Patrick Mack looks back on “a great, nay, historic evening,” Renata Scotto‘s 1981 performance of Il trittico, now newly available on Met Opera on Demand.
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.
On this day in 1959 Alban Berg‘s Wozzeck had its Metropolitan Opera premiere (in English)
Recent discussion about the merits of Le Prophète has prompted Chris’s Cache to unearth a pirate recording of Meyerbeer’s opera with Marilyn Horne, Rita Shane and Guy Chauvet led by Charles Mackerras, along with an earlier collaboration of the mezzo and conductor: Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice in which Horne goes to hell to get back Adriana Maliponte with the help of Judith Blegen.
Chris’s Cache sends Renata Scotto a valentine ahead of her 89th birthday next week with rare in-house recordings of eight (!) mid-career performances spanning 1971-1977.
On this day in 1964 the Metropolitan Opera opened its season with a new production of Lucia di Lammermoor.
On this day in 1959 Alban Berg‘s Wozzeck had its Metropolitan Opera premiere.
Sixty years ago today, Berg’s Wozzeck was first performed at the Metropolitan Opera.
Our Own Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin celebrates tonight’s opening of the season at the Met with an opening night from the past: a 1967 performance of La traviata.
The comprimario tenor, veteran of 2,928 performances at the Met, died earlier today. He was 82.
When a new production of Fidelio premiered at the Met in 1960, the opera had been absent from the repertoire since 1951, the post-war return of Kirsten Flagstad as a still effective Leonore and led by Bruno Walter. In the period between the two productions a new generation of singers had begun to make their…
To get straight to the point, the main attraction of this DVD is Renata Scotto. The Italian soprano, the first to perform all three heroines of Il trittico at the Met, is simply superb. She has élan in the moments of tension and a powerful, in-depth delivery. There is not a single word in the…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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