What Opera Are You Listening to Now?

[Tsaraslondon]

Gounod's Faust was once the most popular and most regularly performed operas in the repertoire, though it fell out of favour somewhat during the latter half of the twentieth century. This 1958 recording (a stereo remake of an earlier mono set with the same principals) has hardly ever been out of the catalogue, and with good reason. De Los Angeles is perfect as Marguerite, Gedda a stylish Faust, well up to the demands of the high tessitura. Christoff is the controversial element, some finding his execrable French too much to bear, others feeling his brilliant characterisation more than compensates. I lean towards the latter camp, though I'm not firmly in it.


For the rest, Ernest Blanc is an excellent Valentin, Liliane Berton a pert Siebel and Rita Gorr a splendid Marthe. Some have found Cluytens' conducting a little dull, but I like the way he lets the music speak for itself. The set has a real whiff of the theatre about it.

[knight66]

I love this set and, though I have tried to fine competition for it, I have failed. The voices are all so spot on and I think Christoff's demonic French is appropriate. I started with an LP of exerpts which seemed to concentrate on Act 2. Then I bought the three LP set. I have had the performance for over 45 years.

On DVD I recommend the Covent Garden set with Alagna and Terfel, a real blast of a performance with a terrific ballet sequence.

Mike

[Tsaraslondon]

I've listened to other recordings, but none of them quite hits the mark for me, as this one does.

I saw the opera once at Covent Garden, with Alfredo Kraus a non pareil of a Faust and Valerie Masterson a delightful Marguerite (she was always excellent in the French repertoire).

[knight66]

I am now getting annual reminders about Valerie Masterson, as I meet her agen at Dorset Opera and he always has new fond stories to relate about her and he clearly considers her to have been a considerable artist. I seem mainly to have missed out on her and I only have her in a Julius Caesar opposite Baker.

Another singer who I meet in Dorset is Roderick Kennedy who runs the Dorset Opera Festival. I recall seeing him a number of times and he shared stages with many of the most famous singers of the last 40 years, but his recorded legacy is almost nonexistent. A great pity as I clearly recall how good he was on stage.

Mike

[Tsaraslondon]

I am now getting annual reminders about Valerie Masterson, as I meet her agen at Dorset Opera and he always has new fond stories to relate about her and he clearly considers her to have been a considerable artist. I seem mainly to have missed out on her and I only have her in a Julius Caesar opposite Baker.

Another singer who I meet in Dorset is Roderick Kennedy who runs the Dorset Opera Festival. I recall seeing him a number of times and he shared stages with many of the most famous singers of the last 40 years, but his recorded legacy is almost nonexistent. A great pity as I clearly recall how good he was on stage.

Mike

I have very fond memories of Valerie Masterson, having seen her in a variety of roles at various stages of her career, among them Manon, Juliette, The Governess, Gilda, Margeurite, The Marschallin and Semele. She was very beautiful, with a look of Lee Remick, and could easily have had a career in Hollywood musicals - a la Julie Andrews.


I also heard her once in recital at the Wigmore Hall, a programme of mostly French song and Richard Strauss, if I remember correctly. I have a couple of recital discs (a mixed song recital with piano and French arias with orchestra). It's a shame they were recorded so late in her career, when the top of the voice, once one of its glories, has begun to sound just a little bit pinched. I enjoy them both nonetheless.

[Tsaraslondon]

I always find it hard to choose between the two Callas recordings of Un Ballo in Maschera, this studio one of 1956 under Votto and the live account under Gavazzeni from the following year. The casts are similar but not identical, the main difference being that we get Gobbi as Renato in the studio and Bastianini live. Bastianini is probably the more vocally entitled, but I do miss Gobbi's special accents and specificity. The way he sings the one word Amelia, when he discovers the identity of Riccardo's midnight tryst, so full of the conflicting emotions that besiege his heart, haunts my memory.


There have been more aristocratic Riccardo's than Di Stefano to be sure, but he sings with lashings of charm and real face. As usual the voice can occasionally turn tense and tight in the upper register, but it is nonetheless one of his best roles. Barbieri is an excellent Ulrica, but Simionato on the live set is even better.

