Ethiopian blends
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.
Montserrat Caballé
151 pieces since 2005 — in 27 roles, at 10 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
151
pieces
27
roles
10
companies
22
years
By role
Role Aida
Role Alaide
Strange music
Just over a month ago the great Catalan soprano Montserrat Caballé died at age 85.
Role Desdemona
The right box
Let’s call this meeting to order. My name is Patrick and I’m a boxset-aholic.
Role Dircé
Steal me, sweet thieves
Ali Baba ou Les Quarantes Voleurs continues straight-tone September with Teresa Stich-Randall as its heroine while Alfredo Kraus scales the heights with another Nadir.
Role Elena
“Il vostro fato è in vostra mano!”
On this day in 1974 Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani had its Metropolitan Opera stage premiere.
Role Elisabetta
Filth and dementia
Zachary Woolfe reflects on the legacy of parterre box founder James Jorden and three decades of “remembering when opera was queer and dangerous and exciting and making it that way again”
By Zachary Woolfe
21 comments
The vanities of the divas
Maria Callas and Montserrat Caballé are two of the most highly-regarded and esteemed exponents of the great soprano roles in both bel canto and in the operas of Verdi, and their recordings are held as artistic triumphs of the highest order.
Roberto Devereux: Tragedy Mirrored
By the time Roberto Devereux saw its premiere at Napoli’s Teatro San Carlo on 29 October, 1837, Gaetano Donizetti had lost, in an 18-month time frame, both his parents, two still-born children, and his beloved wife Virginia.
Role Elvira
How deep is your love
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.
Role Gioconda
Thoughts on La Gioconda: the others
Yes, there were other Giocondas if not of quite the same distinction. Chronologically…
Role Giovanna
Odd numbers
All of the operas of Giuseppe Verdi contain music that is worth hearing and can be rewarding in good performances.
Role Imogene
The zoo story
A week from Saturday Will Crutchfield’s “Bel Canto at Caramoor” ends a 20-year run with Il Pirata.
Mad woman
Mike Richter, via CD-ROM, takes us back to the golden age of concert opera in New York City with Il pirata starring Montserrat Caballé.
Role Leonora
Thoughts on La Forza del destino: recordings
As said at the beginning, I implied I’d rather see Don Carlo(s) and listen to Forza.
Ready or not, here comes mama
Opening night of La Scala in 1962 with Franco Corelli, Antonietta Stella, Fiorenza Cossotto, Ettore Bastianini, and Ivo Vinco.
Role Liu
Zubin Mehta is a great opera conductor
Zubin Mehta was a major part of musical life when I moved to Southern California in 1969, having started his tenure as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
By Mister Snow
110 comments
All the lovely things you are to me
To celebrate the 100th anniversary performances of Turandot at the Met starting next week, Patrick Dillon gives a listen to seven versions of “Signore, ascolta!” for Perspectives on an Aria.
Past perfect
With much laying-on of fanfares and gift boxes our friends at Decca Classics have unleashed Luciano Pavarotti Edition 1: The First Decade on a weary and satiated public.
Role Lucrezia
Nadir at zenith
Les Pêcheurs de Perles with an impressive Francophone cast headed by the superb Nadir of Alain Vanzo, one of my favorite tenors.
Role Lucrezia Borgia
Pretty poison
The wicked poisoner showed herself in fine form, full of purple passion and lusty music-making that would gladden the heart of any bel canto enthusiast or opera lover in general.
High ‘Society’
Off-and-on since last fall my PPP (Personal Pandemic Project) has been assembling a chronology of the American Opera Society. For 19 years beginning in 1951 it presented a remarkable series of concert performances of works unperformed by either the Met or New York City Opera.
the million things she gave me
La Cieca offers her own personal salute to a very special holiday with an edition of Unnatural Acts of Opera featuring Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia. In this legendary April 20, 1965 performance, the eponymous antiheroine is Montserrat Caballé. Lucrezia Borgia (Prologue)
Role Luisa
Act out, Luisa
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.
