Metropolitan Opera Archives
Sparked by “Chris and the Pirates,” a five-part series that appeared here in August 2015, and at James Jorden’s suggestion, I began Trove Thursday, which I initially thought might be a brief series, on September 10, 2015 with Berlioz’s Les Troyens, one of my very favorite operas.
Trove Thursday continued weekly (with one brief interruption) for seven years until I took a breather. Chris’s Cache, its successor, began in late 2022, and I’ve been most pleased for the opportunity to share a sizable number of invaluable Met in-house “pirate” recordings which hadn’t been a feature of Trove Thursday.
As this tenth anniversary approached, I was blown away to realize that nearly one thousand audio tracks have been uploaded. Among Parterre’s recent upgrades, Nick Scholl has heroically migrated all those tracks to YouTube where they can now be listened to.
There is also on this website an alphabetical listing by composer of all the Trove Thursday offerings. I have it in mind to do a similar list for Chris’s Cache but I can’t promise when I’ll tackle that.
Recently I decided it was time for another break. While this is the final installment of Chris’s Cache, a bit of the old (audio) and a bit of the new (video!) will debut in a feature called Parterre Presents in either late 2025 or early 2026 with a special sneak preview coming next month. Stay tuned.
Like Troyens, Nozze is one of the essential operas for me, and today’s stellar pair contain almost too many marvelous features to mention. For example, the Rome visit in Luchino Visconti’s legendary production (the only time his work appeared on the Met stage) documents among its all-Italian cast the sole Met appearances by Ilva Ligabue, Biancamaria Casoni, Rolando Panerai, and Giulini, among others.
Paris’s features in Giorgio Strehler’s fabled staging the house debuts of Margaret Price, Kurt Moll, and Michel Sénéchal, the latter of whom would go onto perform 175 times with the Met. It was also the first performance in the house since 1968 by Mirella Freni. Following several Fausts with the Paris company, Freni wouldn’t return to the Met again until the spring of 1983.
The Paris visit to the Met, along with La Scala’s to the Kennedy Center that same September, was to salute the United States’s 200th birthday. I have a feeling that next year’s 250th will be quite different.
Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro
Contessa Almaviva: Ilva Ligabue
Susanna: Graziella Sciutti
Cherubino: Biancamaria Casoni
Marcellina: Silvana Zanolli
Barbarina: Emilia Ravaglia
Figaro: Rolando Panerai
Conte Almaviva: Tito Gobbi
Bartolo: Angelo Nosotti
Basilio: Florindo Andreolli
Curzio: Mario Carlin
Antonio: Giorgio Onesti
Conductor Carlo Maria Giulini
Teatro dell’Opera di Roma at the Met
26 June 1968
In-house recording
Contessa Almaviva: Margaret Price
Susanna: Mirella Freni
Cherubino: Frederica von Stade
Marcellina: Jane Berbié
Barbarina: Daniele Perriers
Figaro: José Van Dam
Conte Almaviva: Gabriel Bacquier
Bartolo: Kurt Moll
Basilio: Michel Sénéchal
Curzio: Jacques Loreau
Antonio: Jules Bastin
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Paris Opéra at the Met
8 September 1976
In-house recording
Both Nozze 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.
Chris’s Cache can be accessed via Apple Podcasts or RSS.
