Romantic Opera goes HIP!

[Tsaraslondon]

Incidentally, this is the second new La Sommabula in recent months. Has anyone heard the Dessay version?

[Sarastro]

Has anyone heard the Dessay version?

With Francesco Meli on Virgin Classics? I have... The reviews posed it as the original edition, but there are plenty of cuts and transposition (is it the word? I don't know how it is called in English when singers sing something in a different key, say, half-tone down...). Dessay is good, though it's clear she has lost her brilliance after the vocal problems and singing roles such as Manon and Marie, I think.

[Tsaraslondon]

With Francesco Meli on Virgin Classics? I have... The reviews posed it as the original edition, but there are plenty of cuts and transposition

Well I don't bother too much about those. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Bellini himself approved different versions to accomodate different singers, and there are plenty of cuts and transpositions in the Callas versions.

Also, though Decca, announce that the Bartoli recording is a restoration of the Malibran version, I'm sure I'm right in thinking that Frederica Von Stade sang the role of Amina. Presumably, being a mezzo soprano, she too would have sung it in the Malibran keys. I'm also pretty sure she would have been a lot more suited to the role than Bartoli.

[Sarastro]

Well I don't bother too much about those.

Me too; I was just anticipating what had been written in reviews.

[Wendell_E]

I'm sure I'm right in thinking that Frederica Von Stade sang the role of Amina. Presumably, being a mezzo soprano, she too would have sung it in the Malibran keys.

Yeah, she sang the opera in San Francisco in 1984, and according to the cast sheet at the SF Opera website, the "Mezzo-soprano "Malibran" version of the opera" was used:

http://archive.sfopera.com/reports/rptOpera-id789.pdf

But according to a review at the New York Times website, von Stade and SF Opera general director "decided that most of the radical transpositions Malibran used weren't necessary. In the end, Miss von Stade's first aria was taken down a tone, the first part of her final aria remained as written and the final ''Ah! non giunge'' went down a minor third. But she sang the rest of Amina's role untransposed."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B06E6DB173BF933A1575AC0A962948260