parterre box

50 comments

• Ruxton says:

  Sweet Sanford – when that blessed day comes that I am vacuuming the floor to the strains emmanating from the CD player, I hope you won’t mind too much if the two Die Tote Stadt arias go on first, followed by the second and third act of Aida (or any part of Traviata except the final scene). I wish la Moffo had done Die Tote Stadt.

  on June 16, 2010 at 3:37 AM
  • Sanford says:

    Ruxton, my own beloved, you may listen to the Korngold. And actually, I really loved Rennaaayyy’s performance of it.
    

    on June 16, 2010 at 3:52 AM
    • luvtennis says:

      Anna is okay, but this is the shit.

      on June 16, 2010 at 6:13 PM
      • MontyNostry says:

        I adore Leontyne’s version of the aria — she always sounds so sincere in German too — but it would have been better if she’d been a bit further from the mic. That applies to the entire album it comes off.

        on June 16, 2010 at 6:31 PM
      • Arianna a Nasso says:

        Love the album cover pics of LP on this. What one could get away with in the 70s! Nothing gets between a diva and her marabou.

        on June 16, 2010 at 6:57 PM
      • richard says:

        I like this one, myself

        on June 16, 2010 at 6:58 PM
      • Ruxton says:

        Simply stunning!

        on June 16, 2010 at 7:35 PM
      • Ruxton says:

        Mmmm – comments not always coming out in the right place. Love Pilar but la Price does it for me every time.

        on June 16, 2010 at 7:38 PM
  • Henry Holland says:

    I hope you won’t mind too much if the two Die Tote Stadt arias go on first

    Is the second one the Pierrot Lied?

    on June 16, 2010 at 3:57 AM
• Ruxton says:

  Oh thank you my Sweetest Sanford – I’m so glad you don’t mind because those two arias are great at any time- when candle light dining or having bubble baths or giving massages to… a world of possibilities…and doubly glad that you also don’t mind Rennaayyyys sumptuous version of it. It’s gorgeous.

  Yes Dear Henry, it surely is. I adore the Pierrot Lied…one of my secret pleasures.

  on June 16, 2010 at 4:17 AM
• browser says:

  I’ve never understood people who do down Purcell – especially the British (he is much more performed in continental Europe). He is one of the most harmonically and melodically interesting composers that the Western European tradition has produced. Some of his chamber music is heartbreaking…
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G1q1e_OI18&feature=related

  on June 16, 2010 at 10:50 AM
  • January says:

    Well said.

    on June 16, 2010 at 3:34 PM
  • louannd says:

    How can you not love the music from a man who wrote the most stunning little semi-opera of all time, The Fairy Queen:

    httpv://www.youtube.com/user/OedipusTyrannus#p/u/17/DkNymuNriRk

    on June 16, 2010 at 9:05 PM
  • louannd says:

    Try again?

    on June 16, 2010 at 9:08 PM
• LogeLizard says:

  Might we also quibble that “Gluck das mir verblieb,” in spite of appearing as a solo in some aria collections, is actually a duet?

  on June 16, 2010 at 3:59 PM
• soubrettino says:

  That Jessye is as grand as an Elizabethan ruff.

  At least there’s a Bellini and the Liebestod.

  And what a lovely thing that When I am laid comes out first. So appropriate, in many ways.

  on June 16, 2010 at 4:19 PM
• Edward George says:

  Dido’s Lament also has a particular resonance being part of the music played (after “Nimrod”) during the Remembrance Sunday service each year to remember the war dead.

  on June 16, 2010 at 6:57 PM
• Donna Carlo says:

  From Muriel Barbery’s astounding The Elegance of the Hedgehog: Renée is the concierge in a luxury apartment building, hiding her own vast intelligence and learning, and utter cynicism, until she is found out by a perceptive new tenant from Japan.

  She enters his apartment for dinner and hears the strains of Dido’s Lament. Her reflections:

  “In my opinion, the most beautiful music for the human voice on earth. It is beyond beautiful, it is sublime, because of the dense succession of sounds, as if each were linked to the next by an invisible force and, while each one remains distinct, they all melt into one another, at the edge of the human voice, verging on an animal cry. But there is a beauty in these sounds that no animal cry can ever attain, a beauty born of the subversion of phonetic articulation and the transgression of the careful verbal language that ordinarily creates distinct sounds.

  Broken steps, melting sounds.

  Art is life, playing to other rhythms.”

  The theme of the Lament continues to thread through the rest of the novel and is one “moment” of beauty (among several) that ultimately redeems her life.

  The superb author is French–as you may have guessed from the philosophizing–not British.

  on June 16, 2010 at 7:24 PM
  • La Cieca says:

    Is there nothing that Fleming woman can’t do?

    on June 16, 2010 at 9:09 PM
    • Donna Carlo says:

      RIEN, absolument RIEN. C’est pourquoi on l’appelle Renée, La Reine de Rien!

      on June 16, 2010 at 10:57 PM
• mrmyster says:

  I suppose one day Renee may marry again.
  Would La Cieca like to sing at her wedding?
  What would the song be?
  Marietta’s Lied?

  on June 16, 2010 at 11:02 PM
  • kashania says:

    on June 17, 2010 at 12:53 PM