What Opera Are You Listening to Now?

Started by Tsaraslondon, April 10, 2017, 04:29:04 AM

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Tsaraslondon

Quote from: Papy Oli on June 30, 2022, 09:39:55 AM
I ended up narrowing Toscadown to Karajan/Price and Davis/Caballe/Carreras. My opera streaming list for our holiday ahead is looking very exciting.

Please may I ask for a few more recommendations:

Q5 - Verdi / Il Trovatore: from the mentions in threads, I already line up Mehta/Price/Domingo, Karajan/Callas/Di Stefano, Giulini/Domingo/Plowright. Any other please ?

Q6 - Mozart - Don Giovanni : Lined up are Abbado/Keenlyside/Salminen and Giulini/Waechter/Schwarzkopf. What else please ?

Q7 - Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier : Which recordings beside Karajan/Schwarzkopf/Edelmann/Ludwig ?

Q8 - Puccini - Madama Butterfly ?

Thank you in advance  :)

Karajan's and Davis's Tosca are both very fine, particularly Karajan, which would be my stereo choice for the opera, but please don't ignore De Sabata, which, though mono, is one of the undisputed greatest opera recordings ever made. Even those who don't normally like Callas will admit its superiority. The most recent Warner transfer is by far the best.



Your three Il Trovatore choices are all front-runners. You should be ok with them.

Don Giovanni - Giulini is a classic and is constantly wins in surveys of the opera's recording history, even after all these years, most recently in Gramophone and in BBC Radio's Building a Library porgramme. For a more modern take, try Gardiner.

The early Karajan Rosenkavalier is easily my favourite recording of the opera, and I've never needed another. Again which transfer you choose is quite important. Warner's recent transfer was overseen by the original stereo engineer of the recording and is by far the best,



On the other hand there are those who swear by Solti. It's not for me, as I am not a Solti fan, but it's also a front runner, as is Haitink with Te Kanawa as the Marschallin.

Most people will no doubt recommend Karajan's stereo Madama Butterfly with Freni and Pavarotti, which is absoutely gorgeous, so who am I to disagree? I don't have it though, and my favourite recordings are Karajan I with Callas as the most tragic of Buterflies, Gavazzeni with De Los Angeles and Barbirolli with Scotto. All three are more dramatically compelling in my book.

Happy listening.

\"A beautiful voice is not enough.\" Maria Callas

Papy Oli

Thank you, I have added the Butterfly recommendations to my playlist.
Olivier

idia legray

Quote from: Tsaraslondon on June 29, 2022, 09:52:49 AM
As I said, you'll get a lots of different recommendations. I'm afraid I find Sutherland completely unconvincing as Violetta. Callas and Cotrubas are almost unbearably moving, but Sutherland doesn't move me one bit, I'm afraid.

Gheorghiu is an excellent Violetta too, but I'm not too fond of Solti's conducting, nor of her Alfredo and Germont.
I so completely agree with your opinion when it comes to Violetta. You have named two who touch my heart, along with the Solti Gheorghiu, and I do like Lopardo.  It isn't that I don't like Sutherland's performance, it's simply that I am not receiving that gut feeling when she interprets the part.  Her singing is gorgeous.

Tsaraslondon



The rather tacky cover and title does not reflect the quality of this disc, which includes quite a few arias from little known Tchaikovsky operas. Documentation is also a bit shoddy and I can't see anyhwere in the notes which arias are allocated to the various singers, easy enough to work out with the two men, as one is a baritone the other a tenor, but not so simple with the two sopranos. Fortunatey I managed to find a Gramophone review, which says who sings what.


Both sopranos are good, but Galante is particularly fine in Tatyana's Letter Scene which is also the most popular item on the disc. The tenor is a bit effortful, but the other singers are all excellent and this is a very worthwhile collection.
\"A beautiful voice is not enough.\" Maria Callas

Todd



The opera as a whole is very fine, in the smaller-scale, punchier, not weighed down style of Karajan or Krauss.  It does not equal those two - my two faves - and both Siegfried and Brunhilde have been notably bested on record, yielding a third act that is not all it could be, but this is none too shabby.  Had I paid to see the performances, I would not have been disappointed.
The universe is change; life is opinion. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

