Classical Music & Opera Forums

Behrens was the best Salome I've ever heard, and that includes Mattila.

brunnhilde wrote:Behrens was the best Salome I've ever heard, and that includes Mattila.

Wow! That's saying something! I admit I have never heard Behrens' Salome.

BTW, Behren's Immolation Scene today was very beautiful. I had to go out shopping and missed Act II.

calvert wrote:Every tenor I have heard as Siegfried since the Met started broadcasting complete cycles in 1988 has been only adequate, no more, with the exception of Jerusalem, who was very, very good, apart from a disastrous Gotterdammerung broadcast in 1990 during which he was ill and barely made it through the performance, with quite audible vocal distress in Siegfried's final apostrophe to Brunnhilde. I felt relief for him when he died!!

Good to know. I always thought that he had blown his voice on the Siegfried performance and had little left for GD. His Siegfried (as captured on video) is really very good, especially in the first act. His voice sounds a bit shot by the final passages but very satisfying overall.

I'm with Amni on Behrens. Not everyone loves her and, from what I've read, she could be quite inconsistent. I agree that she wasn't a true hochdramatisch soprano but she was very satisfying as Brünnhilde. And she's one of those singers who really moves me, even with her over-the-top acting.

The Karajan/Behrens Salome is perhaps her best-received recording and has been on my list for ages.

I don't think Mogs was "dissing" Warren, Gobbi, London, and Bechi, just opining that their voices were not as conventionally beautiful as other baritones like Merrill (and Bastianini). I would agree as to Gobbi and Bechi, but Warren's voice, at its best, is for me the locus classicus of the melifluous Verdi baritone. And IMO London doesn't really belong in that company because he was a bass-baritone who sang little in the Italian rep.

Mogs:

If you do not know the voices of Stracciari, Amato and De Luca, you could not do better than to acquire some recordings of these singers. They were each glorious, although different. De Luca was the most lyrical of the bunch. Stracciari's voice was described by Ponselle as a "shower of diamonds." It has an exciting, brilliant ring to it, as well as great beauty in the upper middle register. He was also quite a characterful performer: there is a complete Barbiere di Seviglia with Stracciari in which he (and the Basilio and Bartolo) constantly indulge in hilarious ad libs which were quite traditional and expected at the time. Amato's recording of "Eri tu" from Ballo in Maschera is probably my all-time favorite version of that aria.

And while we are speaking of great baritones, don't forget Lisitsian and Tibbett.

Ah yes my dear Guru:
You have me going all over the place now and testing all the Figaros and we (HH and I) both agree that Stracciari wins the prize. (The other contenders were: Ruffo (wow power galore!), Gobbi (always superb), and Merrill (the most beautiful sound).
Here is a sample of our fave: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL1uRmP61h8

Back to searching out Amato and DeLuca.
Grazie, signor.

Here is one of the great no-holds-barred performances by a baritone: Lawrence Tibbett singing, "Standin' in the Need o' Prayer" from Louis Gruenberg's The Emperor Jones, the title role of which Tibbett created at the Met in 1933. The passion and commitment in this recording are astounding, although one can almost see the blood coming out of Tibbett's vocal cords.

No baritone (well, no white baritone) could sing this today without being hauled off to a sensitivity training re-education camp, so those of you with tender P.C. sensibilities may want to skip it.

Whatever Merrill's merits as an interpreter, he secured his place in operatic history by joining with Jussi Bjoerling to make this stunning duet. Listen and weep.

Agreed. That duet by Bjoerling and Merrill has to be one of the greatest of all time. The benchmark for all the rest.

As for Tibbett's Emperor Jones, It's a bit over-the-top for me but because I have a personal connection with the original story by Eugene O'Neill, I have an affinity for it.
O'Neill wrote the play and developed the part of Smithers for his very close friend and my drama teacher, Jasper Deeter.
In fact, he is the one who persuaded O'Neill to cast a real black man in the part instead of using a white actor in blackface.

calvert wrote:
I
Mogs:

Amato's recording of "Eri tu" from Ballo in Maschera is probably my all-time favorite version of that aria.

.

I agree that the best recording Amato ever made is "eri tu." Also not bad is his Pagliacci prologue.

