What Opera Are You Listening to Now?

[Tsaraslondon]

Callas's 1949 Abigaille may be required listening, but the sound is awful and, for a library version, there is no better recording than this one. This was Suliotis's first recording commercial recording and it is, without doubt, the best representation of her art on disc. The singing is fearless and absolutely thrilling and the role became her calling card. However, such recklessness cost her dear and all too soon the voice disintegrated. In little more than five years, she was sung out and her career virtually over. Still, we are lucky to have this memento of her at her exciting best.

We also have Gobbi, admittedly at the end of his career, but still giving a lesson in creating character through music and still in fine voice, finding a myriad of colours in his duet with the triumphant Abigaille of Suliotis and wonderfully moving in Dio di Giuda. The rest of the cast have less to do, but Cava and Prevedi are fine as Zaccaria and Ismaele. Only Dora Carral makes little impression in the rather thankless role of Fenena.

Gardelli, as ever in early Verdi, paces the score perfectly and gives us a particularly fine Va pensiero. I place this above both the Muti and Sinopoli recordings of the opera.

[KevinP]

[JBS]

That cover is a lot better than the one used on my copy

[KevinP]

Will spin the live version from this set later today. The cover (lower left) is somewhat in-between.

[JBS]

Interesting set....but three Tristans!

[Wendell_E]

Incidentally, Halévy and Auber also wrote operas adapted from the novel [Manon Lescaut], though they are rarely performed today.

Also, Henze's Boulevard Solitude.

[Papy Oli]

Bizet - Carmen (Callas, Prêtre)

[Tsaraslondon]

Also, Henze's Boulevard Solitude.

Yes indeed, though I've never seen or heard it. Actually it is based on a play by Walter Jockisch, which is a modern re-telling of the novel.

[Tsaraslondon]

Bizet - Carmen (Callas, Prêtre)

It's a bit of a Marmite recording. People tend to love it or hate it. Obviously I'm in the former camp, as was Richard Osborne of Gramophone Magazine, who reviewed one of its CD reissues,

"[Callas's] Carmen is one of those rare experiences, like Piaf singing La vie en rose, or Dietrich in The Blue Angel, which is inimitable, unforgettable, and on no account to be missed."

[Papy Oli]

It's a bit of a Marmite recording. People tend to love it or hate it. Obviously I'm in the former camp, as was Richard Osborne of Gramophone Magazine, who reviewed one of its CD reissues,

"[Callas's] Carmen is one of those rare experiences, like Piaf singing La vie en rose, or Dietrich in The Blue Angel, which is inimitable, unforgettable, and on no account to be missed."

I am sort of enjoying it, just sitting on the right side of the fence (2 acts in).

It is so far of one two examples where I actually enjoy hearing my mother tongue being sung in a classical setting (the other being Dietschy singing some Fauré songs). I know it is a weird thing to say with a partly French cast but the clarity in the French diction here feels err... "refreshing" to these ears.

It is a totally different beast to Solti's, less oomph or fiery overall, even with some flat-ish moments I found. And yet, at times, it can be mesmerising. The duet "parle-moi de ma mère"  for instance really made me sit up and listen (It got an encore), and Callas wasn't even in it 

If not a completely full mark, a positive tick still goes next to this recording.


     

[San Antone]

Monteverdi: L'Orfeo (2015)
Jordi Savall



This Savall recording is very good - but earlier I listened to one I like even better.  It is on Glossa by Ensemble La Venexiana and led by Claudio Cavina

[Tsaraslondon]

I am sort of enjoying it, just sitting on the right side of the fence (2 acts in).

It is so far of one two examples where I actually enjoy hearing my mother tongue being sung in a classical setting (the other being Dietschy singing some Fauré songs). I know it is a weird thing to say with a partly French cast but the clarity in the French diction here feels err... "refreshing" to these ears.

It is a totally different beast to Solti's, less oomph or fiery overall, even with some flat-ish moments I found. And yet, at times, it can be mesmerising. The duet "parle-moi de ma mère"  for instance really made me sit up and listen (It got an encore), and Callas wasn't even in it 

If not a completely full mark, a positive tick still goes next to this recording.


   

Ah, I didn't know you were French.

Well, almost everyone in the Callas recording is French, and the whole recording is much more French in style than the internationally cast, polyglot Solti version. Admittedly Gedda and Callas weren't French, but both were excellent linguists, and Gedda was something of a French spécialiste. Callas was by this time living in Paris and spoke the language fluently. Interestingly, Beecham originally considered her for his famous recording, but she turned him down, saying that she didn't think her French was good enough yet. The role eventually went to Victoria De Los Angeles.

It's interesting that you the Solti more fiery. I've always thought Troyanos's Carmen was a bit anonymous. I suppose you could say Solti's coducting was fiery, though it's not really to my liking. I'd call it more bombastic than fiery.

