I did a quich search and the Metropolitan Opera archive page shows her name and she certainly is both my recoding from the TV broadcast and the DVD I got from my sister in law on last year’s Christmas. Are we thinking of a different Carmen DVD?

Whitney was also the artist who got the wheels in my head turning on coming to realize that I wasn’t like the other boys. Anectdotal evidence had been building, but my aspiration to *be* this woman when I grew up seemed entirely natural. If anything, it seemed queer that any boy person would rather mature into something like Hulk Hogan and not this talented and beautiful woman. I am grateful my parents had me in a quaker school, who knows how many times my impromptu Whitney performances on the playground would have been met with fists rather than the confused fascination of my dozen or so fellows. Whitney didn’t teach me how to be myself, she demonstrated that being yourself comes only from an overwhelming and uncontrollable passion to express what is inside. If I hadn’t tapped into that side of my emotional world via Whitney would I have come out at 15? Spent hours at the library in high school listening to musicals and opera? Followed my dream to become an academic? Who can say. Dear Whitney, despite your massive fame and celebrity and my own very public engagement with your career I know that “a few stolen moments is all that we shared” and I will treasure those forever. Rest In Peace.

HH’s getting into dangerous waters. A survey like that could lead to a season of naught but Magic Flute, Turandot and Boheme.

That’s what I meant, but was unable to express as well as you did: there is a whole power infrastructure to which we owe the International Style trend.

Incidentally, Maria Luigia Borsi will be Liu in this year’s Chorégies d’Orange Turandot (the same festival that last year gave us a stunning Rigoletto with Nucci, Ciofi and Grigolo).

That’s one of the things I love about mature Wagner. It really is hard to pin down his lietmotifs to a single interpretation. The music could refer to Brunhilde. Or to Brunhilde’s role in protecting the life of the in utero Siegfried. Or to Sieglinde’s response to the knowledge of her pregnancy. Or to all of the above.

One thing I know for sure. We both love this music intensely. And I feel a kinship with anyone who loves the Ring with the intensity that you clearly do.

and how many would say “L’Amour De Loin?”

I guarantee you, would bet you a full seasons subscription in the Founders Circle, if someone did a survey and asked 100 people leaving a LAO performance what 3 operas they’d like the company to put on, not one of them would say I Due Foscari.

Again, lacking a list of all the operas LAO have ever done my memory is fuzzy, but they’ve done the infinitely superior Don Carlo(s) once, in the 4 act version with a hideous all-gray wall set (corrections gladly welcomed). If Domingo is so intent on doing baritone stuff, why not add Rodrigo to the 14,238 roles he’s already done? Have they done La Forza del Destino? When’s the last time they did Falstaff, the late 80′s?

Yes, those pieces are costlier to do, but that’s what co-productions are for.

Domingo as I Due Foscari, well, whether you think the sound is right or not, he had big successes as Simon Boccanegra at La Scala, Covent Garden, Metropolitan and in Berlin, so assuming that he will be up to singing the elder Foscari is not totally far fetched (notwithstanding that some might not like him in baritone roles).

But I would tend to agree that the other operas seem too tame, too much old warhorses. I understand focusing on popular operas but why not at least a concert performance of a Britten opera or something from the Recovered Voices series which I understand was at least critical successes?

On the other hand, the casting is not bad. Poplavskaya should be interesting (even though Angela Meade might be more suited for the part), likewise seeing Owens as Sharpless (which I cannot really imagine – but I have heard bassbaritones as Sharpless before which was actually ok). Angela Meade should be a good Donna Anna. i could also mention Elisabeth Matos, Jay Hunter Morris etc.

RIP to a GREAT lady!