Mountain high
Yes, the plot of Luisa Miller is a novella, and a pleasantly juicy one at that.
Role Madama Cortese
Wien disposition
Following classic recordings documenting the work of Karl Böhm and Herbert von Karajan. Orfeo’s 150 Years Wiener Staatsoper box moves on to new releases that are seeing their first incarnation on an officially available disc.
Role Maddalena
Thoughts on Andrea Chénier: the others
There were, of course, other Chénier recordings beyond the truly great ones…
Role Manon
prepackaged pathos
Those of you cher public who ordered and enjoyed Decca’s bargain Wagner box may now be interested in a bargain Puccini edition offered by EMI. The set, Puccini: The Operas, retails for $59.98 (less than four bucks a disc) and includes complete performances of:Â
Role Marguerite
The beautiful and damned
On this day in 1965 Montserrat Caballé and Sherrill Milnes made their Metropolitan Opera debuts in Faust.
Role Maria Stuarda
Masques et bergamasques
John Yohalem wraps up Donizetti Month at parterre box with a look back at nearly six decades of Donizetti operagoing.
Role Marschallin
Tarnished rose
Glyndebourne’s release of a live Rosenkavalier from 1965 longs to be loved and cherished by listeners. Featuring a thrilling Traumcast composed of Montserrat Caballé, Otto Edelmann, Teresa Zylis-Gara, and Edith Mathis, one would certainly expect it to deserve much praise and admiration. The sound quality is, however, a stunning disappointment.
Role Mimì
The 1973 La bohème is so overrated
The Solti recording of Bohème is completely miscast.
By Mr. Fabulous
222 comments
Loving him isn’t the right thing to do
Matthew Travisano takes on Mimì’s Act III aria from La bohème — not that one, the other one — in the latest installment of the “Perspectives on an Aria” series
Role Norma
The new Norma
In a splashy new recording of Norma, Marina Rebeka “is doing something very untoward, and it appears destructive to her voice.” It has Niel Rishoi worried.
The color of Monet
When I saw that Richard Bonynge AC CBE, conductor and musicologist supreme, had authored a book titled Chalet Monet about the home he shared with his wife, La Dame Joan Sutherland OM AC DBE, in Les Avants, Switzerland I practically had to wipe my chin.
The vanities of the divas
Maria Callas and Montserrat Caballé are two of the most highly-regarded and esteemed exponents of the great soprano roles in both bel canto and in the operas of Verdi, and their recordings are held as artistic triumphs of the highest order.
The priestess with the mostest
Edita Gruberova takes on the requirements of the title role in Bellini’s Norma.
A life with a hero
By some quirk of fate, I tend to hear about the deaths of many operatic legends via radio news while out driving.
Who’s the missing star?
La Cieca was just wondering about something yesterday on opera-l, and doggone if Anne Midgette wasn’t wondering about the same thing today in the New York Times. (That woman haunts my dreams, I tell you. It’s like she’s inside my head. Now, where was I? Oh, yes…) The point that dear Anne and I (among […]
Podcasta Diva
Did you know Unnatural Acts of Opera is the only all-opera podcast in the whole, uh, podosphere? Even better, this podcast features only live opera performances, preferably demented. Our opera this time is both live and demented, with even a soupcon of backstage drama to add an extra frisson. La Cieca presents the first act […]
Role title role
The reel world
It never occurred to me that each tape had to be individually dubbed or that others, maybe many, many others, might also be ordering tapes at the same time.
Role Turandot
I’m a stranger here myself
In 1982 I saw Turandot at the San Francisco Opera, the year after I became an opera fan, and it was my first live opera.
Come to the record store in old Peking
In the lead up to LA Opera’s mounting of Turandot on May 18th (hooray!) I thought I’d touch on some of my favorite recordings and new re-masters I’ve discovered. I have them all.
Role Violetta
Consumptive professionals
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.
Felice troppo
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.
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
