impossible discs
|
On the other hand, one can be reasonably pleased that Neil Shicoff, not Jos� Carreras, sang Don Jos� on the Ozawa Carmen; Mr. Carreras' Don Jos� should be remembered as it sounds on the DG/Karajan recording! Another unnecessary duplication was avoided when the death of Jussi Bj�rling brought Nicolai Gedda to the EMI/Schippers Boh�me. But we'll close this paragraph with a baritone story I've always liked. Ettore Bastianini was going to learn Jago for a records-only assumption (Decca/Karajan), but he showed up underprepared and was replaced by Aldo Protti (who of course had already sung the part on Decca's mono Otello, conducted by Alberto Erede, with the same tenor and soprano). The funny part involves Bastianini showing up with all these experienced Otello types and trying to make a joke out of it by asking, "Now what's all this about a handkerchief?"
To the findings reported in the second article , I should add a few more items:
In the late 1950s, Decca switched sopranos on a pair of projects: Anita Cerquetti and Renata Tebaldi traded Fanciulla and Gioconda.
Christel Goltz was originally announced for the DG/B�hm Elektra which so memorably stars Inge Borkh.
Mirella Freni joined Mr. Gedda on the above-discussed EMI/Schippers Boh�me, planned as a stereo remake with Mr. Bj�rling and Victoria de los Angeles (� la their Butterfly, though the first time out there Giuseppe di Stefano was the wonderful Pinkerton).
Catarina Ligendza on the DG/Jochum Meistersinger continues the tradition of bad replacement Evchens (as already reported re: Hannelore Bode) -- we were supposed to get Edith Mathis!
Julia Varady, the Santuzza on the Decca/Gavazzeni Cavalleria Rusticana, was another of those mystery replacements -- was this also proposed as a Freni project, with that diva backing out at the last moment?
Cheryl Studer was replaced by Luba Orgonasova on the Rossini Stabat mater (DG/Chung).
On the brand-new DG/Abbado Don Giovanni, Carmela Remigio (who?) stands in for originally-announced Jane Eaglen (which is why Sony could include the Donna Anna arias on Miss Eaglen's new CD); Cecilia Bartoli gave way to Patrizia Pace as Zerlina.
Let's round off this talk of
individuals replacing individuals with a few conductor
changes. Jean Martinon's death brought Lorin Maazel
on board for EMI's Tha�s (where he also
played the violin for the "Meditation"), and
William Steinberg disappeared from the RCA
Trovatore which now bears Zubin Mehta's name.
The RCA (now Decca) Walk�re conducted by
Erich Leinsdorf, already discussed for changes with its
Sieglinde and Fricka, was once earmarked as a project
for Herbert von Karajan, and Ferenc Fricsay was named
for the above-mentioned DG Elektra which Karl
B�hm ended up making. But the most surprising such
tale must be that of Carlo Maria Giulini on the justly
celebrated EMI Don Giovanni -- not only was he a
replacement (for Otto Klemperer, who got a second
chance seven years later), but he had never performed
the opera before!
Before we turn to those complete sets you're so
eager to read about, let�s take a moment to
review discs of operatic excerpts. Dame Joan Sutherland
reportedly recorded Mignon's "Connais-tu le
pays?" for her "Romantic French Arias"
album, but we've yet to hear it if so. RCA planned
a second disc of Donizetti rarities with Montserrat
Caball�, and she taped long Marino Faliero
and Fausta scenes for it. The disc was never
finished, however, and even with all the CD
compilations featuring the diva, these arias were never
released.
More surprisingly, she recorded an entire duets album
with Mr. Carreras -- the Lucrezia Borgia
prologue, Manon's Saint-Sulpice scene, the
end of Act One of Otello, almost all of
Ch�nier Act Four, the H�rodiade
prison duet -- in 1990, but due to "unacceptable
sound quality" (I leave it to my readers to guess
what this euphemism might mean) the album has not
appeared. Two other Doomed to Disaster Duet Albums,
both on Philips: Shirley Verrett and Simon Estes
singing "show tunes," and of course the
notorious Maria Callas/Giuseppe di Stefano scenes from
Elisir (I think), Don Carlos, Les
v�pres siciliennes, Otello and (if
memory serves) Faust.