Beecham conducts a very stylish, elegant account of the score, but I'm afraid I've always found De Los Angeles's Carmen a bit too ladylike, though she is as usual a wonderfully musical singer. I often wonder what a Beecham/Callas Carmen would have been like. Prêtre can be a bit vulgar at times.

[Tsaraslondon]

Oh, if only, if only..... If only Tebaldi had been the Desdemona on this recording, what a performance it would have been. As it is, Vickers, though recording the role before he had stage experience in it, is absolutely superb, and a lot more musically scrupulous than Del Monaco, who sings it on the roughly contemporaeous Karajan recording (with the wonderful Tebaldi). Gobbi, it goes without saying, is just fantastic as Iago, the personifciation of manipuative evil and Serafin, as so often, just gets so much so unobtrusively, but so brilliantly right.

The fly in the ointment, for me at any rate, is Rysanek. This is just the wrong voice for the role. At times she just sounds hoarse and her intonation is occasionally suspect. Nor does she really suggest Desdemona's innocence and purity. Tebaldi is in a different world, but I can think of any amount of recorded Desdemonas I prefer; Rethberg (of course), Freni, Ricciarelli, Scotto, Te Kanawa, Margaret Price and Studer, to mention a few who are on complete audio performances. Fleming is also much to be preferred on video.

Nonetheless this is a great performance. Vickers may have been more inside the role by the time of Karajan's second recording, but there are some weird recording balances on that one and Karajan makes a swingeing and totally unnecessary cut in the big Act III ensemble. By and large, the Serafin has remained my favourite, though I intend to listen to the three Domingo recordings next, and it will be interesting to record my impressions.

[Florestan]

Good evening, Mr. Tsaras.

I am greatly, greatly, greatly tempted by this set:



As the GMG's leading expert on Callas, what say you? Should I click or should I not?

[Tsaraslondon]

Good evening, Mr. Tsaras.

I am greatly, greatly, greatly tempted by this set:



As the GMG's leading expert on Callas, what say you? Should I click or should I not?

Well of course I'm going to say, just click.

If you want my detailed reviews, they are all on my website. Start with https://tsaraslondon.com/2017/01/05/callass-studio-recordings-an-introduction/ and then just click on next article for reviews of each opera or recital disc.

Some will tell you that not all the Warner transfers are better than some of the original EMI ones (not the Callas Edition black cover ones, which were something of a disaster), and others will tell you that the original LPs are best. But I'd just go for the box set.

If you are getting it on CD, you also get the bonus of an extra disc with all the librettos on them.

[Florestan]

Well of course I'm going to say, just click.

If you want my detailed reviews, they are all on my website. Start with https://tsaraslondon.com/2017/01/05/callass-studio-recordings-an-introduction/ and then just click on next article for reviews of each opera or recital disc.

Some will tell you that not all the Warner transfers are better than some of the original EMI ones (not the Callas Edition black cover ones, which were something of a disaster), and others will tell you that the original LPs are best. But I'd just go for the box set.

If you are getting it on CD, you also get the bonus of an extra disc with all the librettos on them.

Thank you. Click it is, then. (Not that I expected otherwise, anyway  )

Oh, and I'll be certainly reading your reviews in their entirety. In fact, am reading the first installment right now.

[Tsaraslondon]

Thank you. Click it is, then. (Not that I expected otherwise, anyway  )

Oh, and I'll be certainly reading your reviews in their entirety. In fact, am reading the first installment right now.

I hope you have many hours of pleasure ahead of you.

[Florestan]

I hope you have many hours of pleasure ahead of you.

Hours? You surely mean days, if not weeks. Thanks anyway. 

[Florestan]

[Callas] spoke [French] fluently (though tellingly refused the role of Carmen in the Beecham recording, "because my French isn't good enough yet")

Joan Sutherland would have surely laughed her ass off had she known about that. 

No, really, I'm not aware of any other major operatic singer, female or male, who has/had a worse diction that JS. Which begs the question, why on earth such a supremely gifted soprano never cared to take some lessons in Italian/French diction...

[Tsaraslondon]

[Callas] spoke [French] fluently (though tellingly refused the role of Carmen in the Beecham recording, "because my French isn't good enough yet")

Joan Sutherland would have surely laughed her ass off had she known about that. 

No, really, I'm not aware of any other major operatic singer, female or male, who has/had a worse diction that JS. Which begs the question, why on earth such a supremely gifted soprano never cared to take some lessons in Italian/French diction...

Sutherland's diction was a lot better when she was working with conductors like Serafin, Giulini, Nello Santi and Molinari-Pradelli. It went to  pot when she started working almost exclusively with Bonynge, who got her to adopt a moony, swoony style. It's not just that her diction was bad, but that she never really made words count. It's also noticeable that the more they concentrated on her brilliant upper register, the more the lower and middle registers fell away and the voice became dull in those areas. Some thought the splendour of her upper notes compensation enough, but I never did.