Despite her large discography, Caballé never recorded either Ballo or Trovatore which is particularly surprising in the latter case as that Leonora was one of her most celebrated roles. This Met recording abundantly illustrates why.

In 1967 Trovatore became the first of the eight Verdi operas that Caballé performed at the Met. Today’s recording preserves a Leonora from the season when the soprano was also performing her first Normas at the house. The Trovatore broadcast from a month earlier with Fiorenza Cossotto (also her Adalgisa) may be a bit better known than today’s more exciting pirate. More than a third of Cortez’s Met performances were as Azucena.

Caballé sang the Ballo Amelia just five times at the Met, all in the fall of 1970, so none of them were broadcast. This run was the first time that Caballé and Domingo performed together in an opera with the company, a collaboration that continued with their impassioned Manon Lescaut duet at the Bing Gala, then the 1973 run of Trovatore and concluded with a single Aida three years later. After these first Riccardos, Domingo would continue performing Ballo at the Met until 1992; thereafter, he conducted a run of the opera in 2001.

Their Oscar, Joy Clements, might not ring a bell for many, but I became aware of her when I was just a kid: she was born in my hometown—Dayton, Ohio—and was occasionally mentioned in the local papers.

Having made her Met debut as Eboli in 1957 and then sang nearly 70 performances of Amneris with the company, it’s perhaps surprising that Irene Dalis was just doing her first Ulricas with the Met during this 1970 run.

Would there be any interest in hearing a pirate of Caballé’s Met Violetta on a future installment of Chris’s Cache?

Verdi: Il trovatore

Leonora: Montserrat Caballé
Azucena: Viorica Cortez
Ines: Carlotta Ordassy
Manrico: Plácido Domingo
Count Di Luna: Robert Merrill
Ferrando: Paul Plishka
Ruiz: Nico Castel

Conductor: Carlo Felice Cillario
Metropolitan Opera
11 April 1973
In-house recording

Verdi: Un ballo in maschera

Amelia: Montserrat Caballé
Oscar: Joy Clements
Ulrica: Irene Dalis
Riccardo: Plácido Domingo
Renato: Robert Merrill
Samuel: Paul Plishka
Tom: Andrij Dobriansky
Silvano: Raymond Gibbs

Conductor: Francesco Molinari-Pradelli
Metropolitan Opera
13 October 1970
In-house recording

Both Caballé Verdi at the Met recordings can be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio player above and the resulting mp3 file will appear in your download directory.

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