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.
This week Chris’s Cache features Maria Chiara, Elena Mauti-Nunziata, Rita Orlandi-Malaspina and Orianna Santunione in L’Amico Fritz, Mefistofele, Simon Boccanegra and La Fanciulla del West, respectively.
On October 14, 1979 I spent my birthday attending my first all-star opera gala, thrilled at the chance to hear some of the great singers I’d only experienced on LPs, broadcasts or via my pirate reel-to-reel tapes.
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.
“Trove Thursday” presents a performance from 40 years ago: an inspired Renata Scotto as Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur.
“Trove Thursday” offers a Der Fliegende Holländer from New York City Opera featuring the underrated American soprano Johanna Meier.
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with an unexpected heroine: the electrifying Julia Varady, seduced and abandoned by the suavely ardent Giacomo Aragall.
Today the world of opera mourns the death of soprano and pedagogue Phyllis Curtin, who passed away yesterday at the age of 94.
Richard Wagner told Cosima he first got the idea of composing an opera about Tristan and Isolde while he was conducting Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi starring his muse, Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, in the trouser role of Romeo.
[This article originally appeared in the print zine precursor to this site, one of a series of surveys of live recordings by critic Leila de Lakmé.] Leyla Gencer. The very name is exotic. She was an artist of Turkish ancestry who, during the 1950s and 60s, held her own despite the presence of Maria Callas,…
La Cieca’s all-time favorite soprano, Renata Scotto, in one of her greatest roles, Adriana Lecouvreur — if you can think of an operatic experience to rival it, La Cieca hopes you will let her know what you’re having! La Scotto is heard in her first Adriana Lecouvreur, from San Francisco in 1977, partnered by Elena…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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