People would rather believe than know - E.O. Wilson

Propaganda death ensemble - Tom Araya

Papy Oli

Rossini - Il Barbiere di Siviglia

Galliera / Callas / Gobbi / Alva
Olivier

Papy Oli

(I think "une Voce Poco fa" is going quite some way to show me the benefits of having some Callas in my life  0:) )
Olivier

ritter

Quote from: Papy Oli on July 05, 2022, 06:53:20 AM
(I think "une Voce Poco fa" is going quite some way to show me the benefits of having some Callas in my life  0:) )
Then listen to her in "Care compagne...Come per me sereno" from La Sonnambula, the mad scenes from Lucia di Lammermoor and I Puritani, and in all of Norma, and you'll be bowled over.... :)

Papy Oli

Quote from: ritter on July 05, 2022, 06:58:40 AM
Then listen to her in "Care compagne...Come per me sereno" from La Sonnambula, the mad scenes from Lucia di Lammermoor and I Puritani, and in all of Norma, and you'll be bowled over.... :)

Steady on Rafael  :-[ Please remind me of those when I get to those operas  ;) I am only starting the shoot-outs on my pre-selections done last week, while on the sun lounger in Ibiza, as one should  :laugh:

Now, my other contender in the Barber, Gui / De Los angeles
Olivier

Tsaraslondon

Quote from: Papy Oli on July 05, 2022, 07:14:28 AM
Steady on Rafael  :-[ Please remind me of those when I get to those operas  ;) I am only starting the shoot-outs on my pre-selections done last week, while on the sun lounger in Ibiza, as one should  :laugh:

Now, my other contender in the Barber, Gui / De Los angeles

Another excellent contender. Oddly enough, both were recorded in the 1950s.

When it comes to Norma, there really is only Callas and it usually boils down to which of her two studio recordings to go for, though the best all round performance is live, from La Scala in 1955. Caballé was also an excellent Norma, but her studio recording is not that satisfactory and she is best heard (and seen) on the video of a famous performance from Orange.

The Bartoli set should be avoided at all costs.  >:D

\"A beautiful voice is not enough.\" Maria Callas

Papy Oli

On the Barbiere, I can't find anything to separate the Gui and the Galliera. The both draw me in and mesmerise me completely. I'll buy both.

The Abbado/Domingo/Battle has not made that cut.
Olivier

Papy Oli

Listened to this Traviata in full today, simply a thing of beauty. Another one in the basket  8)



Opera, like JSB, is nothing to be afraid of after all, is it... :laugh:
Olivier

Tsaraslondon


I have just started on a concentrated spell of Verdi listening, and intend to listen to all the Verdi opera recordings in my collection. I started with the Requiem, of which I have three recordings (Giulini on EMI, Muti's first studio recording and a live 1981 Muti recording, which was given its first official release last year).
.
I've now moved on to the operas and first it's the turn of Aida.



This is the earliest of my six recordings of the opera and, in all but matters of sound, I have a feeling none of the others will match it for thrills. I can ony imagine what it must have been like to be in the theatre on that night in 1951. Where would you find a cast like this today? Well, you wouldn't, would you?

It's famous for Callas's stupendous high Eb in the Triumphal Scene, but it's a good deal more than just that. Oralia Domnguez, who made far too few commercial recordings, was making her local debut in the role and is one of the best Amerises you will ever hear. Del Monaco is better at playing the hero than the lover, and he does rather bawl his farewell to life, but there is the at least the compensation of a voice in full bloom. Taddei is a superb Amonasro and the Nile scene is one of the most thrilling you wil ever hear. In fact the whole cast, orchestra, chorus and conductor are on fire.

Admittedly, this isn't the most subtle performance you will ever hear, but the singing is just spine tingling. As for the sound, it's a lot better on this issue than on some of the others that were around for years, though obviously lo-fi and hardly up to the standard of mono studio recordings of the time.

\"A beautiful voice is not enough.\" Maria Callas

Florestan

Quote from: Tsaraslondon on July 08, 2022, 02:20:51 AM
I have just started on a concentrated spell of Verdi listening, and intend to listen to all the Verdi opera recordings in my collection.

I'm puzzled. Is this not what you usually do most the time?  :D
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Tsaraslondon

#3134
Quote from: Florestan on July 08, 2022, 04:09:34 AM
I'm puzzled. Is this not what you usually do most the time?  :D

Haha. Not that often actually, and it must be at least a year since I've done a concentrated spell of Verdi listening. I've been working through  my collection for a while now, taking one composer at a time, so Verdi's been quite a long time coming. With the amount of Verdi CDs I have, he'll probably keep me going till Christmas!  ;D
\"A beautiful voice is not enough.\" Maria Callas

ritter

#3135
Revisiting (after decades) Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix:



I've always had a certain "antipathy" towards Donizetti (despite some magnificent moments in some of his works), as I find his art much cruder than that of Rossini and Bellini, and see him as a trailblazer of the more vulgar aspects that permeate much of Verdi's output.

