Podcast / Chris’s Cache
Operatic gems, secret live recordings, and honestly a little filth… from the collection of Christopher Corwin.
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As this is “Donizetti Month” here on parterre box, Chris’s Cache offers the recently deceased Paul Plishka and Opera Orchestra of New York with Carol Vaness in Anna Bolena and with Mariella Devia in the rarely heard Adelia.
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This week, Chris’s Cache highlights Bernarda Fink and Inga Kalna in an opera by Johann Gottlieb Naumann
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Following the successful launch of the new regular feature The Talk of the Town in January, the team at the box is inviting contributions for a new quarter of operatic potpourri.
This week, Chris’s Cache offers a performance of Follies from 2007 featuring Lucine Amara as a rarely richly sung Heidi alongside Donna Murphy and Victoria Clark.
Prompted by Washington Concert Opera’s upcoming Luisa Miller, Chris Cache’s misbehaves five times by offering just the opera’s final act with sopranos from the 1970s, some of whom might be considered “under-appreciated”: Gabriella Tucci, Adriana Maliponte, Renata Scotto, Gilda Cruz-Romo, and Katia Ricciarelli.
As several readers put forth Patrizia Ciofi as a favorite under-appreciated soprano; Chris’s Cache enthusiastically agrees by offering a Ciofi-copia that includes complete operas by Handel and Meyerbeer and extensive excerpts of a Bellini, plus a dazzling concert of rare late 18th century arias.
No Leos Janácek operas have turned up this month among the works we’d like to see at the Met, so Chris’s Cache corrects that omission with live recordings of two of the composer’s most compelling operas (performed in English).
Chris’s Cache offers ten more sopranos singing Strauss‘s Vier letzte Lieder: Sena Jurinac, Gundula Janowitz, Jessye Norman, Roberta Alexander, Edith Mathis, Helen Donath, Malin Byström, Christiane Karg, Jacquelyn Wagner, and Corinne Winters.
Fourteen years ago this month, James Levine conducted a tryout at Juilliard of a quite pleasant production by Stephen Wadsworth of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride (in English) intended for the Met. Unfortunately, that transfer never happened and New York has been the poorer for it.
Following last week’s multiple versions of three prime concert arias, Chris’s Cache concludes its Mozart month by offering more of those special vocal works, this time twenty-five arias for mezzo, tenor or bass, as well as more for soprano.
Seven years ago, Trove Thursday presented an anthology of sixteen Mozart soprano concert arias. In 2025, Chris’s Cache adds to this month’s Mozart-fest with a deep dive into three of the most celebrated of those works: Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!; Bella mia fiamma; and Ch’io mi scordi di te.
Given the keen interest in recent posts of Met pirates of Montserrat Caballé in Verdi, Chris’s Cache concludes its trio with the Spanish soprano’s Met Violetta, along with additional Met in-house recordings of Virginia Zeani, Pilar Lorengar, Jeanette Pilou, and Joan Sutherland as Verdi’s doomed courtesan.
A perfect meeting of voice with composer occurred when Arleen Auger took part in the rediscovery of early works by Mozart.
Operettas always seem to be on the menu for New Year’s Eve, so Chris’s Cache joins in with a broadcast of Offenbach’s delicious La Grande-duchesse de Gérolstein featuring Stephanie Blythe in the title role.
Anticipating the first new local Aïda in thirty-six years, Chris’s Cache revisits Verdi’s popular opera in four unusually interesting in-house recordings from the Met 1961-1976.
While everyone tries to figure out what on earth Strauss and Hofmannsthal are up to in Die Frau ohne Schatten, now playing at the Met, Chris’s Cache offers a later, simpler, shorter Strauss with three live broadcasts of his “bucolic tragedy” Daphne.
December at Chris’s Cache kicks off with two of Verdi’s lesser-known operas: La Battaglia di Legnano and I Due Foscari.
Chris’s Cache ends the month with another “fun” opera but one even rarer than last week’s Rossini: Der Wildschütz by Albert Lortzing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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