A divided duty
Today’s Chris’s Cache features live recordings of Otello most noteworthy for their Desdemonas: (in chronological order) Teresa Stratas, Julia Varady, Eva Marton and Karita Mattila.
Teresa Stratas
61 pieces since 2009 — in 8 roles, at 2 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
61
pieces
8
roles
2
companies
18
years
By role
By company
Role Desdemona
Role Jenny
The last days of disco
The Met’s 1979 telecast of Mahagonny exposed one of the lesser-known factors contributing to the demise of disco: the global supply of eye shadow, rouge and lip gloss was exhausted for the next decade by a cast featuring Klara Barlow, Louise Wohlafka, Nedda Casei, Gwynn Cornell, Joann Grillo and Isola Jones—and stilettos, garter belts and […]
Role Komponist
Composer’s intentions
A live broadcast of the prologue to Ariadne auf Naxos featuring Julia Varady, a favorite sopranos in a role she sang only rarely.
Role Lulu
Uniquely and devastatingly honest
On this day in 1981 the Metropolitan Opera broadcast the full three-act version of Berg’s Lulu starring Teresa Stratas.
Loy meets girl
Christof Loy’s highly controversial 2009 production of Berg’s Lulu for The Royal Opera House has been released on DVD (Opus Arte), with beautifully realized film direction by Robin Lough. Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra of The Royal Opera House lead an extraordinary cast of singing actors in plumbing the musical and psychological depths of this […]
Snake charmer
A long-awaited DVD from the Met documents one of the great “42nd Street” episodes in operatic history: on December 20, 1980, a largely unknown Julia Migenes (or Migenes-Johnson, as she was called in those days) stepped in on a few hours’ notice for an ailing Teresa Stratas as the anti-heroine of Berg’s Lulu. A prodigiously […]
Role Marenka
An old-fashioned wedding
“Trove Thursday” presents a complete Prodanà Nevesta (aka Die Verkaufte Braut, of course) by Smetana plus extended excerpts from a broadcast of Spontini’s La Vestale in its rarely heard original French version.
Role Micaela
Mais nous voyons à nouveau La Carmencita
The opening night of the Metropolitan Opera of September 1972 was supposed to be the dawn of a new era.
Role Mimi
The first time I saw Paris
On this day in 1981 “the Zeffirelli Bohème” opened at the Metropolitan Opera.
Dies irae, dies illa
Trove Thursday offers Mozart’s Requiem with Lucia Popp, Christa Ludwig, Peter Schreier and Walter Berry conducted by James Levine from the 1981 Salzburg Festival.
The right box
Let’s call this meeting to order. My name is Patrick and I’m a boxset-aholic.
Role Queen (Marie Antoinette)
“Ghosts” of honor
John Corigliano‘s first and second symphonies won the Grawemeyer and the Pulitzer, respectively; the premiere of his Third Symphony wasn’t even reviewed by the Times. His score for The Red Violin won an Oscar™; his score for Edge of Darkness ended up on the cutting room floor. Is there an American composer at once more […]