painted flats

A flat is a flat canvas panel stretched on a frame, usually 2 x 4's. Before sets began to be constructed like actual buildings, etc., stage scenery was mostly painted on these flats. By utilizing perspective the scene-painter created the illusion of depth and three dimensional setting with just paint on the flat canvas. This was done in "straight" (ha) theater, too. Until the turn of the 20th century, that's pretty much what all stage settings were, with furniture placed downstage in front of paintings of street scenes, rooms, etc. When electric lighting came into general theatrical use toward the end of the 19th century, lighting designers could do a lot and stage design changed. Google Adolph Appia and Charles Gordon Craig for more on this. They were the ground-breaking lighting designers who revolutionized stage design, and those developments doomed the old-fashioned painted flats, like the ones in this production of "Tosca", a copy of the original 1932 production that opened the War memorial Opera House. It took decades for their revolutionary work to become the norm, though. Painted flats were cheap, and could be painted over for the next production, or sometimes re-used for a street scene in a different opera.

Tosca at SFO

Last Thursday's "Tosca" was a solid performance, although a certain musty provincial quality was on display. In the title role, Canadian soprano Adrianne Pieczonka displayed a healthy instrument of good size and weight, but her characterization felt dutiful rather than inspired. The Uruguayan tenor Carlo Ventre began with more than a suggestion of a wobble, but this dissipated as he warmed up, and his "E lucevan le stelle" was very well received. Along the way he produced the requisite volume and high notes, but without much style or personality; there was little acting on display, although he is not without stage presence. The voice, while relatively graceless, is not small. Georgian baritone Lado Ataneli was a more satisfying Scarpia, with some detailed and specific acting and a good voice of power and amplitude, lacking only real individuality. Jordan Bisch was a capable Angelotti, and Joel Sorensen a fine Spoletta. The orchestra played well for Marco Armilliato, and the chorus was imposing in the "Te Deum" that closes Act 1.

The 1997 production, which recreates the inaugural SFO mounting of the opera, looks cheap, but it's serviceable. Younger opera-goers may never have seen painted flats before. In these days of financial uncertainty, the Opera company is fortunate to have a no-nonsense production to deploy economically.

Max Lorenz: Wagner's Mastersinger, Hitler's Siegfried, a film on Medici Arts

The rarest operatic voices are tenors, the rarest tenors are dramatic tenors, and the rarest dramatic tenors are Heldentenors-- Wagner tenors. Most critics and commentators consider the Dane Lauritz Melchior (1890-1973), by a wide margin, the greatest Wagner tenor who made recordings. Connoisseurs who heard all his important predecessors as well as Melchior generally agree, with a few preferring Jean de Reszke (1850-1925), the Polish tenor who dominated the fin de siecle, and who took up Wagner's heaviest roles late in his career, after many triumphs in Gounod's Faust (first performed in 1859) and other decidedly non-Wagnerian roles. Wagner himself heard only a handful of his greatest interpreters, but he consistently named Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1836-1865) the greatest, although that unique artist died too young to sing Siegfried. A fascinating new film by Eric Schulz and Claus Wischmann, "Wagner's Mastersinger, Hitler's Siegfried, the Life and Times of Max Lorenz", available on a Medici Arts, EuroArts Production DVD (53 minutes), offers a different candidate. In the filmmakers view, the German tenor Max Lorenz (1901-1975) deserves the title.

Lorenz is a justly famous and much-recorded artist, whose career spanned the late 20's on into the early 60's. Besides his Wagner roles, Richard Strauss (1864-1949) cast him in the brutally demanding tenor role of Menelaus in "Die Egyptische Helena", and as Bacchus in "Aridne auf Naxos", and he created numerous roles in contemporary operas. He sang at the Metropolitan Opera before and after World War 2, but it's the tenor's entanglements with the Third Reich that this film concentrates on. It's a compelling story. Archival footage shows him singing part of the second prologue to "Die Gotterdammerung" with the great Wagnerian soprano Frida Leider (1888-1975), and in numerous other parts. His is a clarion voice, coupling a kind of wild impetuosity with absolute security. It is a brilliant and theatrically compelling instrument, and he is a notably fine actor. The film utilizes a simple and very effective device: Lorenz's recording are played for several distinguished auditors, who react and comment. They include the distinguished Heldentenor Rene Kollo (b. 1937); the legendary baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (b. 1925); Hilde Zadek (b. 1917), a German-Jewish soprano who fled to Palestine, returning for a distinguished career as a dramatic soprano once the war was over; and Waldemar Kmentt (b. 1929) an important post-war tenor, all of whom sang with Lorenz. They all regard him as the greatest, and repeatedly say as much. They are joined in this view by several non-singers, including the widow of the conductor Heinz Tietjen (1881-1967), who had occasion to observe Lorenz closely when he worked with her husband at Bayreuth.