Ruth Ann Swenson's calling-card aria recital
("Positively Golden," on EMI) was supposed to
include Lakm�'s Bell Song and "Caro
nome," but neither appears on the record. Since
broadcasts reveal her to be particularly ravishing
whenever she sings the latter, its omission ranks as a
particular disappointment. And Angela Gheorghiu's
first solo disc for Decca does not include
Mica�la's aria (which I believe she did record
for it) because of the Teldec Carmen which
features her (indeed, she's its only real
attraction). Moreover, though I read a detailed listing
of the day-to-day recording schedule for the EMI duet
record which features Miss Gheorghiu and her hubby,
Roberto Alagna, two items mentioned there -- the second
Adina-Nemorino duet and P�richole's
S�guidille -- are not on the CD.
James Levine's gala concert (April 1996) suffered
an unusual spate of cancelled numbers: Miss Swenson and
Mr. Pavarotti's Lucia duet; Hildegard
Behrens' Bible Scene from Wozzeck; Sharon
Sweet, Dolora Zajick and Richard Leech in the
Norma trio; Miss Bartoli's Cenerentola
finale; Dame Margaret Price's "Io son
l'umile ancella"; Teresa Stratas in an item
from Act Two of Mahagonny; Miss
Caball�'s Willow Song and Ave Maria; Marilyn
Horne's "Che far�"; Jessye Norman
and Christa Ludwig in the Cat Duet (!!!!); and a
Bartoli-Bryn Terfel "La ci darem" (replaced
by the Act Two Sextet).
And there were replacements in the Ghosts of
Versailles quartet (Christine Goerke for Miss
Stratas), the Don Carlos interview (Roberto
Scandiuzzi for Nicolai Ghiaurov), the
P�richole solo (Frederica von Stade for Maria
Ewing, who was evidently going to do two!), the
Fledermaus duet (H�kan Hageg�rd for Jerry
Hadley), the Hoffmann Sextet (Alfredo Kraus for
Francisco Araiza), the Lombardi trio (Mr.
Bergonzi for Mr. Pavarotti again!) and the
Tannh�user solo (Deborah Voigt for Miss
Behrens, who only days before had nabbed the aria away
from Miss Eaglen).
All right. No more screwing around. This ain't our
first time at the rodeo. Let's find out about
abandoned recordings, beginning with those planned but
dropped before they could ever start. Columbia
struggled and struggled to find a Leonore for Bruno
Walter's Fidelio, but neither their own
Eileen Farrell (under contract with them, and indeed
she recorded one of the best "Abscheulichers"
ever made on a recital disc, but since she wasn't a
native speaker Walter wasn't interested) nor Ingrid
Bjoner, Inge Borkh or Sena Jurinac satisfied.
Finally he worked with Gr� Brouwenstijn and agreed
to use her. A similar search transpired for Marzelline
(with rejects including Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf,
Irmgard Seefried and Rita Streich!), with Wilma Lipp
the eventual winner. Jon Vickers was rejected also, and
they were trying to make arrangements with James
McCracken when Walter fell ill (December 1961, only
months before his death) and cancelled the whole thing.
EMI has had many Italian opera proposals cancelled or
perhaps rerouted, including a Floriana Cavalli/Alfredo
Kraus Tosca (early '60s), a Caball�
Attila (late '70s) and both Tosca and
Trovatore for R�gine Crespin. Another EMI
Trovatore-that-never-was comes from the early
'70s, when Giulini planned to lead Miss
Caball�, Shirley Verrett and Piero Cappuccilli. I
suppose they never found a suitable Manrico. Also in
the early '70s, Decca booked session time for a
premiere recording of Britten's Gloriana with Dame Janet Baker as Elizabeth, but either the mezzo decided she didn't want to do it after all or (more likely) the ailing Britten just wasn't going to be up to conducting it.
