Risorgimental

The former features Spanish soprano Enriqueta Tarrés who passed away last month at 90, and the latter stars Renato Bruson and Carlo Bergonzi, along with Maria Parazzini who died in 2022.

Neither of these works have been produced by the Metropolitan Opera, though Foscari was performed at the company’s Lincoln Center home in 1968 during the Rome Opera’s visit. A pirate recording of one of the performances can be heard on YouTube with Luisa Maragliano, Renato Cioni, and Mario Zanasi, conducted by Bruno Bartoletti.

Trove Thursday previously offered Battaglia di Legnano in an Opera Orchestra of New York performance from 1986 withEve Queler leading the Three M’s: Aprile Millo, Mario Malagnini, and Matteo Manuguerra.

Tarrés’s Met career lasted just one year and two Puccini heroines: Mimì and Cio-Cio-San during 1974. However, she had previously sung at the Met when the Hamburg Staatsoper performed at the Met in 1967, the summer before the Rome Opera’s visit, when she was Ursula in Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler. An accomplished Strauss soprano, Tarrés often sang Chrysothemis, including an exciting San Francisco production with the under-rated Amy Shuard as her sister.

She was also frequently the Empress in Die Frau ohne Schatten; for example, she took the role at the premiere of a new Harry Kupfer staging at the Berlin Staatsoper in the early 1970s.

As far as I know, Parazzini’s only US appearances were in San Francisco in Aida in 1977. She most often was heard internationally in Verdi operas and made a specialty of Odabella in Attila.

Thanks again to Queler’s OONY, New York audiences heard Foscari the year after today’s Rome performance, again featuring Bruson and Bergonzi, but with Margarita Castro-Alberty as Lucrezia. I was happy to have attended when OONY again mounted Foscari in December 2007 with Paolo Gavanelli, Aquiles Machado, and Julianna Di Giacomo. I remember Gavanelli being really impressive, clearly the highlight of his local career which spanned sixteen sporadic years at the Met. I caught him there twice: as Riccardo to Edita Gruberová’s Elvira in a 1991 I Puritani and as Amonasro in a wildly enjoyable 1998 Aida in which Maria Guleghina and Olga Borodina fought over Giorgio Merighi!

Verdi: La Battaglia di Legnano

Lida: Enriqueta Tarrés
Imelda: Wendela Bronsgeest
Arrigo: Gianni Bevaglio
Rolando: Salvatore Sassu
Barbarossa/Consule/Podesta: Aurio Tomicich

Kees Groot Omroepkoor
Omroeporkest Bakels,
Conductor: Kees Bakels
Amsterdam
29 January 1977
Broadcast

Verdi: I due Foscari

Lucrezia Contarini: Maria Parazzini
Pisana: Anna di Stasio
Jacopo Foscari: Carlo Bergonzi
Francesco Foscari: Renato Bruson
Loredano: Bernardino di Bagno
Barbarigo: Angelo Marchiandi

Conductor: Daniel Oren
Teatro dell’opera di Roma
10 December 1980
In-house recording

Each of today’s Verdi 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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