Lorenz was gay, which placed him in grave danger under the Nazis. According to Frederic Spotts in his wonderful book "Bayreuth" (Yale UniversityPress, 1996), Lorenz was caught in flagrante with an assistant conductor backstage at the Festspielhaus, an incident which threatened to end his career. Hitler, whose devotion to Wagner and closeness to the Wagner family (who called him "Uncle Wolf") is documented with agonizing detail in "Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Heart of Hitler's Bayreuth" by Brigitte Hamann and Alan J. Bance (Granta Books, 2006), informed Winifred that Lorenz was not suitable for Bayreuth. Winifred, with the candor and grit that she demonstrated throughout her life, replied "Then I may as well shut the place down, Bayrueth is impossible without Lorenz". Hitler acquiesced. What happened to the assistant conductor, I have nor been able to discover. As if this wasn't enough, Lorenz had married a Jewish wife, to whom he was devoted. The Gestapo came one night when Lorenz was away and attempted to arrest her and her mother; the tenor managed to get Goering himself to phone the would-be arresting officers and tell them in no uncertain terms that the ladies were under "the personal protection of the Fuhrer", and to leave them alone. They were not arrested, and they survived the war. This thrilling story of artistic greatness and personal courage demonstrates the complexities--and ambiguities--of so many singers' and musicians' careers under the Third Reich. To sing Siegfried and Tristan requires nerves of steel; to sing them under the eyes of the Gestapo, as a known homosexual married to a Jew—the sort of courage that requires can hardly be understood, but it is on display in this film.

The set also includes the first-ever release of 74 minutes worth of Lorentz's Young Siegfried, in live excerpts from October 4th, 1938 under Erich Kleiber (1890-1956), recorded in performance at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. Most of Lorenz's Wagner roles are well documented on recordings, live and commercial, but the title role in "Sioegfried" is not, so these excerpts, Act 1 complete and a bleeding chunk of Act 2, scene 2, are most welcome. Erich Witte (1911-?) is Mime; Herbert Janssen (1892-1965), another gay singer, who managed to flee the Nazis and enjoyed a long Metropolitan Opera career, is Wotan the Wanderer; and Emmanuel List (1886-1967), a Jewish basso who also escaped to the Met, sings Fafner. The audio quality is extremely variable. Whole sections are nearly inaudible, but the sound sometimes suddenly clears to excellence. The overall effect reminds one of Samuel Coleridge's (1772-1834) comment about the great English actor Edmund Kean (1789-1833): to watch Kean, Coleridge claimed, was "like reading Shakespeare by lightning."

Verdi's Ernani on DVD and CD

"Ernani", Verdi's fifth opera (1844), is based on Victor Hugo's "Hernani", and it's a work that's been described as fustian, a kind of Robin Hood-esque farrago of unlikely situations and improbable characters. I wouldn't disagree with that view, but it doesn't prevent me from enjoying it hugely. This is because Verdi (1813-1901) pours out memorable melodies with a kind of hectic profligacy, creating non-stop opportunities for his four principals. They are Ernani, the disenfranchised nobleman Don Giovanni d'Arragona, masquerading as a bandit (a tenor of course); his would-be wife Elvira (soprano); Elvira's repeatedly spurned suitor, King Carlo V of Castille (baritone), and Elvira's guardian, the elderly nobleman Silva (basso), who being in charge of the lady is poised at the beginning of the opera to marry her and settle things before they get underway. But no.

