Chris’s Cache
Operatic gems, secret live recordings, and honestly a little filth… from the collection of Christopher Corwin.
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.
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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.
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“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.
Chris’s Cache wishes Gundula Janowitz a happy 87th birthday today with three early live broadcasts of a favorite soprano in works by Pergolesi, Haydn, and Schumann.
“In over nine years you’ve never posted an opera by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari,” no one has ever said.
Not so many live primetime Bolshoi Opera performances were recorded, but when the company went on tour it always brought its very best singers, and often pirates were there to capture them.
Chris’s Cache follows up its Gounod R&J installment with a widely varied quintet of additional Romeos and Juliets
