...denied it remains to be seen, but in the meantime this is an album to treasure. youtu.be/LRjaSaDdUxM?...
YouTube video by Agnes Baltsa - Topic
...usually prone to understatement, Baltsa is probably the best Eboli on record, one who remembers that she is a high-ranking Spanish aristocrat and not an amped up, scenery-chewing twin sister to Azucena. Whether the Milan version deserves such loving care when the 1867 original is all too often...
...my misgivings, this performance can hardly be faulted as the cast is more or less ideal. I have never been fond of Raimondi, but Carreras sounds attractively youthful, Freni appropriately fearless and regal, and Cappuccilli tenderly understated in the wonderful death scene. Although not...
...all wrong and I get the impression that I am listening to a highlights disc, with all the transitions curtailed or omitted altogether. This is a drama that was never meant to be fast-moving and shortening it in this manner somehow diminishes it, like a postcard of the Sistine Chapel. Despite...
...unhealthy crush on his stepmom. (Never mind that this is probably closer to the historical truth!) Apart from Act 1, most of the famous scenes and arias are still in place, with some glaring omissions (the Lacrymosa section, which Verdi had already recycled in the Requiem); but the pacing is...
Don Carlo (1883). HvK was unaccountably fond of the so-called "Milan" version, a preference I do not share. The omission of the entire Act 1 is a major mistake as it fundamentally alters the tenor of the opera, which is no longer about star-crossed lovers but about a disturbed teenager with an...
In the current Paris production of Falstaff, which is set in the 1890s, Alice Ford has a gramophone in her home. I wonder what happens to opera when the characters listen to recorded music.
Went to the opera last night. Loud coughing everywhere in the house, which is perfectly normal for mid-January. Oh wait.
Bro are you okay? I just heard your leitmotif played on soft strings in a minor key.
Martinelli was a huge star back in the day, but I sometimes wonder why--I don't like the pinched, metallic sound and he rides the ensemble instead of melding with it. Maybe he sounded better in person and the recording technologies available at the time just didn't do him any favours.