This is an opera that was considered kind of old-fashioned within 20 years of its premiere, along with pretty much all of Verdi's works up to his break-through trilogy, "Rigoletto"(1851), "il Trovatore" (1853), and "la Traviata" ( 1853). These were Verdi's 16th, 17th and 18th operas. A quick look at the numbers yields the startling fact that between his first opera, "Oberto", premiered in 1839, and "Rigoletto" in 1851, Verdi composed, prepared and saw staged 16 full-length operas--in 15 years. He referred to that time as his "years in the galley", and he had in mind a trireme rowed by slaves, not a kitchen. Unlike Rossini (1792-1868), who produced operas at an even faster pace, Verdi re-used virtually no material. Verdi's early works are propulsive, energetic and often frankly crude. Every one is a completely sincere work of art, but they are not (with some arguable exceptions, especially "Macbeth", written in 1846-47 and revised extensively 1864-65) masterpieces, in the sense in which that term is usually understood. They are, like some of Shakespeare's lesser plays, often a bit of a mess. Many of these works are plagued by miserable libretti, but every one of them is stuffed full of tunes. If you like tunes (serious composers really weren't allowed to write tunes after a certain point in the 20th century) you may like these operas. If your idea of a good time is Arnold Schoenberg's (1874-1951) "Moses und Aaron" (1930-32, unfinished) you may not. An ability to enjoy Robin Hood is a big help, too.

These works were written for an audience that wanted, above all, to hear singing. They wanted to hear new works, not revivals. Paris was the undisputed capital of the opera world, and French works were enjoyed in translation, but the Italian audience would remain bewildered if not openly hostile to Wagner until the composer was dead. These works are very much of their time and place, and many of them are thinly-veiled calls to revolution, because the Italian Peninsula was largely under Austrian rule; in fact, there was no "Italy" yet, and there wouldn't be for decades. The rulers of fragmented Italy were very careful about what they allowed on the stage. Nationalism was sweeping across Europe, and censorship was an inescapable fact of operatic life. Venetians and Milanese, Neapolitans and Romans and everyone else were feeling passionate about the idea of "Italy," but this passion could not be openly expressed. But the audience was well aware that when Verdi set a magnificent ensemble for rebellious nobles in Act III, it wasn't only "the lion of Castille" that was aroused, it was their own nationalistic aspirations. Most of these early works include a chorus that became part of the rising tide that would become the Risorgimento; the most famous is "Va pensiero" from "Nabucco", Verdi's first great success. Verdi's name itself became a rallying cry: Patriots scrawled "Viva Verdi" across walls throughout the Peninsula. It was understood to mean "Viva Vittorio Emmanuele, Re d'Italia."

A modern audience may be aware of this background, and appreciate "Ernani" more for that, but there's no getting around the fact that the motivations of the characters are mostly unbelievable to us. Silva wants to marry Elvira, who wants to marry Ernani. The king wants to marry Elvira, but wants to be made Holy Roman Emperor more. The King and Silva want to kill Ernani because, well, he's supposedly a bandit. Ernamni wants to avenge his father's death and marry Elvira, but these objectives are mutually exclusive. When Ernani and Elvira finally overcome all these obstacles and get married, Silva blows a hunting horn and Ernani is obliged to kill himself, which, in front of the much put-upon Elvira, he does. OK, this is not an easy sell, depending as it does on our understanding and accepting the Code of Honor of a feudal civilization seen through the filter of some pretty pissed-off Italians. It seems frankly incredible to people today. So, why would anyone want to hear this work anymore? Unless you really like Robin Hood a lot, it's all for the singing.

A performance under Riccardo Muti (b. 1941) is available on DVD. The production, by Luca Ronconi (b. 1933) opened the 1982/83 La Scala season; it stars Placido Domingo (b. 1941), Mirella Freni (b. 1935), Renato Bruson (b. 1936) and Nicolai Ghiaurov 1929-2004). The production is traditional, if not realistic, and Ronconi is at pains to tell the story. Contemporary Regietheater often is not concerned with that, so this is a production that many will consider old-fashioned. The first scene places Ernani on a plinth to sing his entirely conventional first aria and cabaletta. Choristers and supers dressed as audience members watch the action from upstage in several scenes. This puts us at a distance from the work from the start, and for me this works well: we're invited to see "Ernani" as a theatrical object, and relieved of the need to engage the plot directly, which, as I've indicated, is close to impossible. Let's just go to the opera, shall we?

