Lascivious wassails
If you feel like discussing the Sirius broadcast of Antony and Cleopatra, here’s the place.
That bit just now sounded a lot like “An American in Paris!”
Quiz question: Mardian is sung by Andrea Velis… but the part was written for someone else. Who?
November 18, 1922
MEFISTOFELE with Chaliapin, Gigli, and Frances Alda, and I’ll bitch throughout the whole performance because Muzio isn’t singing Margarita.
Metropolitan Opera House
November 24, 1938
LA BOHEME {330}
Mimi………………..Mafalda Favero [Debut]
Rodolfo……………..Jussi Bjoerling [Debut]
Musetta……………..Marisa Morel [Debut]
Conductor……………Gennaro Papi
OK, if I had to pick just one I’d go for a Fremstad or a Nordica. I like the turn of the century girls.
I guess this one as I’ve read about it in a number of old histories of the Met (and Olive)
Metropolitan Opera House
January 1, 1908
New production
TRISTAN UND ISOLDE {84}
Wagner-Wagner
Tristan……………..Heinrich Knote
Isolde………………Olive Fremstad
Kurwenal…………….Anton Van Rooy
Brangäne…………….Louise Homer
King Marke…………..Robert Blass
Melot……………….Adolph Mühlmann
Sailor’s Voice……….Albert Reiss
Shepherd…………….Albert Reiss
Steersman……………Julius Bayer
Conductor……………Gustav Mahler [Debut]
Nilsson’s debut as Isolde. Sutherland’s debut as Lucia. Price and Corelli’s debut in Trovatore. Flagstad as Sieglinde. Rysanek and London’s first Dutchman.
It is so hard to choose an opera from the past and I am so bad at decisions that I fear my time machine would run out of fuel before I make up my mind, but looking for a Walküre I would like to have seen found one that intrigues me. After seing this, I would like to stay in the past for a while and see Lawrence as Brünhilde riding a real horse as Grane.
Metropolitan Opera House
February 8, 1940 Matinee
DIE WALKÜRE {312}
Der Ring des Nibelungen: Cycle [67] Uncut
Brünnhilde…………..Kirsten Flagstad
Siegmund…………….Lauritz Melchior
Sieglinde……………Marjorie Lawrence
Wotan……………….Friedrich Schorr
Fricka………………Kerstin Thorborg
Hunding……………..Emanuel List
Gerhilde…………….Thelma Votipka
Grimgerde……………Irra Petina
Helmwige…………….Dorothee Manski
Ortlinde…………….Maxine Stellman
Rossweisse…………..Lucielle Browning
Schwertleite…………Anna Kaskas
Siegrune…………….Helen Olheim
Waltraute……………Doris Doe
Conductor……………Erich Leinsdorf
Moffo in Traviata and the 4 heroines of Hoffmannand and Liu
Dame Kiri as The Countess or Desdemona.
Sherrill Milnes and Caballe both debuting in Faust (’65)
“Moffo in Traviata and the 4 heroines of Hoffmann”
By all accounts a failure, alas…
“Moffo” and “failure” are not to be used in the same posting. Right, Sanford?
Moffo at her best was as good or better than most… but at her worst, well, still better than a lot. Even her notorious 1969 Lucia has glimmers of greatness. She lost the middle of her voice and the ability to sustain support to the end of phrases, but never seemed to lose the top. And there are singers today (a certain Russian and a certain Straussian come to mind) who, even at their best, will never approach her artistry in bel canto.
Caballe in Lucrezia Borgia
Caballe in the L’Orange Norma
Sanford, in the late 60s, Moffo started having serious problems with her extreme top. I saw her in about a half dozen Traviatas from about 1970 on as well as a Juliette and a Lucia and the top was very tight, constricted and prone to cracking. Sempre Libera was nowhere as effective as it was earlier, anything about high c was squeezed and she cracked the eflat in most of the performances I saw her in.
