He has conducted some of my favorite opera recordings.
My favorite Verdi performance is the iconic 1960 RCA recording of Otello with Jon Vickers in the title role and the Rome Opera Orchestra and Chorus under the baton of the masterly Tullio Serafin.
Tito Gobbi‘s performance of Rigoletto’s “Cortigiani, vil razza dannata” offers the most musically and dramatically complete portrait of Verdi’s tortured court jester that I have ever heard.
For all his undeniable precision and discipline, I still find Toscanini’s tempi rushed and unyielding and his lack of rubato a chilly turnoff.
Suck it, Joseph Kerman: Puccini’s “Shabby Little Shocker” has outlived you and will probably bury us all.
Ahead of her return to the Met, soprano Corinne Winters chats with Kevin Ng about her repertoire, overcoming biases about her voice type, and how she plans to play “energetic, young women” as long as she can.
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.
Lyric Opera of Chicago has opened its new season with a revival of its tried and true 2006 production of Verdi’s sixteenth opera, Rigoletto, one of his most tuneful and dramatic works (I attended the Sunday matinée performance).
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.
Maria Callas’s official debut in opera was as La Gioconda in 1947 at the arena in Verona.
Your favorite box set-aholic here completely missed the release last August of Giuseppe Di Stefano – Complete Decca Recordings in honor of the great tenor’s centenary.
New Camerata Opera is presenting its first staged and indoor program in some time, at “The Muse,” a lofty cabaret space up against a cemetery in Bushwick, and their singers sound like they’ve been champing at the bit for eighteen months and are bursting to vocalize!
Trove Thursday celebrates Christa Ludwig with live excerpts from 1955 through 1982.
The American Opera Society introduced many important singers to New York City audiences, but few were as controversial as the Greek soprano Elena Souliotis; Trove Thursday offers her local debut (at age 23) in Anna Bolena with Marilyn Horne, Janet Baker, Plácido Domingo and Carlo Cava.
Giacomo Puccini’s La fanciulla del West may have its detractors (Stravinsky referred to it as a “horse-opera’) but you will not find me among them.
Sonya Yoncheva’s first-ever Princess Romazov was one of this summer’s casualties but Trove Thursday steps up with a rare 1960 in-house pirate of Giordano’s Fedora starring Renata Tebaldi, Giuseppe di Stefano and Tito Gobbi along with a pair of Tebaldi-di Stefano Puccini highlights from the early 1950s.
Trove Thursday relishes neglected works, operas in translation and irreplaceable divas, and this week it presents a pair that embody all three affections: Cherubini’s Les Abencérages and Weber’s Oberon in Italian with the glorious Anita Cerquetti, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini and Vittorio Gui respectively.
Somewhere in all of this, I decided it was time to try Callas.
Michael Fabiano is a boss. This is a fact.
Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco in a rare NYC concert performance with Margaret Price, Carlo Bergonzi and Sherrill Milnes.
“Are we Team Guelf or Team Ghibelline?”
“Trove Thursday” presents Falla’s La Vida Breve in a live concert version with Victoria de los Angeles, one of Spain’s greatest singers, as Salud.
In the midst of Tosca month “Trove Thursday” assembles from the 60s to the 80s an Il Trittico in which each opera features an important Italian star.
The second half of Warner Classics’ Maria Callas Live Remastered set represents the years 1954 to 1964 in the career of La Divina.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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