The costumes, in the main, appear to be from about Verdi's own time, or at least what people in his era would have expected "accurate" historical costumes to look like. None of the singers is required to appear in a costume or wig that's intentionally unflattering, which is refreshing (a recent "Ring" production has Brunnehilde wearing what appears to be a picket fence). Muti is among the outstanding Verdi conductors of the post-war period, and everything is scrupulously "come scritto" (as written). Because Silva's cabaletta following "Infelice, e tu credevi" was not part of Verdi's original (he added it for a subsequent production to please the basso) he omits it here. Ghiaurov (who married Freni in 1978), was one of the greatest bass singers of his time, but he is a little rusty here, so losing the cabaletta is not so bad. He suffers only in comparison to his own earlier recordings, though, and he is a commanding presence throughout. Nobody is a match for Christoff, that lion, and Siepi, in both the Del Monaco performances (see below) is close to ideal, in his absolute prime and singing in his native language. And nobody was taking that cabaletta away from either of those artists. For old Silva on records, then, an embarrassment of riches.

Domingo, still singing principal parts at 68, long ago earned a place among the greatest tenors in the history of opera. I believe he is unique in the breadth of his repertoire and in his vocal longevity, leaving aside his great accomplishments as a conductor and administrator. The man is a giant. He sings a very fine Ernani, marred only slightly by the relative tightness of his highest notes and the fact that his committed, imaginative acting can feel a little generalized. These are small quibbles. The finest Ernani's on disc (both in live performances) are Franco Corelli in a 1965 Met broadcast with Leontyne Price (b.1927), Mario Sereni (b. 1928) and Cesare Siepi (b. 1923) under Thomas Schippers (1930-1977) ; and Mario del Monaco (1915-1982) in one from the 1957 Maggio Musicale Fiorentino with Anita Cerquetti (b. 1931), Ettore Bastianini (1922-1967) and Boris Christoff (1914-1993) under Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896-1960). Both are dramatic tenors, with headlong, impassioned singing styles that suit this volatile, larger-than-life character. A friend of mine used to call del Monaco "Mario del Maniac". Another Mitropoulos performance, from the Met, in '56, teams the tenor with Zinka Milanov (1906-1989), Leonard Warren (1911-1960), and Siepi. Carlo Bergonzi is a fine Ernani in the RCA set with Price; Pavarotti sang the part late in his career; the commercial set with Sutherland (b. 1926) was not released for several years after it was recorded, and it's not hard to see why: it is a dull affair, with Sutherland in particularly unsteady voice, and Pavarotti sounding his by-then advanced age. "Ernani" is a lot of things, but dull should never be one of them.

Freni sings a lovely performance in a role that requires, ideally, a larger voice than hers. Always a fine singer and a resourceful artist, she gives an extended lesson in safely negotiating an assignment too heavy for an essentially lyric voice, much as she does in complete recordings of "Aida" and "Don Carlos", among others. Italian dramatic sopranos have vanished, and if the works are to be performed, lighter voices must serve. The many low-lying passages are deftly handled and her singing is never less than lovely. Price is preferable, although her lower register is obviously produced differently from the rest of the voice, and it turns husky and "smoky," an effect which grew more pronounced over time. Cerquetti, a unique artist whose meteoric career left only a few commercial recordings, is very fine, and her vocal weight is appropriate to Elvira's demanding music.

The role of Carlo, the King of Castille, is one of Verdi's long line of great baritone roles, beginning with Nabucco and following through all the way to Falstaff. Carlo has several demanding arias, and Bruson meets the challenge with something like complete success. The voice is in excellent condition, and barring an occasional gruff high note, he commands the long line and the myriad expressive markings with real authority and considerable grandeur. He is worthy to stand next to the great Leonard Warren, which is about as high a compliment as a baritone can be paid, and since he's singing his own language, in that respect his Carlo might even be thought preferable. He has not so long a line as Cappucilli (in a live '72 performance from Verona, in rather poor sound), but his voice has much more character and individuality. All Bruson's singing in this role is magisterial, and it's his performance that most ideally serves the composer's demands.

All in all, creaky old "Ernani" is well-served by this DVD, and even better by some of the CD versions available. If you like Robin Hood, you may have fun with "Ernani".

