Today’s installment features the final scene from Salome with James Levine conducting the Boston Symphony; her only Amelia in Un Ballo in Maschera; a radiant Fidelio from Paris; and another Strauss heroine, Ariadne auf Naxos.

While I never had the chance to hear Janowitz and I caught Baker just twice in the 1980s, I have been lucky to hear Mattila many times beginning with Donna Elvira at Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1988.

I’m sorry that the diva hasn’t appeared recently in the US where she now lives, nor so often on stage in the roles that might best suit her now. She has only performed Kundry in concert a few years ago (a San Francisco Opera production was reportedly canceled), and this summer’s Ortrud, her stage debut at the Savonlinna Festival, was only her second encounter with that Wagner role.

Many wonder if she will ever return to the Met? Who knows if the company still intends to present its once planned Ivo van Hove production of Weill’s Mahogonny that Mattila premiered at the Aix-en-Provence Festival? She was also the first Kostelnicka in Claus Guth’s version of Jenufa which is reportedly bound for New York.

My enthusiasm for the Finnish soprano has led me to offer many recorded examples of her thrilling artistry here. Rather than repeat myself, I’ll refer readers to past parterre posts which contain a wide-ranging selection of Mattila recordings, including Janacek’s The Makropoulos Case, the first act of Wagner’s Die Walküre with Jonas Kaufmann, her only Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello; Elvira in that all-star Don Giovanni I attended in Chicago, Schoenberg’s Erwartung, and an unforgettable Met Pique Dame with Ben Heppner, Leonie Rysanek, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

However, I must apologize in advance for today’s Fidelio. Both versions that I’ve heard of first act of the French broadcast end with “Abscheulicher!” Though missing the moving conclusion of that act, I thought the rest of performance worth sharing.

Strauss: Salome—Final Scene

Karita Mattila

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: James Levine
4 November 2004
Broadcast

Verdi: Un Ballo in Maschera

Amelia: Karita Mattila
Oscar: Camilla Tilling
Ulrica: Elisabetta Fiorillo
Riccardo: Marcelo Alvarez
Renato: Thomas Hampson
Samuel: Giovanni Battista Parodi
Tom: Matthew Rose

Conductor: Antonio Pappano
Royal Opera. Covent Garden
25 April 2005
Broadcast

Beethoven: Fidelio

Leonore: Karita Mattila
Marcellina: Henriette Bonde-Hansen
Florestan: Ben Heppner
Jaquino: Pavol Breslik
Don Pizarro: Juha Uusitalo
Rocco: Matti Salminen
Don Fernando: François Lis

Choeur et Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France
Conductor: Myung-Whun Chung
Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris
29 June 2006
Broadcast

Strauss: Ariadne auf Naxos

Ariadne/The Prima Donna: Karita Mattila
Zerbinetta: Jane Archibald
The Composer: Ruxandra Donose
Naiad: Sofia Fomina
Dryad: Karen Cargill
Echo: Kiandra Howarth
Bacchus/The Tenor: Roberto Saccà
Harlequin: Markus Werba
Music Master: Thomas Allen
Dancing Master: Ed Lyon
Wig Maker: Ashley Riches
Lackey: Jihoon Kim
Scaramuccio: Wynne Evans
Brighella: Paul Schweinester
Truffaldino: Jeremy White
Officer: David Butt Philip
Major Domo: Christopher Quest

Conductor: Antonio Pappano
Royal Opera, Covent Garden
June/July 2014
Broadcast

Any Mattila performance hosted on parterre 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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Photo: Mattila’s justly famous X account