What Opera Are You Listening to Now?

[JBS]

There seem to be several versions of it on Youtube.

[KevinP]

There are. It's often done with the piano score rather than the orchestra version, which is understandable.

[T. D.]

Rossini's Le comte Ory is a delight, especially in the old recording conducted by Gui. So is his Il Turco in Italia. The Callas recording is cut, so inauthentic in some ways I suppose. But I think there's a greater authenticity in the sheer joy of the performance that you won't hear in the more modern uncut versions.

Le comte Ory is a fantastic opera, one of my favorites. I have the Gui recording. Once saw a live performance, which was riotously funny and one of my all-time operagoing highlights. I prefer Ory to Il viaggio a Reims, on which it was based, but I can follow French to an extent, know almost no Italian, and never saw Il viaggio live.

[Tsaraslondon]

Maybe because Handel wrote so many works to an English text, I don't really mind that this is performed in English. This is a studio recording, based on one of ENO's most successful productions, which travelled to Houston and San Francisco.

Though played on modern instuments, Mackerras conducts with a sure sens of seventeenth century Handlelian style, his tempi always well chosen. He also has at his disposal a superb cast. Baker' Caesar is a warrior, herioc and forthright, but also a tender lover and wonderful in the scene where he is firt captivated by Lydia/Cleopatra. Valerie Masterson, who looked absolutely ravishing in the production, is also ravishing of voice, flirtatious and capricious but deeply moving in Se pieta and Piangero. There are also wonderful contributions from Sarah Walker as Cordelia, Della Jones as Sextus, James Bowman as Ptolemy and John Tomlinson as Achillas.

[ritter]

Richard Wagner: Siegfried (Act 3).

From the cheapo Ring recorded under haphazard conditions in Nuremberg in 1968 by Fratelli Fabbri. Hans Swarowsky (mainly remembered today as the teacher of conductors than as a conductor himself) conducts the "Großes Sinfonieorchester", which essentially was the Czech Philharmonic, with some positions filled by members of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra —the recording was underway when the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia, and some of the Czech musicians returned home before the project was completed—. The singers have more or less lapsed into oblivion: Wotan is Rolf Polke, Erda is Ursula Boese, Siegfried is Gerald McKee, and Brünnhilde is Naděžda Kniplová (who had sung the rôle under Karajan in Salzburg in 1967).



This is not one of the great recordings of the Ring, by any means, but it does have a quaint charm.

Often regarded as the ugly duckling of the four Ring operas, the more I listen to Siegfried, the more I think the work is musically and dramatically superb (an impression that was confirmed the last time I saw it staged, in the chaotic but ultimately quite wonderful Frank Castorf production in Bayreuth, conducted by Kirill Petrenko).

And then it has that glorious line "Das ist kein Mann!" 

[Wendell_E]

Maybe because Handel wrote so many works to an English text, I don't really mind that this is performed in English. This is a studio recording, based on one of ENO's most successful productions, which travelled to Houston and San Francisco.

Also the Met, where it was performed 23 times between 1988 and 2007.

[Tsaraslondon]

Also the Met, where it was performed 23 times between 1988 and 2007.

I didn't realise that was the same John Copley production.

[Papy Oli]

French Arias by Callas.

[Wendell_E]

I didn't realise that was the same John Copley production.

The Met's online database listing for the premiere (September 27, 1988) quotes a review by Martin Mayer from Opera Magazine (UK):

Next came "Giulio Cesare" in its Metropolitan debut. This was the ENO staging, with efficient gilded panels dropped or slid on a relatively empty stage by the John Pascoe who designed and directed Platée. It is also, unfortunately, a rather empty production, staged in a matter-of-fact manner by John Copley and wasting in a sort of random fussiness several of the magical moments of the piece (most notably the Mount Parnassus scene). But it did come to life on the half-dozen occasions when Tatiana Troyanos took centre stage as Caesar and created the bravest of brave heroes (and of course the wiliest of hunters). Troyanos still has [first]-night jitters, but the voice did not coarsen on October 3, when her every moment on stage was a musical and dramatic joy.