"Les Urnes de l'Opera" A Time Capsule

This is an overview of the opera world of a century ago, and a fascinating one. The set includes a very interesting booklet, but no English translations. My French is not adequate to translate the essay, so much of the mystery of these ancient urns waiting through the whole of the 20th century in the dark cellars beneath the Paris Opera still clings to them. Among the mysteries: there are 60 tracks, not the expected 48. Here's part of the press release:


On 24th December 1907, 48 gramophone records were buried in the basement of the Paris Opéra. The instructions were to leave them there for 100 years.
The project was the brainchild of Alfred Clark, founder and president of EMI’s ancestor, the International Gramophone Company. His aim was to enlighten the citizens of the 21st century as to “the voices of the principal singers of our time and the interpretations they gave of some of the most famous pieces from the lyric and dramatic repertoire.”

The 48 records, released by the Compagnie du Gramophone in the first years of the 20th century, were unearthed in December 2007 and then restored with enormous care by the technicians of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, in collaboration with EMI Classics.

Now the contents of the so-called ‘Urnes de l’Opéra’ are being released by EMI Classics in partnership with the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Opéra National de Paris and the Association pour le Rayonnement de l’Opéra national de Paris.

These musical treasures from the early days of the record label are introduced with a visionary speech from Firmin Gémier, the celebrated actor and director who founded France’s Théâtre National Populaire in 1920.


All in all, this is a beautifully produced issue with dozens of great singers, Italians, Germans, Russians as well as French. These recordings are what Mr. Alfred Clark and the management of the Paris Opera considered most representative of the best of their time, and that gives the collection more than usual stylistic coherence and historical relevance; these recordings were intended to be heard together. On a brilliantly sunny, cool, perfect San Francisco day I'm having a lot of fun listening to these gloriously restored treasures.

Studio Recordings vs. Live Recordings

Recordings of complete operas fall into two main categories: studio recordings and "live" ones. In recent years the cost of making studio recordings has risen dramatically, while the executives in charge of record companies have concentrated on turning a profit in a short time, so studio recordings have become very rare. Many famous recordings of the 50's and 60's have been in continuous release ever since they were first published, amortized their costs long ago, and have been profitably sliced and diced into dozens of compilation discs. But the industry—or what remains of it—has now adopted the business model of popular music, and if a recording doesn't sell a lot of copies very fast, it isn't considered viable. Complete operas do not sell enough copies quickly enough to fit this business model. By default, most recordings of complete operas are now live, most often filmed in performance in the opera house and sold on DVD. Films of operas are another matter. Lip-synching singers we'll leave for another time.

While it's sad that studio recordings have become so rare, the comparative abundance of live performances has created a vigorous new market for "real" performances. Whereas studio sets usually had an active intention to create an "ideal" or even "definitive" version of a given work, filmed opera performances are often "records" in another sense: records of specific productions. The contemporary contributions of set and costume designers are rarely directly derived from the composer's written instructions. And when the stage director gets busy, it's much more common for the composer's stated desires to be ignored, if not actively contradicted, then for them to be respected. What results is a film of a particular interpretation of a work. I would argue that that's a very good thing, although it's obvious that not every filmed production is a success.

Studio recordings began in the early years of the 20th century, and were limited in many ways. The singers voices were the main objects of attention, and because of the primitive conditions under which these sets were made, very little actual orchestral sound made its way onto the shellac sides eventually offered for sale. Because only a short amount of music could be recorded, sometimes as much as 4 minutes, but often as little as 2 or 3, musical continuity in playback was impossible. Apart from the technical difficulty of producing sides that accurately matched up, the listener had to stop the record after each side, carefully remove that disc (or cylinder) and replace it in its protective packaging, take out the next record and carefully place it on the turntable and start the music again. All of this took time, and the sense of a complete performance was difficult to obtain, at best.

