Patrick Mack on the iconic Ethan Mordden‘s career and his first book on opera in 30 years – and it appears that time has mostly stopped in the Mordden manse.
When asked to express some “thoughts” here about Verdi’s Il trovatore, my immediate thought was “hmm… not a lot to think about there.”
To the extent that singers should be considered stewards of their repertoire, equating bad singing to whatever “verismo” is will only be to the detriment of verismo.
Chris’s Cache celebrates an “Easter in October” gala with five special pirate recordings of Cavalleria Rusticana from the Met featuring four prima donnas whose Santuzze never got a Saturday broadcast and one whose did: Giulietta Simionato, Fiorenza Cossotto, Régine Crespin, Rita Hunter and Mignon Dunn.
Les Contes d’Hoffmann is something of a puzzle in which some of the pieces are missing and others been altered to fit since Offenbach died before he could complete and revise the work.
When my editor suggested to me a round-up of my favorite recordings of Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann I was très, très, intrigued.
“In over nine years you’ve never posted an opera by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari,” no one has ever said.
There were, of course, other Chénier recordings beyond the truly great ones…
Quite simply, the singers are not around today who are steeped in the tradition of verismo, or for that matter the later part of the 19th century.
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.
Yes, there were other Giocondas if not of quite the same distinction. Chronologically…
Maria Callas’s official debut in opera was as La Gioconda in 1947 at the arena in Verona.
It would be enough to compare his official studio recording of this work with the recent performances in Turin to confirm that today Riccardo Muti is no longer totally ‘Mutian’
As said at the beginning, I implied I’d rather see Don Carlo(s) and listen to Forza.
Following the composition of Un ballo in maschera, Verdi had gone into a self-imposed retirement, at least musically; he had not composed a note in four years.
On June 20, a rather breezy, pleasant cool summer evening, the soprano Gabriella Reyes, tenor René Barbera and baritone Will Liverman took over the Summerstage space with a wide-ranging, ambitious recital program with Dimitri Dover tickling the ivories.
Out of sheer morbid curiosity last evening I pulled up the “orders” page of my Amazon account and searched Otello to discover that over the past 11 years. I’ve ordered 15 items with that title (one as recently as last night!)
Welcome, beloveds, to the Jessye Norman Memorial Museum. I’ll be the docent for your tour today.
On this day in 1981 the Metropolitan Opera telecast its new and unremarkable production of La traviata.
On this day in 1987 the Met raised the curtain on Franco Zeffirelli‘s production of Turandot.
On this day in 1984, the Metropolitan Opera presented a new production of Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini.
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 1982 the Metropolitan Opera revisited its controversial season-opener Norma.
The winners of the evening were the composer Riccardo Zandonai and Teatro Grattacielo which pulled off a near-impossible feat with success.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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