Gavazzeni, who conducts the live performances, is a more positive presence in the pit, but Votto is here more than just an accompanist and this is some of his best work in the studio.

The mono studio sound is obviously better than the live recording, though that is one of the better live La Scala offerings from that period.

As for Callas, she is in admirable vocal form on both occasions, her singing full of incidental detail but sounding utterly spontaneous. Though she only sang the role at that series of performance at La Scala in 1957, one would suspect that it was part of her regular stage repertoire. Whichever performance you go for, Callas's Amelia has to be heard.


I review the studio set on my blog here https://tsaraslondon.wordpress.com/2017/01/08/un-ballo-in-maschera/ and compare the two recordings here https://tsaraslondon.wordpress.com/2017/03/24/callass-two-recordings-of-un-ballo-in-maschera/

[knight66]

I have very fond memories of Valerie Masterson, having seen her in a variety of roles at various stages of her career, among them Manon, Juliette, The Governess, Gilda, Margeurite, The Marschallin and Semele. She was very beautiful, with a look of Lee Remick, and could easily have had a career in Hollywood musicals - a la Julie Andrews.


I also heard her once in recital at the Wigmore Hall, a programme of mostly French song and Richard Strauss, if I remember correctly. I have a couple of recital discs (a mixed song recital with piano and French arias with orchestra). It's a shame they were recorded so late in her career, when the top of the voice, once one of its glories, has begun to sound just a little bit pinched. I enjoy them both nonetheless.

Thanks for that. Her extant recordings where she has a significant part are few and far between. But I have tracked down the French arias disc and it is on its way to me. I see the comments on it affirm your words about the recording being too late for her best years, but nevertheless giving great pleasure.

Mike

[Jaakko Keskinen]

I always find it hard to choose between the two Callas recordings of Un Ballo in Maschera, this studio one of 1956 under Votto and the live account under Gavazzeni from the following year. The casts are similar but not identical, the main difference being that we get Gobbi as Renato in the studio and Bastianini live. Bastianini is probably the more vocally entitled, but I do miss Gobbi's special accents and specificity. The way he sings the one word Amelia, when he discovers the identity of Riccardo's midnight tryst, so full of the conflicting emotions that besiege his heart, haunts my memory.


There have been more aristocratic Riccardo's than Di Stefano to be sure, but he sings with lashings of charm and real face. As usual the voice can occasionally turn tense and tight in the upper register, but it is nonetheless one of his best roles. Barbieri is an excellent Ulrica, but Simionato on the live set is even better.

Gavazzeni, who conducts the live performances, is a more positive presence in the pit, but Votto is here more than just an accompanist and this is some of his best work in the studio.

The mono studio sound is obviously better than the live recording, though that is one of the better live La Scala offerings from that period.

As for Callas, she is in admirable vocal form on both occasions, her singing full of incidental detail but sounding utterly spontaneous. Though she only sang the role at that series of performance at La Scala in 1957, one would suspect that it was part of her regular stage repertoire. Whichever performance you go for, Callas's Amelia has to be heard.


I review the studio set on my blog here https://tsaraslondon.wordpress.com/2017/01/08/un-ballo-in-maschera/ and compare the two recordings here https://tsaraslondon.wordpress.com/2017/03/24/callass-two-recordings-of-un-ballo-in-maschera/

Which recording has the better Oscar?

[Tsaraslondon]

Which recording has the better Oscar?

It's Eugenia Ratti on both - the sort of soubrettish soprano that appears to no longer be in fashion. She's a bit pip squeak to be honest.

[Tsaraslondon]

I first saw Alagna, when he sang Roméo in a new production of Gounod's opera at Covent Garden, one year before he made this recording. There was a real sense of excitement in the house on that occasion, and a sense that maybe we had at last found a successor to the big three (Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras). That initial promise was never entirely fulfilled, though, in my opinion, he continued to be at his best in French opera and he makes a superb Roméo in this excellent recording, fresher and younger sounding than the stylish, but aging, Alfredo Kraus on Plasson's first recording of the opera.