All this changed by the early 50's, and with the flood of complete sets that poured forth came a new attitude. Producers now wanted to capture not just a performance, but something that summed up the composer's intentions. We weren't buying just another performance of "Carmen", we were being offered "Carmen" as an object that came as close as possible to what the composer had imagined in his head. And that quest for perfection and desire to define the work brought some new wrinkles. With the ability to seamlessly splice magnetic tape came the ability to correct mistakes, in both vocal and orchestral performances. When Wilhelm Furtwangler (1886-1953) conducted Kirsten Flagstad (1895-1962) in "Tristan und Isolde" in 1951, Flagstad could no longer reach some of the exposed high notes in the role; Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (1915-2006), the wife of the recording's producer, Walter Legge (1906-1979), was spliced in singing them for her. Once stereo arrived (in the shops by 1958) microphone technique had made great advances. At first only 2 microphones were used, but within a few years recording studios bristled with dozens, allowing orchestral details to be displayed as nobody but conductors and second violinists had ever heard them before, and manipulated with great virtuosity. Soon every section of the orchestra had its own microphone (or 3) and every soloist her own track, all of them fed by the dozens into huge mixing consoles. If the baritone was too loud in the quartet, the volume of his track could be lowered to please the tenor. If a singer couldn't hit that high C on the particular day the big aria was being recorded, it could be recorded again and again until she did hit it. And if she still couldn't hit it after many takes, her best effort could be speeded up very slightly to make up the difference. If she couldn't produce the diminuendo called for in the score, the engineers could lower the volume of her track to give the impression that she had. And eventually, if Mr. Domingo or Mr. Pavarotti couldn't be present in Paris during September to record his part of duets and ensembles, he could be recorded later—sometimes years later—and that track seamlessly integrated into the master tape. But is the result "a performance" at all? By the height of the digital era, when CD's were selling in large numbers and several dozen operas were being released every year, a typical "performance" might be assembled from literally thousands of very brief takes recorded over many months. Hearing was no longer believing.

Of course, singers really don't sound in the theater just as they do on recordings. Many smallish voices carry surprisingly well, but some get lost altogether; on records it's very hard to tell. Dramatic voices are harder to record than lyrics, so some artists get ignored by record companies; Leonie Rysanek (1926-1998), one of the most important sopranos of the post war period, made few commercial recordings; she was nearly impossible to record because her top sounded as loud as the whole orchestra. Birgit Nilsson (1918-2005) recorded frequently, but few of those recordings really capture the visceral excitement of her amazing high notes. The recordings Kirsten Flagstad made in her prime are impressive, but not quite like what an old timer told me about her: in the house, he claimed, her high notes were "like getting hit in the face with a baseball bat." Boris Christoff (1914-1993) is reputed to have had a rather small voice; on records he sounds enormous. And in general, almost all voices sound larger on records than the actual experience of hearing them in the theater. They tend to be miked more closely, so many record collectors (myself occasionally included) prefer to hear opera on records instead of in the opera house.

Of course, many live performances, largely airchecks, have survived from the time the microphone was introduced around 1925. Dozens of singers who made few or no commercial recordings have been preserved, Leyla Gencer (1928-2008) for example, an important artist who had a major career but whose legacy would be lost entirely were it not for her dozens of complete broadcast performances. Without the many great live performances of Maria Callas (1923-1977), we would hardly know what magic she made in live performance, no matter how wonderful her earlier studio recordings unquestionably are. Gertrude Grob-Prandl (1917-1995), an important post-war Wagnerian comes to mind, as does Astrid Varnay (1918-2006), who made more than a few commercial recordings, but whose live performances, especially from Bayreuth, are revelatory.

What we hear in these live recordings is not an abstraction or a musical mosaic, but, for better or worse, an evening in the theater. Stage noises, mistakes, hoarseness, flat high notes (or sharp ones), all manner of blunders abound. With DVD's we get absurd sets, unflattering costumes, directorial conceits, a good look at dental work, and often the rueful awareness that Madame X looks nothing at all like Mimi or Tosca, or Herr Z is much too old and stout to make anything like a passable (visual) Siegfried. But we get a real performance. With studio recordings, we get something more, and less.

A New "Butterfly" Takes Wing

Although we were told a few years ago that the EMI "Tristan", with Domingo (b. 1941) finally in the title role, opposite the excellent Nina Stemme (b. 1963), would be the last studio recording of a complete opera, now comes Antonio Pappano's exciting new "Madama Butterfly". Pappano has been Music Director of Covent Garden since 2002, and Music Director of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia since 2005. Recorded in Rome with the latter orchestra, this set brims with an exuberant sense of spontaneity and genuine Italianita, although the title role is taken very successfully by the Romanian Diva Angela Gheorghiu (b. 1965), and Pinkerton is sung by the rising German tenor star Jonas Kaufmann (b. 1969). The set feels, very pleasantly, like an echo from the heyday of the classical record industry, when singers trooped off to Italy (or London or Vienna) every summer to record, and collectors looked forward eagerly to stacks of new complete recordings in due course. It was another time, and it's useful to remember that a lot of those sets can seem generic, and many were assigned to inappropriate conductors. Erich Leinsdorf (1912-1993), for example, a fine conductor in the German repertoire, made a lot of recordings that give the distinct impression that he's embarrassed by the music ("Aida", "Turandot", "Il Tabarro") and rushing through the parts he dislikes—which are many.