Back when I was at Opera School, I lived in a household with a bass-baritone, a clarinetist and two architecture students. I had a record of arias by Merrill, and we generally started the day with "Largo al factotum" over breakfast. It was a really cheery way to start the day! The Pearlfishers duet was another favourite, but I think I just marginally prefer "Solenne in quest ora". When Merrill's voice comes in with "Lo giuro, lo giuro" - Wow!

They really were a sublime pairing.

Speaking of "Solenne in quest' ora" -

I may have told this story before (I am approaching my anecdotage), but just in case not...Terry McEwen, director of London Records in the 70s, was at the Met the night Leonard Warren died. Just when Tucker and Warren began "Solenne in quest' ora," McEwen said to his companion, "Let's go to Sherry's and get a drink. I can't stand to listen to Tucker and Warren being unctuous over each other again." So they got up and went to the restaurant in the Met to have a drink. Now, Warren died after singing his aria, "Urna fatale," which follows the duet. So about 10 minutes after they sit down in the bar, people came filing out of the auditorium, way before the act was due to end. McEwen asked what was going on, and they said that Warren had been taken ill and the performance interrupted. Just then the gong sounded and people trooped back inside to hear Bing's announcement that Warren had died. Imagine - being in the audience on one of the most historic and tragic nights at the Met - and going out for a drink just before the tragic event occurred!

Terry also said that Tebaldi (a London Records artist that Terry looked after), who was singing that night, was hysterical backstage. It was her return to the Met after her mother had died and she was emotionally strung out anyway, and Warren's death hit her hard. She refused to cross the stage - very superstitious lady - where Warren had died and insisted on exiting the house on the other side.

Jamie:
I am the joke-teller in the family and poor Cliftwood has had to sit patiently by ad nauseam while I tell the same jokes over and over and over again.
So now I know how it feels to be one of the "originals" on these forums because although I've heard your story before, it is so well-worth hearing again (and again!)
...and again...

Denyce Graves marries: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/

dargom3 wrote:Denyce Graves marries: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/

Good, maybe it will get her off the opera stage!

mogliettina wrote:Jamie:
I am the joke-teller in the family and poor Cliftwood has had to sit patiently by ad nauseam while I tell the same jokes over and over and over again.
So now I know how it feels to be one of the "originals" on these forums because although I've heard your story before, it is so well-worth hearing again (and again!)
...and again...

Calvert...

I hadn't read that story and am really pleased that you repeated it.

Re my decades of hearing the same jokes by my bride, I must confess that while I moan my discontent as she begins once again to retell one, I really do laugh everytime with her presentations, which always seem to have some variation on the theme, for my benefit.

In case you all didn't know it, she is a very talented mimic, a natural comedienne, and she has great taste in men.

Amneris: Right on!!

New subject: The Cincinnati Opera seems to have done well by DON CARLO with James Morris et al. A friend who was present confirms the general thrust of the newspaper review:

http://www.cincinnati.com/search/result ... a.y=9#1013

jessica wrote:

maestrob wrote: ... he hated being called "Bob" Merrill, and to tease him, especially in rehearsal they would do so.

What did he want to be called? "Moishe"?

Robert, of course. It's the done thing in professional music circles not to use nicknames when dealing with fellow professionals, especially when an audience or a microphone is present.

What a great Tibbett excerpt the "Emperor Jones" clip is...He was simply phenomenal and a personal favorite...I do not think it's available on Youtube ( God bless it) but if you haven't heard Tibbett sing "Wotan's Farewell" with Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra then you ain't heard nothin' yet, as another famous singer once said. I have it in my car cd player and listen to it with some frequency ( after setting the speed control) ..it's mesmerizing..terrifically resonant of voice, tender and powerful by turns, and sung with extraordinary lyricism a la Schorr but with a somewhat richer natural instrument...Likewise Tibbett's "Cortigiani" - stupendous, deeply moving, vocally unsurpassed...if I had ever heard him in the house I'm sure that I would have to be carted off to the laughing academy ( or wherever they take people who won't stop applauding, weeping and shouting "Bravo") after hearing such grandeur and glory....It's wonderful to be a TOF!