Richard Tucker must have been annoyed
when he learned that RCA was recording every note of
Les v�pres siciliennes but kept cutting
back plans to record a complete La juive with
him. (That LP of scenes with Martina Arroyo and Anna
Moffo represents everything they recorded.) But he
should have counted his blessings, for in the late
'70s, RCA completely abandoned three big projects,
two of which were slated for James Levine. One was a
Don Giovanni for Sherrill Milnes, Leontyne
Price, Miss Caball�, Judith Blegen and Stuart
Burrows.
I've heard it said that one problem here was Miss
Price's insistence that her then-boyfriend Cesare
Siepi be cast as the Don, but who knows? The other
story is stranger still: a planned Gioconda with
Renata Scotto, Tatiana Troyanos, Mr. Domingo and Mr.
Milnes evaporated, only to be replaced (that is, using
the planned studio time) by an EMI Boh�me
with the same conductor, soprano and baritone! And the
non-Levine project was a Butterfly with Dame
Kiri Te Kanawa and Mr. Domingo, which disappeared when
the forgetful tenor stepped into Neil Shicoff's
place on the CBS/Maazel recording . . .
Other 1970s RCA troubles involve the ever-fascinating
Anna Moffo, who told Opera Monthly a decade or
so ago that she couldn't wait to record
Tosca (a set RCA actually planned in the '70s),
an aria recital and God knows what else -- she was also
once named in connection with proposed recordings of
Alzira (with Franco Bonisolli and Mr.
Cappuccilli) and Lodoletta.
A few bel canto disappearances now. A Sony
Puritani with Edita Gruberov� and (I think)
Chris Merritt was promised several years ago; then we
learned that Luciana Serra would be singing Elvira
instead. I don't think the record was ever made.
Philips announced its own Puritani in the 1970s,
to star Cristina Deutekom, but it too never appeared.
Similarly, an Erato Semiramide with Miss
Caball� and (I think) Martine Dupuy may have been
recorded, but if so it was never approved for release.
Miss Caball� and Mr. Carreras had hopes of late
'70s recordings of Forza (Spanish Columbia)
and Adriana Lecouvreur (Philips), but neither
happened. (Mr. Carreras taped his Alvaro on an unhappy
DG/Sinopoli recording.) And there were Puccini plans
too: a recent bio tells of two Butterfly
recordings (one with Pavarotti) nixed before the one
with her husband, Bernab� Mart�, was made
(she evidently felt that doing the opera without him
was like cheating on him!), and evidently an early
'70s Pavarotti/Glossop/Karajan version "failed
to materialize for a complex variety of
reasons."
I'm also told that EMI had Karajan
booked for Lohengrin sessions with Jussi
Bj�rling (!!), Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and
Maria Callas (as Ortrud!!!!), but Mr.
Bj�rling's death put paid to everything; if
you believe this story, I guess the Kempe Lohengrin
(with Jess Thomas, Elisabeth Gr�mmer and Christa
Ludwig) resulted a year or two later. Other Karajan
plans were of course destroyed when the conductor died,
but evidently late in the game he had met and liked
Aprile Millo, whom he wanted for Donna Anna (!) and
Elsa (!!), plus an aria record (!!!) He'd talked to
Vinson Cole about Fidelio (no doubt with Janet
Perry as Leonore), and Mirella Freni turned him down
for Rigoletto (as she'd already done for
Turandot and Ballo).
The early 1980s brought talk of a Hoffmann (for
Philips, I think) with Alfredo Kraus and Agnes Baltsa
(as Giulietta, one may safely presume!) under James
Levine's direction. (Dame Margaret Price was talked
of in connection with a Philips Hoffmann at some
point too -- as Antonia?) This too never appeared. The
Philips Hoffmann with Araiza (first announced as
a Deutsche Grammophon project -- ah, these PolyGram
confusions!) featured a rather good Giulietta in Cheryl
Studer. About seven years ago, a Canadian opera
magazine revealed a variety of recordings as "in
the works" for this soprano, including
Massenet's Manon opposite Pl�cido
Domingo.
