Podcast – Chris’s Cache
Operatic gems, secret live recordings, and honestly a little filth… from the collection of Christopher Corwin.
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November has brought a lot of bad news to many of us, so Chris’s Cache will end the month with a pair of “fun” operas.
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Later this month the Met at last revives its striking Herbert Wernicke production of Die Frau ohne Schatten, prompting a Chris’s Cache preview of three live recordings of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s fanciful if knotty masterpiece.
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Andy Knapp recently wrote enthusiastically about a 1973 Met pirate recoding of Il Trovatore starring Montserrat Caballé, Viorica Cortez, Plácido Domingo, and Robert Merrill. Chris’s Cache today shares that recording, as well another Met in-house starring the same soprano, tenor and baritone in Un Ballo in Maschera from several years earlier.
Once again inspired by Harry’s verismo tract, Chris’s Cache unleashes a La Wally avalanche of complete performances of Alfredo Catalani’s opera featuring Renata Tebaldi, Magda Olivero, Carol Neblett, Stefka Evstatieva, and Eva-Maria Westbroek in the title role.
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Inspired by Harry Rose’s recent fine polemic about verismo performance practice, Chris’s Cache offers one of Opera Orchestra of New York’s most exciting evenings: Zandonai’s Francesda da Rimini from 1973 with Raina Kabaivanska, Placido Domingo, and Matteo Manuguerra.
Lately I’ve been preoccupied with Verdi and Il trovatore in particular anticipating the opera’s return to the Met later this month for the first time since 2018, this unusual deep-dive Chris’s Cache (on my birthday) is the result.
Chris’s Cache celebrates an “Easter in October” gala with five special pirate recordings of Cavalleria Rusticana from the Met featuring four prima donnas whose Santuzze never got a Saturday broadcast and one whose did: Giulietta Simionato, Fiorenza Cossotto, Régine Crespin, Rita Hunter and Mignon Dunn.
Needing a Mozart palate-cleanser after the recent misbegotten Marriage of Figaro, I went back more than two decades for a Houston Così fan Tutte featuring then-rising Americans Christine Goerke, Joyce Di Donato, Richard Croft, and Nathan Gunn as the confused lovers.
Ahead of its September 24 Metropolitan Opera premiere, Chris’s Cache provides three Les Contes d’Hoffmann each with just one soprano as its heroines, as well as unusually interesting Antonia acts.
“Let’s start at the very beginning” of Kent Nagano’s pioneering complete Ring project which was recently discussed here in depth in Montagu James’s review of Die Walküre.
Following Gundula Janowitz and Janet Baker, Chris’s Cache sends birthday greetings to another favorite diva—Karita Matilla—with a quartet of broadcasts.
One of the goals of both Trove Thursday and now Chris’s Cache has been to share pirate recordings of the valuable NYC groups that have presented concert operas over the decades.
Chris’s Cache celebrates the 91st birthday today of Janet Baker, one of my favorite singers.
Chris’s Cache steps up with a recording of Michael Spyres in Lohengrin, as well as with a capture of Spyres in the title role of a 2017 La Clemenza di Tito.
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