November has brought a lot of bad news to many of us, so Chris’s Cache will end the month with a pair of “fun” operas.
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Later this month the Met at last revives its striking Herbert Wernicke production of Die Frau ohne Schatten, prompting a Chris’s Cache preview of three live recordings of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s fanciful if knotty masterpiece.
Andy Knapp recently wrote enthusiastically about a 1973 Met pirate recoding of Il Trovatore starring Montserrat Caballé, Viorica Cortez, Plácido Domingo, and Robert Merrill. Chris’s Cache today shares that recording, as well another Met in-house starring the same soprano, tenor and baritone in Un Ballo in Maschera from several years earlier.
Inspired by Harry Rose’s recent fine polemic about verismo performance practice, Chris’s Cache offers one of Opera Orchestra of New York’s most exciting evenings: Zandonai’s Francesda da Rimini from 1973 with Raina Kabaivanska, Placido Domingo, and Matteo Manuguerra.
Lately I’ve been preoccupied with Verdi and Il trovatore in particular anticipating the opera’s return to the Met later this month for the first time since 2018, this unusual deep-dive Chris’s Cache (on my birthday) is the result.
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.
Needing a Mozart palate-cleanser after the recent misbegotten Marriage of Figaro, I went back more than two decades for a Houston Così fan Tutte featuring then-rising Americans Christine Goerke, Joyce Di Donato, Richard Croft, and Nathan Gunn as the confused lovers.
Ahead of its September 24 Metropolitan Opera premiere, Chris’s Cache provides three Les Contes d’Hoffmann each with just one soprano as its heroines, as well as unusually interesting Antonia acts.
“Let’s start at the very beginning” of Kent Nagano’s pioneering complete Ring project which was recently discussed here in depth in Montagu James’s review of Die Walküre.
Following Gundula Janowitz and Janet Baker, Chris’s Cache sends birthday greetings to another favorite diva—Karita Matilla—with a quartet of broadcasts.
One of the goals of both Trove Thursday and now Chris’s Cache has been to share pirate recordings of the valuable NYC groups that have presented concert operas over the decades.
Chris’s Cache celebrates the 91st birthday today of Janet Baker, one of my favorite singers.
Chris’s Cache steps up with a recording of Michael Spyres in Lohengrin, as well as with a capture of Spyres in the title role of a 2017 La Clemenza di Tito.
Chris’s Cache wishes Gundula Janowitz a happy 87th birthday today with three early live broadcasts of a favorite soprano in works by Pergolesi, Haydn, and Schumann.
“In over nine years you’ve never posted an opera by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari,” no one has ever said.
Not so many live primetime Bolshoi Opera performances were recorded, but when the company went on tour it always brought its very best singers, and often pirates were there to capture them.
Chris’s Cache follows up its Gounod R&J installment with a widely varied quintet of additional Romeos and Juliets
Earlier this month the opera world was stunned to learn of the death of Belgian soprano Jodie Devos who died of breast cancer at just 35, and Chris’s Cache remembers her with a broadcast from last November of Devos as Ophélie in Hamlet, her only US appearance.
Chris’s Cache offers two live recordings of Sondheim’s first two solo (as both composer and lyricist) Broadway shows: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Anyone Can Whistle
Chris’s Cache offers four iterations of Bartók’s one-act masterpiece with Evelyn Lear & Thomas Stewart; Tatiana Troyanos & Siegmund Nimsgern; Agnes Baltsa& Samuel Ramey; and Nina Stemme & Gerald Finley
A second Parisian Salome, in crisper sound, has surfaced for the perverse pleasure of cher public
A parterre box exclusive: a live recording of Lise Davidsen‘s first Judean princess
“What a day, what a day for an Auto-da-fe!” and it’s also always a good day for Candide, so Chris’s Cache presents a pirate recording of a 1971 staging starring Mary Costa, Frank Porretta, and William Lewis.
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pb—with our friends at Carnegie Hall—is giving away two tickets to PB’s December concert. Enter now!
