Sir Georg Solti and Birgit Nilsson study the score for Richard Strauss’s Salome in Chicago in December 1974 (Terry’s Photography. Courtesy of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association’s Rosenthal Archives)

As we eagerly await the Met’s new Salome, Chris’s Cache reaches back just over 50 years to a legendary Salome presented at Carnegie Hall by the visiting Chicago Symphony Orchestra, along with a pirate of another important CSO @ Carnegie visit, Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron. Oh, and by the way, both are conducted by Georg Solti with the Strauss title role sung by Birgit Nilsson and Hans Hotter is Moses!

During Solti’s time with the Chicago Symphony, the orchestra regularly visited New York with its fanciest programs which often meant concert versions of operas. I believe the final one was a somewhat star-crossed 1991 Otello with an ill and/or misbehaving Luciano Pavarotti performing the title role for the first and only times. I had recently moved to NYC and remember calling Carnegie-Charge the morning tickets to the Verdi went on sale. Upon learning the available tickets were too rich for my blood, I declined: the right decision in retrospect.

I did catch an earlier Solti-Verdi CSO visit in 1985 when I happened to be in town for Falstaff with Guillermo Sarabia in the title role, along with Katia Ricciarelli, Kathleen Battle, Christa Ludwig and Wolfgang Brendel. It proved to be my only Solti encounter as well as the only time I heard Ricciarelli in person. One of the performances in Chicago was broadcast and I posted it here a long while ago, but it remains available. Anyone retaining doubts about Battle-magic should check out her heaven-sent Nanetta.

Though they recorded numerous operas together, the Nilsson-Solti CSO Salome may have been the only time that the soprano and conductor performed that opera together. Though Ragnar Ulfung and Norman Bailey performed with the Met occasionally, Ruth Hesse, their Herodias, never got the opportunity.

Moses was receiving its New York premiere in 1971 when Solti and his soloists, orchestra and chorus arrived at Carnegie Hall. Sarah Caldwell had earlier produced the opera, but it’s almost certain her staging lacked the sovereign musical forces that Solti mustered, well in command after three performances in Chicago.

I did manage to catch Hotter in another spoken appearance: as the narrator of an earlier Schoenberg work, the Gurrelieder, on the occasion of Zubin Mehta’s retirement from the New York Philharmonic in 1991. It turned out to be the final time I heard its Tove, Susan Dunn, whom I’d previously heard in Cincinnati in the Verdi Requiem and as Desdemona to one of James McCracken’s final Otellos.

For those interested in further immersing themselves in the Salome spirit, I also remind readers of the interview I published with the Met’s upcoming Salome, Elza van den Heever, last week.

Strauss: Salome

Salome: Birgit Nilsson
Herodias: Ruth Hesse
Page: Sandra Walker
Sklave: Sarah Beatty
Herodes: Rarnar Ulfung
Jochanaan: Norman Bailey
Narraboth: George Shirley
1. Jude: Philip Creech
2. Jude: Jerry Jennings
3. Jude: John Lanigan
4. Jude: William Wahman
5. Jude: Eugene Johnson
1. Nazarener: Cory Winter
2. Nazarener: Franz Mazura
1. Soldat: Curtis Dickson
2. Soldat: Thomas Paul
Cappadocie: Gershon Silins

Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Georg Solti
Carnegie Hall
18 December 1974
In-house recording

Schoenberg: Moses und Aron (in English)

Ein junges Mädchen: Karen Altman
Eine Kranke: Emilie Miller
Moses: Hans Hotter
Aron: Richard Lewis
Ein junger Mann/Der nackte Jüngling: Kenneth Riegel
Ein anderer Mann: Benjamin Matthews
Ephraimit: Stephen Swanson
Ein Priester: Donald Gramm

Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
Conductor: Georg Solti
Carnegie Hall
20 November 1971
In-house recording

Salome and Moses 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.

Never miss an episode of Chris’s Cache! Subscribe to this podcast via Apple Podcasts or RSS.