This dramma semiserio (or comédie larmoyante) was composed for Vienna, and earned its composer a great success, but is now almost forgotten. With a Savoyard and Parisian setting, the story is one of a girl deceived, who then goes mad, recovers, and in the end love triumphs. In other words, there's no interest whatsoever to the plot. What we do have is a sort of "Italian Biedermeier", which is a historical curiosity.

The recording (from Naples in 1956) boasts many starry names: the eternal also-ran —in a decade dominated by the Callas / Tebaldi "rivalry"— Antonietta Stella (whose coloratura is approximative, but has a sweet tone), Fedora Barbieri (more suited to e.g. Amneris than to the breeches rôle of Pierotto), the ever elegant Cesare Valletti,  and two notable baritones, Giuseppe Taddei and Renato Capecchi. All led with gusto by that doyen of the Italian opera pit in the post-WW2 years, Tullio Serafin.

A period piece (the work and the recording), but with a certain quaint charm.

And boy, the photographer who took Signora Stella's picture for the cover deserves to be summarily shot!  The cover designer mustn't have been the sharpest tool in the box either, and what he did is invert the picture of the original LP cover (which in itself was no masterpiece — see below), and for some unfathomable reason add two brushes and what looks like a torn carpet.


Tsaraslondon

#3136


After the success of her 1952 Normas, Callas returned to London in June 1953 to sing three operas, Norma again, Aida and Il Trovatore. Though her Norma again won great praise and her Leonora was applauded as revelatory, reviews for her Aida were more mixed. Interestingly, after further performances in Verona the following month, she never sang the role again, except for the studio recording in 1955. I doubt the weight loss had anything to do with her decision to drop it from her repertoire, for, to judge from photographs, she looked bigger in 1953 than she had been in Mexico in 1951.

There are no barnstorming top Ebs in this performance and in general it is more subtle than the Mexico performance, meaning we miss a lot of the thrills, and the temperature is quite a few degrees lower throughout. Barbirolli is less of an asset than you might expect. There is a lot more light and shade to be sure, but the performance is a bit short on excitement. Callas and Simionato are the best of the soloists. Baum, though not quite as bad as his reputation would suggest, nonetheless tends to sing forte throughout, though he tames it down a bit in the last aria, maybe at the behest of Barbirolli. Walters is no Taddei, and the Nile Scene lacks the tension and drama of Mexico. One point of interest is the presence of Joan Sutherland as the Priestess in Act I scene ii.
\"A beautiful voice is not enough.\" Maria Callas

Papy Oli

A first listen to Mozart - Don Giovanni.

(Giulini, Wächter, Schwarzkopf)
Olivier

Tsaraslondon



This 1955 studio recording is rarely anyone's first choice for the opera, and I always forget just how good it is until I listen to it again.


True, by the time Callas came to record the role, her days as Aida were behind her and her voice has thinned out quite a bit since the thrilling 1951 Mexcio performance, but this is 1955, which was the year of some of her most spectacular successes, so, though she may not command the sweetness of tone some will think essential for an Aida, she is still in pretty good voice. Dramatically her Aida is a good deal more interesting than any other singer I've heard in the role, the very epitome of the slave princess torn between love and duty.


She also has a pretty good cast around her. Tucker may not be as elegant as some, and he does tend to aspirate and sob, but the voice itself is in splendid shape. Barbieri is a tremendous Amneris, at least as good as SImionato and Dominquez and Gobbi is superb as Amonasro, the quintessential warrior king, implacable and single-minded and yet able to inject a little affection into his duet with Aida, which bristles with electricity. Really Callas and Gobbi did much of their best work together. Someone should release a compilation of their duets.


The oft underrated Serafin is superb and, quite honestly, I think this is one of the best conducted sets to be heard. What a shame it wasn't in stereo.


A more detailed review on my blog ​https://tsaraslondon.com/2017/01/08/aida/​​​
\"A beautiful voice is not enough.\" Maria Callas

Todd



Wrapping up Zweden's Ring.  An excellent ending.  Some singers don't match <Insert Golden Age Wagnerian Here>, but for me only Eric Halfvarson's Hagen ends up disappointing in key moments, but those moments are fleeting.  Overall, an eminently enjoyable Ring Cycle.
The universe is change; life is opinion. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

People would rather believe than know - E.O. Wilson

Propaganda death ensemble - Tom Araya