Chris’s Cache offers up a quintet of intriguing “forgotten” Leonora-Azucena pairings from the 1970s.
On this day in 1966 the Metropolitan Opera presented a new production of Elektra.
The mixture of romance and realism in Sondheim songs, the revelation that while love could be grand and passionate it could also be mundane or inconvenient or mistimed or just plain embarrassing, was such a relief.
Franco Corelli was born on April 8, 1921 in Ancona and Trove Thursday celebrates the matinee-idol tenor’s centenary with a pair of his rare non-Met US appearances; seducing Marie Collier in La Fanciulla del West and vacillating between Ilva Ligabue and Grace Bumbry in Il Trovatore.
“Met’s Roller Coaster Season Dips Back Into Artistic Basement with Walküre“
“Trove Thursday” remembers the company’s very first Lady Macbeth via Leonie Rysanek’s NYC debut in a concert performance of Verdi’s Shakespeare masterpiece less than a year before her first Met appearance.
Orfeo’s 150 Years box chronologically documents some of the finest nights of live opera from the Wiener Staatsoper in the years following its restoration in 1955.
“Trove Thursday” offers Die Frau ohne Schatten conducted by Georg Solti and also featuring Regina Resnik, Donald McIntyre and the inevitable James King.
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.
The very first Vienna post-war performance of Elektra.
“Good God—an adult musical!”
Between them, Maria Guleghina, Marcello Giordani, James Morris and John Del Carlo have nearly 150 combined years of service on stage.
Falstaff, Verdi’s final opera, is exuberantly inventive, bubbling and roiling with ideas the 79-year-old composer was too impatient to develop.
The American mezzo-soprano, director, filmmaker and teacher Regina Resnik has died.
Sony Masterworks has released on CD
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
×
Sign up for Parterre’s free newsletter.
Exclusive opera reviews, commentary, and top reads
delivered to your email weekly…ish.