Metropolitan Opera Archives

Not only was Paul Plishka (who died on 3 February) a long-time Met stalwart, he also appeared often with Opera Orchestra of New York: twenty-two times in a astonishing variety of roles over more than a quarter-century. As this is “Donizetti Month” here on parterre box, Chris’s Cache offers Plishka and OONY with Carol Vaness in Anna Bolena and with Mariella Devia in the rarely heard Adelia.

Plishka first appeared with OONY in the famous 1972 I Lombardi opposite Renata Scotto and José Carreras. His final gig proved infamous,  instead — Carlo Bergonzi’s ill-fated attempt in 2000 to sing Verdi’s Otello. Bergonzi withdrew half-way through the performance before Plishka appeared as Lodovico.

In between, Plishka joined Eve Queler’s organization for operas from Bellini to Massenet and Halévy with five Verdi works along the way. His seemingly effortless versatility permitted him to perform with OONY Dosifei in Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina followed a month later by Nilakantha in Delibes’s Lakmé, the latter with Devia and Nicolai Gedda is still available for listening or downloading from a 2018 Trove Thursday post.

I first heard Plishka with OONY in 1986 when I impulsively subscribed to all three of the group’s offerings that season even though I was still living in Ohio. But I made it to all of those memorable evenings; happily, all three were broadcast and have found their way to parterre. My first OONY was his return to Lombardi, this time with Aprile Millo and Bergonzi, followed two months later by an extraordinary Smetana Libuse featuring a glorious Gabriela Benackova in her return to New York after an absence of seven years.

Gary Smith/Seattle Opera

My final OONY opera that season was a La Gioconda with Ghena Dimitrova and Piero Cappuccilli in an exceedingly rare local appearance. I posted here a recording of that Gioconda a year ago along with a Met pirate of Ponchielli’s opera with Renata Tebaldi from the company’s second season at Lincoln Center. I had no idea that that Gioconda featured Plishka in his official Met debut as the Monk (he had previously sung with the company several times out of town!)

I didn’t always attend OONY performances after I moved to New York, but I did hear Plishka in Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa with a surprisingly fine June Anderson and Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride starring a sublime Olga Borodina.

Two years ago, Chris’s Cache also made available a legendary Met performance in which Plishka played an important role: he was the King Marke whom Birgit Nilsson and Jon Vickers so thrillingly betrayed.

Today’s double-bill doesn’t contain all of Plishka’s OONY Donizetti: he joined Montserrat Caballé in Gemma di Vergy which was released commercially and he took part in a 1993 Linda di Chamounix that was, if I recall correctly, originally to have starred Luba Orgonasova but instead featured Valeria Esposito as Linda alongside Giuseppe Sabbatini.

Today’s Bolena documents a rare chance for New York audiences to hear Vaness in a bel canto role, and Adelia proved to be Devia’s last NYC appearance until she returned triumphantly in 2014 as Elisabetta in Roberto Devereux, again with Queler and OONY.

On a personal note, a while back I sat next to Plishka at a small dinner party given by a mutual friend. I have no recollection how the subject came up but I was finally able to fill in a blank that long had bothered me. The second opera I attended was Dayton Opera’s Lohengin which at 12 completely went over my head. I knew that the cast included Jean Fenn, Nell Rankin, Ticho Parly (!) and Walter Cassel, but my online research (I didn’t hold onto programs back then) never could turn up the Heinrich who, sure enough, was Plishka—the only times he sang the role were in Dayton and Toledo (back then, Dayton’s sister company).

Donizetti: Anna Bolena

Anna Bolena: Carol Vaness
Giovanna Seymour: Gloria Scalchi
Smeton: Melanie Sonnenberg
Percy: Fernando de la Mora
Enrico VIII: Paul Plishka
Rochefort: Philip Cokorinos
Sir Hervy: Christopher Jux

Conductor: Eve Queler
Opera Orchestra of New York at Carnegie Hall –
7 April 1993
In-house recording

Donizetti: Adelia

Adelia: Mariella Devia
Odetta: Valerie Bernhardt
Olivier: Warren Mok
Arnoldo: Paul Plishka
Carlo: Stephan Pyatnichko
Comino: Justin Vickers
Uno scudiero: Martin Dillon

Conductor: Eve Queler
Opera Orchestra of New York at Carnegie Hall
11 November 1999
In-house recording

Bolena and Adelia  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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