Trove Thursday offers a nearly forgotten 19th century opera with a most marvelous name: Le Roi d’Ys by Éduoard Lalo featuring a superb French cast led by Alain Vanzo, Andrea Guiot, Jane Rhodes and Robert Massard.
As one can see from the chronology published earlier this year, the American Opera Society, in addition to reviving a number of now familiar operas, introduced many singers who became important local figures; however, there were shooting-star exceptions like today’s Trove Thursday offering of d’Albert’s Tiefland featuring Angeles Gulin and Ion Buzea.
In an era when the Metropolitan Opera cannot cast an Aida, Trovatore or Forza consistently, New Amsterdam Opera managed to cast large, attractive and fully technically capable voices in all the cruelly demanding principal roles in I Vespri Siciliani!
Joan of Arc inspired many splendid works of art including Tchaikovsky’s Orleanskaya Deva which Trove Thursday presents today in a 1975 broadcast featuring the great Russian mezzo Irina Arkhipova and her husband tenor Vladislav Piavko.
With La Scala’s plan to open on December 7 with a new Lucia di Lammermoor thwarted, Trove Thursday sets its Wayback Machine to nearly 50 years ago to present two of the 20th century’s greatest madwomen—Joan Sutherland and Beverly Sills—denounced by Plàcido Domingo and Alfredo Kraus respectively, with the former pair consoled by Kurt Moll‘s luxurious Raimundo.
For this, the 250th edition of Trove Thursday, [hold for applause] a broadcast of a memorable evening at Carnegie Hall—and I was there: Smetana’s stirring Libuse, the Czech national opera, with a transcendent Gabriela Benackova as its titular prophetess.
Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco in a rare NYC concert performance with Margaret Price, Carlo Bergonzi and Sherrill Milnes.
Trove Thursday uncovered two broadcasts of Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia that share a fascinating nexus: in each an enduring superstar tenor—José Carreras/Alfredo Kraus—is poisoned by a soon-to-vanish rising-star soprano—Vasso Papantoniou/Margarita Castro-Alberty.
Who could doubt that Leontyne Price contains multitudes?
Trove Thursday presents Michael Fabiano in one of his specialties as the dashing hero of Il Corsaro torn between Tamara Wilson and Nicole Cabell.
While Luciano Pavarotti may have brought opera to the people, once he realized how lucrative it could be, there was a string of promoters who helped him turn all that adoration into cold hard cash.
Michael Fabiano is a boss. This is a fact.
Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco in a rare NYC concert performance with Margaret Price, Carlo Bergonzi and Sherrill Milnes.
“Trove Thursday” drafts a 1960s All-Star team for Verdi’s Il Trovatore broadcast from the Teatro Colón.
“Trove Thursday” keeps the evil deeds going this All Saints’s Day with a vintage La Scala broadcast of Arrigo Boito’s only completed opera Mefistofele.
“Trove Thursday” offers due local Lombardi: one with Renata Scotto and José Carreras, the other with Aprile Millo and Carlo Bergonzi.
Venomous fishwife Norman Lebrecht has gleefully seized upon the death of beloved diva Montserrat Caballé to use her scarcely-cold cadaver as a club to attack (who else) Peter Gelb.
On the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of your birth, I am perplexed as to what to write about you that isn’t of the highest, most ecstatic praise and of deliriously effusive encomiums.
Edita Gruberova essentially revived and propagated the bel canto repertoire in central Europe, specifically in the German-speaking countries.
“Trove Thursday” ushers in February with Catalani’s La Wally with a mountain-top cast of Renata Tebaldi, Renata Scotto, Mario del Monaco, Giangiacomo Guelfi and Giorgio Tozzi conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini.
C-major has made available the first DVD/Blu-ray of Franco Faccio’s Amleto.
In Andrea Chenier an unexpected Canadian star-tenor relishes beheading alongside a far less well-known Italian diva: Jon Vickers and Ilva Ligabue.
A live Un Ballo in Maschera featuring Jon Vickers, Amy Shuard, Lucia Popp, Shirley Verrett and Peter Glossop.
Jonas Kaufmann announced that he feels ready to return to the stage after calling in sick since last autumn
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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