Kathleen Battle's Cleopatra was more problematic, partly because the voice is inescapably small for the house ('a wonderful Cleopatra', a colleague said, 'for Drottningholm'), partly because she projects a well-schooled musicality and pert manners-and so little more. There are also, one regrets to report, a few incipient vocal problems, which Peter Davis described as 'cooing', a sound produced with lower jaw pulled back, lower lip over teeth, and throat stretched. Still, she remains for the public "prima inter pares" in our astonishing collection of young light lyrics, and the soaring purity of the voice outside the coo range gives great pleasure.

Sarah Walker was a dull Cornelia, but it's a dull role. Martine Dupuy was a sensational Sextus, energizing the stage for both her arias. The evening was remarked for its advertised introduction of the counter-tenor voice to the Met stage. Jeffrey Gall acquitted himself admirably as Ptolemy, with a whiny but not unmusical sound and mastery of the style. Derek Ragin was a little more strained as Nirenus. Trevor Pinnock in the pit escaped rum-tum-tum monotony, which can plague this very beautiful piece, and the orchestra mostly played very well for him, sometimes spectacularly (especially in the obbligatos, the hunting horns of `Va, tacito' and the joyous valveless trumpets of the final scene).

[Tsaraslondon]

The Met's online database listing for the premiere (September 27, 1988) quotes a review by Martin Mayer from Opera Magazine (UK):

Maybe it didn't look good on the Met stage. The reviews for the original production at the Coliseum in London were wonderful, both for the stageing and the singing. It was very well received in San Francisco and Houston, I believe, where Valerie Masterson was still the Cleopatra.

[JBS]

Apparently a semi staged concert presentation recorded live.
I've never heard this opera before, so I can only say the sonics seem excellent.

[Tsaraslondon]

Apparently a semi staged concert presentation recorded live.
I've never heard this opera before, so I can only say the sonics seem excellent.

I don't know this recording, but the opera is an absolute joy. I've always thought it one of the major successes of Mackerras's Janáček cycle on Decca.

[JBS]

Another opera I've never heard before

[Tsaraslondon]

Another opera I've never heard before

The first Britten I ever saw and I've seen it quite a few times since. Though recorded in mono, Britten's own recording is a classic that should be heard. One notes how clear the singers' diction was back then and teh young David Hemmings, who played Miles in the first production, has never been bettered.

[Tsaraslondon]

In memoriam Renata Scotto.

[JBS]

This

Which is really this


Both Souliotis and the brass seem too shrill (or off in some similar way) in the upper registers.

ETA: Just realized that Urania mispelled Souliotis's name not just on the cover but also in the tracklisting/credits.

[Tsaraslondon]

This

Which is really this


Both Souliotis and the brass seem too shrill (or off in some similar way) in the upper registers.

ETA: Just realized that Urania mispelled Souliotis's name not just on the cover but also in the tracklisting/credits.

Actually the did at first spell her name Suliotis, but later added o to make it Souliotis, apparently because people kept imspronouncing it.

This was her last recording for Decca it's sad to hear the deterioration in her voice since her first recording for Decca (Nabucco) only five years earlier.

[JBS]

Actually the did at first spell her name Suliotis, but later added o to make it Souliotis, apparently because people kept imspronouncing it.

This was her last recording for Decca it's sad to hear the deterioration in her voice since her first recording for Decca (Nabucco) only five years earlier.

Given the shrillness in the brass, the problem might be with the engineering, not the singer.

[Tsaraslondon]

Given the shrillness in the brass, the problem might be with the engineering, not the singer.

I'm pretty sure it's the singer. Suliotis's voice deteriorated quite quickly.

[San Antone]

John Cage : Europera IV
Mode Records



Europeras III and IV were commissioned by the Almeida Festival in London and premiered in 1990, subsequently touring. Both prominently feature gramophones, the former in combination with two pianists (replacing the orchestra). The latter is a chamber piece for singer, gramophone and table lamp.