Metropolitan Opera
The unexpected appearance of Zeani at the Met was one of the highlights of the Met’s first season at Lincoln Center. I’m unsure how it came to pass, but the Romanian soprano popped in for just two Violettas, her signature role. She never again appeared with the Met in New York, but became the company’s first Elena when it offered the company premiere of I vespri siciliani in Newport during the summer of 1967. Bits of the Zeani have turned up on YouTube, but here is the complete performance.
The Caballé Traviata demonstrates how much faster things moved back then. The soprano’s breakthrough in Lucrezia Borgia occurred in April 1965. In just over two years she was opening the 1967-68 Met season as Violetta, her only appearances with the company in that role.
The Lorengar pirate documents only her second Met Violetta, one of three she sang there in 1967, each with a different tenor as Alfredo. Luigi Alva, Alfredo common to both Lorengar and Pilou today, only performed the role four times with the company. Neither Lorengar nor Pilou was a frequent Violetta in New York, although Pilou did get a Saturday matinee broadcast in 1970, though I believe she was a replacement for the originally announced soprano during that strike-stricken season.
In one of the more extreme examples of the casting merry-go-round that was often a hallmark of the Bing years at the Met, in the fall of 1970 Sutherland returned to Traviata for the first time since 1964. Over her six-performance run, her Alfredos included (in order): Giacomo Aragall, Luciano Pavarotti, Carlo Bergonzi, Alfredo Kraus and Placido Domingo! Not too shabby and unimaginable these days. Their Traviata was Pavarotti’s fourth Met appearance and the first of many Sutherland-Pavarotti pairings, more than a year before their history-making Fille du régiment.
As YouTube features recordings of Sutherland with four of these tenors, I’m posting the one it doesn’thave: the first collaboration with Aragall with whom she’d memorably team up in Massenet’s Esclarmonde.
To simplify matters, I’m listing only the three principals for these five performances. If you must know Pilou’s Gastone, I refer you to the Met’s online archives.
Verdi: La Traviata
Violetta: Virginia Zeani
Alfredo: Bruno Prevedi
Germont: Robert Merrill
Conductor: Georges Prêtre
12 November 1966
Metropolitan Opera
In-house recording
Violetta: Montserrat Caballé
Alfredo: Richard Tucker
Germont: Cornell MacNeil
Conductor: Fausto Cleva
18 September 1967
Metropolitan Opera
In-house recording
Violetta: Pilar Lorengar
Alfredo: Luigi Alva
Germont: Sherrill Milnes
Conductor: Fausto Cleva
1 November 1967
Metropolitan Opera
In-house recording
Violetta: Jeannette Pilou
Alfredo: Luigi Alva
Germont: Robert Merrill
Conductor: Jan Behr
18 November 1967
Metropolitan Opera
In-house recording
Violetta: Joan Sutherland
Alfredo: Giacomo Aragall
Germont: Sherrill Milnes
Conductor: Richard Bonynge
12 October 1970
Metropolitan Opera
In-house recording
Each Met Traviata 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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