His Juliette on the occasion of the Covent Garden performances was the girlish Leontina Vaduva, but here she is replaced by Angela Gheorghiu, the other half of what was at the time the golden couple of opera. There is no denying the beauty of the voice, but she sounds, to my ears at least, a mite too sophisticated in the opening scenes. That said she rises superbly to the challenge of the poison aria in Act IV, which is often omitted by lighter voiced sopranos.


José Van Dam and Simon Keenlyside as Frère Laurent and Mercutio are both excellent; Marie-Ange Todorovitch as Stéphano not so much.


The performance is note complete, even up to the ballet music, and Plasson has an even better grip on the score than he had in his first recording with Alfredo Kraus and Catherine Malfitano.


A clear first choice for this opera, I'd have said

[Tsaraslondon]

Out of Verdi's "galley" operas, I often think Attila, his ninth opera is a tad more popular than it deserves. It is full of colour and flashy effect, to be sure, but the effects mostly strike me as empty gesture, and the opera is nowhere near as inventive or original as the one that followed it, Macbeth. A good performance is very enjoyable nonetheless and this Gardelli recording, the second in the series he made for Philips, has quite a bit going for it.

Gardelli's conducting has a fine sweep to it, but he manages to play down the bombast, and has a real sympathy for the more lyrical aspects of the score. Best of the soloists are Bergonzi's stylishly sung Foresto, which manages to be sensitive and heroic at the same time, and Milnes' finely sung Ezio. Attila is a role one imagines would have suited Christoff or Ghiaurov well, and Raimondi doesn't really command the depth or authority the role needs, though he does sing with a fine cantabile Deutekom is completely miscast, the voice pale, shallow and monochrome, completely lacking the strong lower register so essential to the role. It's not really surprising to find she made no further recordings in the series.

There are at least two other commercially made recordings of the opera (Muti for Warner/EMI and Gardelli's second for Hungaraton), and I don't know them well enough to make a choice. Given that it's not an opera I listen to that often, I'm happy enough with this one despite its deficiencies.

[knight66]

When I was about 20 I had an LP of Christoff called Tzars and Kings. That had the main bass asia from Attila, I think it starts with Udino repeated. It was a stunner of a performance/aria. Assuming the music would all be like that, I borrowed some LPs of the opera from the library. I was so disappointed because Raimondi sounded nothing like Christoff and had none of the magnatism of the older singer. I thought Deutekon was positavely unpleasant on the ear and I probably therefore did not then give the opera a fair hearing. I have not heard it since. If I give it another try, I would have to find a different set,

Mike

[Tsaraslondon]

When I was about 20 I had an LP of Christoff called Tzars and Kings. That had the main bass asia from Attila, I think it starts with Udino repeated. It was a stunner of a performance/aria. Assuming the music would all be like that, I borrowed some LPs of the opera from the library. I was so disappointed because Raimondi sounded nothing like Christoff and had none of the magnatism of the older singer. I thought Deutekon was positavely unpleasant on the ear and I probably therefore did not then give the opera a fair hearing. I have not heard it since. If I give it another try, I would have to find a different set,

Mike

You might prefer the Muti then, though, according to Gramophone, it's slightly swings and roundabouts.

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/verdi-attila-1


I wonder what it would have sounded like with, say, Christoff, Callas, Corelli and Gobbi. Now that's a dream cast!

[Tsaraslondon]

Not actually an opera, but it works well on stage, as I discovered when the superb Aix-en-Provence Luc Bondy production came to the Barbican in London, with Joyce DiDonato outstanding as Dejanira.

This excellent studio recording has much of the same dramatic impulse and, in a very positive sense, has the feel of a stage performance, with a superb cast, dominated by Anne Sofie von Otter's superb Dejanira.

[knight66]

You might prefer the Muti then, though, according to Gramophone, it's slightly swings and roundabouts.

