A grandly sung revival of The Ballad of Baby Doe at Central City Opera mines poignance from America’s past and present.
As this is “Donizetti Month” here on parterre box, Chris’s Cache offers the recently deceased Paul Plishka and Opera Orchestra of New York with Carol Vaness in Anna Bolena and with Mariella Devia in the rarely heard Adelia.
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.
Diva November meets Wagner December when Chris’s Cache this week offers Régine Crespin as both Elisabeth in Tannhäuser and Senta in Der Fliegende Holländer via a pair of American pirates from the 1960s.
On this day in 1960 soprano Eileen Farrell made her Metropolitan Opera debut in the title role of a new production of Gluck’s Alceste.
This Sony Classical set of live performances covers a golden quarter century in the singing and staging of Wagner. Birgit Nilsson shared it with many other legends, and many of them appear on these discs.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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