Is the Sinopoli Arabella planned with her,
Angela Maria Blasi and Bryn Terfel (also for DG) ever
going to happen? What about the Sawallisch Ariadne
auf Naxos or the Haitink Die Liebe der
Dana� (both EMI proposals, the latter a sad
gap in the catalogue since it has yet to receive a
complete commercial recording)? I'm doubtful about
either, at least with Miss Studer; ditto for the Met
Rosenkavalier with her (for DG, of course),
Kathleen Battle, Anne Sofie von Otter and Kurt Moll.
(When that Rosenkavalier was announced, they
also talked of a Falstaff with Kathleen Battle's
Nannetta. I've heard nothing of it since.)
On the other hand, the DG/Cheryl Studer recording of
Der fliegende Holl�nder finally became
available after an appropriate seven years in limbo,
and the same label's Rigoletto
(Pavarotti/Levine) just hit the shelves. The rumor was
that Ms. Studer just couldn't finish "Caro
nome," perhaps owing to an unannounced pregnancy,
but somehow she seems to have managed it now -- maybe
by splicing in notes from other DG recordings?
Deborah Voigt goes from strength to strength onstage
but keeps losing record projects through no fault of
her own. Sir Georg Solti's death put paid to the
long-debated Decca Tristan remake; forever
discussed in the '80s as a Jessye
Norman-Pl�cido Domingo project (though James King
was once the tenor and, more recently, Mr. Domingo
named Hildegard Behrens, Maria Ewing (!!!) and Cheryl
Studer as potential Isoldes), it was finally
established for Miss Voigt and Ben Heppner, but now .
Similarly, the Decca/Dohn�nyi Ariadne has
been "on" and "off" and
"on" again, most recently with Miss Voigt and
Natalie Dessay attached. Keep your fingers crossed! But
don't hold your breath for the Met Forza,
which everyone showed up ready to tape -- except the
tenor, Mr. Pavarotti, who hadn't learned his
r�le and cancelled both the record and the
revival, leaving Roberto Scandiuzzi (Padre Guardiano)
with a big check and no performances (since he could
hardly have been expected to sing Sam or Tom in
Ballo) and Miss Voigt without this chance to record
her Leonora di Vargas.
Also unhappy is the news that plans for EMI to record
Die tote Stadt with Miss Voigt and conductor
James Conlon were eliminated when DG (?) considered
making their own with Jane Eaglen. And whatever
happened to the RCA/Sir Colin Davis Parsifal
(Miss Voigt, Mr. Heppner, Mr. Terfel, Sergei Leiferkus
and Jan-Hendrik Rootering)?
Other recent cancellations: an EMI Troyens with
Mr. Alagna (Carmen has taken its place in the
plans), a Decca Rise and Fall of the City of
Mahagonny (so much for the company's complete
Weill project!) and of course the Dohn�nyi
Siegfried and G�tterd�mmerung
(though apparently the rumors about having a hard time
finding a tenor to play Siegfried aren't the half
of it). Did William Christie ever make that
Entf�hrung for Erato?
Most mysterious of all are the complete sets which were
begun or even finished but have never been issued. In a
class by itself here is the 1958 Decca/Serafin
Mefistofele, begun with Giuseppe di Stefano but
left incom-plete when the tenor abandoned ship. The
Faust scenes were redone (or, in the case of the Helen
of Troy scene, done for the first time) with Mario del
Monaco, but everything else was left as it was (as even
the CD release shows, with acoustic shifts from scene
to scene). More bizarrely still, Decca released an
additional excerpts LP of the di Stefano scenes!