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/verdi-attila-1


I wonder what it would have sounded like with, say, Christoff, Callas, Corelli and Gobbi. Now that's a dream cast!

There is a live version with Christoff in wooly sound. I have only heard a few extracts from it.

I have the Hercules you wrote about and agree with its terrific qualities. I have never heard 'Where shall I fly' treated so dramatically. When Von Otter started out on the international scene, I was in performances and a recording she made of the Berlioz Faust. She then seemed a relatively bland singer.

Mike

[Tsaraslondon]

Is Verdi's unloved opera Alzira really as bad as we've always been led to believe? Well it's certainly more workmanlike than inspired, and I'd probably agree that it's the worst of his galley operas since Oberto. That said, nothing by Verdi is totally negligible, and the finale does much to redeem it.

This recording, brilliantly conducted by Gardelli, was, like Oberto, recorded by Orfeo, and uses singers not involved in any of the Philips sets. Best of them is probably Renato Bruson as Gusmano, who brings a certain nobility to the role. Cotrubas is possibly a mite too light of voice for the heroine, but as usual sings with great sensitivity and acquits herself well. Araiza, more often encountered in Mozart and Rossini, is also on the light side, and isn't quite able to disguise a few moments of strain, but brings an appropriate firiness to the role of Zamoro.

[mc ukrneal]

You might prefer the Muti then, though, according to Gramophone, it's slightly swings and roundabouts.

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/verdi-attila-1


I wonder what it would have sounded like with, say, Christoff, Callas, Corelli and Gobbi. Now that's a dream cast!

I only have the Muti, but haven't listened in ages. I'll try if there is time to at least give it a start.

[JBS]

You might prefer the Muti then, though, according to Gramophone, it's slightly swings and roundabouts.

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/verdi-attila-1


I wonder what it would have sounded like with, say, Christoff, Callas, Corelli and Gobbi. Now that's a dream cast!

i have the Muti, listened to it a few times, concluded it was a very workmanlike opera, but nothing more.  So perhaps you are better off with the Gardelli.

[Tsaraslondon]

Pappano's Aida was released in a blaze of publicity in 2015. Unusually for these days, it was a studio recording and a luxury presentation. So how does it hold up to all the sets that have preceded it?

Sonically and orchestrally it is aboslutely splendid and Pappano conducts with a sure sense of the opera's structure, bringing out both the score's lyricism and its dramatic energy. But how about the soloists, who have some pretty big names to live up to. The best of them is Jonas Kaufmann, who fulfils virtually all the requirements for Radames, heroic and forthright, but managing a properly morendo close to Celeste Aida. Harteros as Aida is on the light side, not so vocally entitled as Price, Caballé or Tebaldi, not to mention Rosa Ponselle, nor is she as dramatically thrilling as Callas. Nevertheless her Aida is most affecting. She attempts a true piano top C in O patria mia, which neither Price or Tebaldi do, but it sounds a little shaky, where Caballé is divine. She reminds me most of Freni, the Aida of Karajan's second recording. I'm afraid I don't much like Semenchuk, who is a barnstorming Amneris in the manner of Simionato and Barbieri, but without the verbal specificity they bring to the role. My favourite is Baltsa for Karajan II, who reminds us that Amneris is a young, beautiful princess and a valid rival for Aida. Most Amnerises sound more like Radames's mother to me. However I appreciate that mine is a minority view. Tézier's Amonasro is another success, excellent in the Nile scene, where Harteros is also at her best, though they don't qute erase memories of Callas and Gobbi in the same scene. Schrott is fine, but a bit anonymous as Ramfis.

All in all this modern recording can hold its head up amongst recordings of the past, none of which can be considered perfect in all respects. Though it is not my favourite Verdi opera by a long chalk (I admire it rather than love it), I have quite a few recordings, which suggests that I am constantly looking for one that satisfies on all levels.

[Tsaraslondon]

Another orotorio that has been successfully staged, particularly in this fabulously cast Glynedbourne production, which also exists on DVD. Superb performances all round with the late lameneted Lorraine Hunt Lieberson especially outstanding.