In a satanic panic, this week Chris’s Cache presents trio of performances of Mefistofele
31 comments
This week, Chris’s Cache features five singers in Orchesterlieder by Richard Strauss
Chris’s Cache marks the arrival of Printemps in its many guises with three beguilingly cast performances of operas by Rimsky-Korsakov, Massenet, and Saint-Saëns
Chris’s Cache looks forward to next month’s Boston Early Music Festival with a comprehensive introduction to German Baroque featuring Sandrine Piau, Jennifer Larmore, and Joan Sutherland
This week’s Chris’s Cache presents an early May banquet of ten fine singers in eight vocal works of Gustav Mahler.
It may be blasphemy to admit—particularly this month—but usually I can either take or leave Donizetti’s serious operas. However, I love the composer in comic mode, so Chris’s Cache runs with that sentiment in offering three recordings of Don Pasquale.
As a preview to a spring of Giulio Cesare, Chris’s Cache offers a rare pirate recording featuring Cecilia Bartoli, Andreas Scholl, and Les Arts Florissants.
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.
This week, Chris’s Cache highlights Bernarda Fink and Inga Kalna in an opera by Johann Gottlieb Naumann
This week, Chris’s Cache offers a performance of Follies from 2007 featuring Lucine Amara as a rarely richly sung Heidi alongside Donna Murphy and Victoria Clark.
Prompted by Washington Concert Opera’s upcoming Luisa Miller, Chris Cache’s misbehaves five times by offering just the opera’s final act with sopranos from the 1970s, some of whom might be considered “under-appreciated”: Gabriella Tucci, Adriana Maliponte, Renata Scotto, Gilda Cruz-Romo, and Katia Ricciarelli.
As several readers put forth Patrizia Ciofi as a favorite under-appreciated soprano; Chris’s Cache enthusiastically agrees by offering a Ciofi-copia that includes complete operas by Handel and Meyerbeer and extensive excerpts of a Bellini, plus a dazzling concert of rare late 18th century arias.
No Leos Janácek operas have turned up this month among the works we’d like to see at the Met, so Chris’s Cache corrects that omission with live recordings of two of the composer’s most compelling operas (performed in English).
Chris’s Cache offers ten more sopranos singing Strauss‘s Vier letzte Lieder: Sena Jurinac, Gundula Janowitz, Jessye Norman, Roberta Alexander, Edith Mathis, Helen Donath, Malin Byström, Christiane Karg, Jacquelyn Wagner, and Corinne Winters.
Fourteen years ago this month, James Levine conducted a tryout at Juilliard of a quite pleasant production by Stephen Wadsworth of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride (in English) intended for the Met. Unfortunately, that transfer never happened and New York has been the poorer for it.
Following last week’s multiple versions of three prime concert arias, Chris’s Cache concludes its Mozart month by offering more of those special vocal works, this time twenty-five arias for mezzo, tenor or bass, as well as more for soprano.
Seven years ago, Trove Thursday presented an anthology of sixteen Mozart soprano concert arias. In 2025, Chris’s Cache adds to this month’s Mozart-fest with a deep dive into three of the most celebrated of those works: Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!; Bella mia fiamma; and Ch’io mi scordi di te.
A perfect meeting of voice with composer occurred when Arleen Auger took part in the rediscovery of early works by Mozart.
Operettas always seem to be on the menu for New Year’s Eve, so Chris’s Cache joins in with a broadcast of Offenbach’s delicious La Grande-duchesse de Gérolstein featuring Stephanie Blythe in the title role.
Anticipating the first new local Aïda in thirty-six years, Chris’s Cache revisits Verdi’s popular opera in four unusually interesting in-house recordings from the Met 1961-1976.
While everyone tries to figure out what on earth Strauss and Hofmannsthal are up to in Die Frau ohne Schatten, now playing at the Met, Chris’s Cache offers a later, simpler, shorter Strauss with three live broadcasts of his “bucolic tragedy” Daphne.
December at Chris’s Cache kicks off with two of Verdi’s lesser-known operas: La Battaglia di Legnano and I Due Foscari.
Chris’s Cache ends the month with another “fun” opera but one even rarer than last week’s Rossini: Der Wildschütz by Albert Lortzing.
Sponsored
Did somebody say something?
Act now to join the starry ranks of The Talk of the Town contributors for a new quarter of à propos chitter chatter!
×
Sign up for Parterre’s free newsletter.
Exclusive opera reviews, commentary, and top reads
delivered to your email weekly…ish.