There's also that complete Ermione which was
slated for commercial release until Rockwell Blake
deep-sixed it, complaining about the microphone
placement -- somehow Lyric/Legato got their hands on
that, and they're meant to have the Pesaro
Riccardo e Zoraide (with June Anderson and Bruce
Ford under Riccardo Chailly) Decca dropped after Chris
Merritt pulled out. One last group of
Karajan items first. Fans love to exchange names of the
ladies put forward for his Norma (in one soprano
r�le or both) -- Agnes Baltsa, Lella Cuberli,
Helen Donath, Mirella Freni, Barbara Hendricks, Elena
Obraztsova, Katia Ricciarelli and no doubt others. But
few know that sessions were actually started with Miss
Ricciarelli as Norma, Miss Freni as Adalgisa and
Jos� Carreras as Pollione. I don't know how
much was recorded before Karajan became ill.
Some years before, he'd made a similar start on
Don Carlos, recording about an hour for Decca with
Pl�cido Domingo, Miss Freni and Christa Ludwig,
but there I don't know what happened. And
Karajan's is but one name attached to those early
'50s Bayreuth recordings, some of which have
appeared on pirate labels (with a thing or two, like
Tristan scenes and Walk�re Act
Three, from major labels), of legendary repute. Will
Decca release those 1951 cycles under Karajan and
Knappertsbusch, or is it true that the masters were
destroyed?
Another Don Carlos begun but never finished was
the DG/Abbado set planned in Italian -- with Miss
Ricciarelli, Miss Obraztsova, Mr. Domingo and Renato
Bruson -- that got redone (in French, thanks to Mr.
Abbado's pleading with DG) when the Russian mezzo
was shipped home under KGB suspicion.
A few years before that, Mr. Abbado got another
opportunity when the ever-temperamental Carlos Kleiber
cancelled an in-progress Boh�me (with the
Scala forces in Milan, plus Ileana Cotrubas and Mr.
Domingo) altogether after one of the minor principals
was delayed in Milanese traffic; Mr. Abbado agreed to
make a Verdi Requiem with the orchestra (and
dreadful chorus) in the time DG had booked. Were Miss
Ricciarelli and Nicolai Ghiaurov were already there to
sing Musetta and Colline? (I can't imagine Shirley
Verrett, the Requiem mezzo, had anything to do with
that Boh�me, but who can say?)
Shall we ever see the RCA recording of Strauss'
Die schweigsame Frau, which was allegedly in the
works or even in the can as of a few years ago,
starring the dream-team of Edita Gruberov� and
Kurt Moll? (I seem to recall Deon van der Walt
mentioned for the tenor part too . . .)
According to Galina Vishnevskaya, she and her husband,
Mstislav Rostropovich, had recorded the first act of
Tosca with Zurab Sotkilava and the baritone
Klenov, but the denunciations of various colleagues
brought the rest of the project to a halt. (Said
colleagues included three who were making their own
Tosca -- Milashkina, Atlantov and Mazurok -- and
two pure careerists -- Nesterenko and Obraztsova.) But
at least she got to record an entire Tosca when
DG made one with her and Franco Bonisolli. Contrast
Anita Cerquetti, legendary for having but one
commercial recital and opera (the aforementioned
Gioconda, slated for Renata Tebaldi). The rumors
are true, though: Miss Cerquetti did indeed begin a
Decca recording of Norma with Giulietta
Simionato and Mario del Monaco, and at least the scenes
with Adalgisa were taped (though never released, of
course).
For a long time, the biggest mystery of all was Carlo
Maria Giulini's La traviata for DG. It
starred Rosalind Plowright, Luis Lima and Juan Pons,
and fans used to debate hotly whether the set got off
the ground at all. Well, the recording most certainly
did take place -- there was a session report in High
Fidelity in the late '80s -- but obviously it
has never appeared. Evidently Mr. Giulini, who had
insisted on Miss Plowright for his Traviata,
refused to allow DG to release the recording, but I
don't have his specific reasons (though I've
also heard the entirely credible report that Miss
Plowright had Act One Trouble . . .)
Well, there we conclude this wild exploration. Please do write to parterre box with your comments, questions or indications of details big or small I missed!
Ortrud
Maxwell