I had heard she was bipolar, don’t know if it was true or not, but if she was being medicated for it, that may have been an explanation for some of her problems. An awful lot of the stuff prescribed has the side of effect of causing dry mouth. I can’t imagine how a singer would deal with that
“By all accounts a failure, alas…”
Not Traviata or Liu though. Even later ca 1970 when she was no longer singing all that well, her Violetta was still something. Aside from all else she was just breathtakingly beautiful in the black and ivory dress she wore in Act 1. When the curtain went up, my heart stopped the first time I saw it. But by then Act 1 could be a bit rocky vocally.
I didn’t see Liu but I like her on the famous broadcast
with Corelli and Nilsson.
Evidently the Hoffmann was not so hot. She ended dropping out and only finished two performances. Irving Kolodin didn’t find this too convincing in his
long history of the Met.
Metropolitan Opera House
April 1, 1971
The Brooklyn Jewish CARMEN {668}
Carmen………………Regina Resnik
Don Jose…………….Richard Tucker
Micaela……………..Judith Raskin
Escamillo……………Robert Merrill
“Why is this night different from all other nights?”
B_A_B, that’s brilliant!
Ponselle’s debut in Forza with Caruso, De Luca and Mardones.
Les Huguenots with Melba, Nordica, Scalchi, J. De Reszke, E. De Reszke, Plancon.
Make that Planson.
I was right the first time. It’s Plancon.
“*Musical*,ya know…”
I’m sure you have heard of the cedilla. The letter you want, I will say, is neither an s nor a c but a c with a cedilla, ç:
Plançon.
Now the laugh might be on me when I click ‘submit comment’ and the cedilla disappears. If so, apologies.
But Miss Garanca survives without her cedilla.
As did Miss Gencer.
La Cieca has thought about this question before and she pretty much knows how it would all turn out. She would choose to hear the premiere of La Fanciulla del West and would arrive in New York City on the evening of December 10, 1910, dressed elegantly but tastefully in her Poiret “Directoire” frock with hobble skirt, kimono-inspired sortie-de-bal with fox trim, turban with aigrette, lorgnette and of course all her pearls. But due to some glitch in the Wayback Bus, she’d be nowhere near the Met.
No problem; defying the social mores of the era, La Cieca would hail a cab.
“Where to, lady?” the cabbie would inquire.
“64th and Broadway, my good man.”
“Way up there, lady? Are you sure?”
“Stop chattering and drive, man! Caruso sings tonight!”
So La Cieca would be let out at the corner of 64th and Broadway, where she would immediately be mugged by a gang of Irish hooligans. Naturally she would surrender her gems and furs. But in the scuffle she would sustain a nasty scratch, which would become infected, and, given the lack of antibiotics at that time, she would succumb of sepsis, never having heard “The Girl.”
La Cieca, before the tragedy
One needs to weep.
If you wore that, I’m afraid they’d take more than your gems and furs. (They’d pluck your feather, wouldn’t they?)
Wait a minute. I’m missing something. It’s evidently an in-joke, but wasn’t the old Met at 39th and Broadway? Why is La Cieca going up to 64th?
That’s precisely the point, B_A_B. La Cieca would be ‘encore tout étourdie’ by the experience of time travel and would confuse her locations.
It’s a sad story based on Bernstein backwards, “It ain’t there anymore”.
La Cieca, you could go to where they hang out after the opera and Schumann Heink is always eating meat with lots of potatoes and ask Ernestine to request some encores from them. Anyway, here is a nice consolation.
Oh.
Huh!
Well, I don’t like to DN but as my DF Miss Marple said, “It’s so out of character.” La Cieca might forget her Fisherman’s Friend but not her destination. Did anyone check her garments for some substance smeared in the seams a la Medea?
I’m just not satisfied; I think someone dune her in for her hatpin.
Dear la Cieca- a tale of such woe (and such detail) leaves me clutching my pearls and gasping! If you’d seen those robbers coming you could have stuffed the jewels “somewhere safe” and – perhaps saved the horse and cart as well!