REQUIEM quartet.
I explicitely remember the announcer at the MET Centennial Gala that Price and Pavarotti’s duet from Ballo in Maschera was the first time they were going to sing together at the MET. That was 1983. I don’t know about previous Requiems et al……
I remember the announcer saying that as well. I also remember wondering if I had heard right, and perhaps that’s why it stuck in my mind ( I think I even have it on videotape)
Price is in representative voice here, with a couple of optional high C’s tossed in. She omits “Tu vedrai,” as was her custom. This is well worth hearing. Thanks, La Cieca!
Such a pity that she did omit “Tu vedrai” because on recordings where it was “in” it’s absolutley thrilling.
Sorry to interrupt, but this clip is really disturbing. First Dessay demeans opera at every turn now this condescension from Villazon, who is obviously being imitated in a myriad of detail by the man singing the Moart aria, as the public claps in rhythmic participation, afterwhich everybody laughs at what they just put the public trough.
Nothing wrong with making money, but this is really low.
Many more segments here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/clarely#g/u
What a mockery they are making of singers who have devoted their lives to music.
Of course the answer is if you don’t like it don’t watch it, but the mockery it makes of opera is contemptible
You know? it is lowbrow entertainment. At least people are paying attention at how hard it is to be an opera singer.
lastly, now we know how the people in professional dancing circles feel every season of Dancing with the stars; the only difference is that they likely do not throw fits of these proportions.
The one thing i will say is that Villazon’s hair finally caught up with his singing.
Do stay tuned for next week’s final episode when Andrea Bocelli and Susan Boyle will guest-star with a not-yet-specified duet.
Much as I deplore the whole concept of the show, and the participation of Villazon, I am happy to note that the charity sponsored by the show is
http://www.nordoff-robbins.org.uk/
can’t be bad…
A shame, then, that they’re not making any use whatsoever out of that one redeeming factor. They don’t explain on the show which charity they’re supporting. Just like they started out not telling any details whatsoever about the arias and songs.
Or maybe those bits were just censored on the youtube versions.
Are you serious about the Bocelli Boyle duet?
As serious as you can be with a wiki article and yellow press as sources…
But I think it might be for real, seeing who else they’ve had guest performing so far it definitely fits.
Why in the Hell would you even bring this tous to comment? It has NOTHING to do with the Operatic Art – this pure TV Sensationalism ( don’t know if that’s even a word!) and has NOTHING to do with discussions here of serious Art. If we don’t comment, discuss or make a “to do” over this merde, hopefully, it will go away!
Wanna hurl chunks?
Oh dear God, oh dear God . . . Nymph in thy orisons be all my sins remembered. I repent me of every damned word I ever posted on this site, only just take it away, take it away.
Which is worse, a nation that would never put a series devoted to opera on television, or one that would do it so badly?
I wonder what the Vicar would say?
There is something similar on Italian RAI, though as far as I can tell the quality of the singers is a little higher. They sing aria, pop songs and musicals. in the jury there is (who else????) Katia Ricciarelli.
This baritone sings Largo al Factotum and Tonight (West Side Story)
And this girl sings Olimpia. She does hit a high A flat
And this is a cute tenor
So – in Italy the show is called “Opera Metamucil.” It sure worked for me.
Rumour mill suggests that Domingo, no less, will be performing at this weeks final as he is in town to rehearse Tamerlano.
That’s not all that’s brewing!
Price does sound very good indeed. Too bad I had not been born when this took place. In fact, they all sound quite wonderful. However, there are a few things in her singing, say upper middle voice area, that lead me to suspect that it was not long after this that she dropped the role from her repertoire. The top is still gorgeous, but you can tell she is having a really ON kind of night, and it isn’t easy for her anymore either. I believe she retired only about 8 years after this performance, didn’t she?
Jatm2063:
Not sure how you can tell that from this recording. Don’t you think the more obvious point is this:
The singing here is technically perfect. You could play the Tacea and D’Amor’s from this recording back to back with recordings from the early 60s and few could tell which was early Price and which came late.
Understand that by age 51 Ponselle and Rethberg were essentially retired. Callas and Tebaldi were either dead (nearly so) or retired. Zinka was still going strong at 51, but the track record for Verdianas show Miss Price as being exemplary. BTW, she did not retire in 1986. She just stop singing opera in staged performances.
perfect? scusi, i don’t think so. very good indeed, except for the weird scooping. not perfect, but very good indeed.
i never scooped. when i sang leonora, all of milano cried, it was the most beautiful thing they had ever heard. just ask captain haddock.
yappy mentions at 5.2.2.1 “wiki” articles.
Does anyone here know how to edit Wikipedia articles so that this rather bizarre attribution of “La favorita” to Bellini instead of Donizetti can be corrected? It’s from the entry on the Academy of Music (New York City).
“The repertoire for the first season was ambitious and included Semiramide and The Barber of Seville by Rossini; la Favorita, Norma, and la Sonnambula by Bellini; and Don Pasquale, Lucrezia Borgia and Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti.”
Click the “Edit” link by the side of the section heading.
It says you have to be logged in, etc. I am not about to log in myself, not on this computer. I don’t trust the process. I am too old to do that sort of thing.
I feel accomplished when I’m able to comment on this site. Or send an e-mail. Or link to a European performance on operacast.com. I’ll leave the more advanced activities to you younger tech geniuses.
Here you go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_of_Music_%28New_York_City%29
Well done, quoth!
And rf, you don’t exactly have to log in, they’ll only log your IP if you don’t, so whatever evil changes you make, they can be attributed to your computer. If you never switch off your router, that is. One can help make the world of the poor or time-pressed wiki-only researchers a better place by correcting little mistakes on wikipedia.