Antonio Pappano (b. 1959) is an excellent conductor, and he guides this exciting performance with complete mastery, unembarrassed by Puccini's passion, while always supporting his singers and breathing with them. He draws playing of wonderful color and fire from his Italian orchestra, and the excellent recording team, also Italian, brings it very convincingly to disc. I have no idea how many of these orchestra musicians have played "Butterfly" before, but they obviously have this music in their blood. I find their playing preferable here to the more international style most opera orchestras, even the very best ones, provide. The supporting cast is generally fine. This is a very idiomatic "Butterfly" in nearly every respect.

And those respects are the soprano and tenor leads. Gheorghiu, whom I've heard twice in San Francisco in the last year or so, first as Magda in Puccini's "La Rondine", and more recently as Mimi in "La Boheme", would seem to be something of a Puccini specialist lately. The voice, although rather dark in color, is a little on the small side for Cio-Cio-san. The character demands great subtlety and reticence to be believable, but the role is very long, and she has a lot of music that requires a spinto. Once she makes her delayed entrance, singing an offstage aria capped by a high D, (a difficult note for most spintos) she rarely leaves the stage. A purely lyric soprano would find the love duet taxing, but possibly manageable, but that's just the beginning of the challenges. After "Un bel di", the letter scene in Act II turns quite dramatic. "Ah, mi scordata!" is very heavy musically and emotionally, and the orchestration is dense and loud. At the very end, the suicide scene is very demanding, over a heavy orchestra, and the singer has been working hard all evening. That can be overcome in a recording, but I don't expect Ms. Gheorghiu to sing this part onstage. Pappano, who has recorded often with Gheorghiu, supports her perfectly here, and she navigates the dangers unharmed. She colors her naturally beautiful instrument with great imagination and delicacy. She has some of the shimmering beauty of de los Angeles, some of the beautiful word-pointing of Scotto, a little of the depth of character of Callas, and an individuality of voice and utterance all her own. She sings a very fine Butterfly here.

Jonas Kaufmann is, I think, the most interesting tenor now singing, Villazon (b. 1972) and Florez (b.1973) included. Now 40, Kaufmann has arrived at his absolute prime, and he sings a daringly broad repertoire: it includes Des Grieux in Massenet's "Manon", Jose in Bizet's "Carmen", and he's singing "Lohengrin" at the Bavarian State Opera this season. The voice is an exciting one, baritonal and commanding, but he is also able to sing at any volume level throughout his range—and he caps the love duet with a high C that any tenor would be thrilled to have, and it is an easy, large, full note that thrills the listener as well. I have not heard him in the theater, so I can't say if the voice is as large as it sounds on records; sometimes tenors, especially German-speaking tenors, have smaller voices than their recordings lead one to hope. Mr. Kaufmann's voice does not sound like a small one. He is aslo an exceptionally fine actor. Pinkerton has little to sing after Act I, and with Kauffman in the role, that is a shame. In the love duet he constantly refines his tone to match Gheorghiu, never bellows, never croons, is always inside the character, and generally covers himself with glory. If he has any fault here at all, it might be that he seems a little too much the (vocal) gentleman. Kaufmann is that great rarity among tenors, an artist of immaculate taste. There is no trace of vulgarity in his singing--he reminds me of Nicolai Gedda in this respect, who partners both de los Angeles in this role under Beecham, and Callas under von Karajan, both by 1955. This is a tenor who has also reminded me in other recordings, with his baritonal, heroic vocal stance, a little of Vickers, without that great singer's idiosyncrasies. But when I hear this singer, I see his face. Jonas Kaufmann sounds like nobody but Jonas Kaufmann, and that, for me, is the mark of the great singer. I will be sure to collect every Jonas Kaufmann recording I can find, and I hope there are many, many more. I would love to hear him as Calaf or Dick Johnson. This is a tenor with a great career before him, in fact, a singer who can choose several different paths--Italian, French, and German Fachs--or Wagner. Jonas Kaufmann as Siegmund, Tristan, Siegfried...that might be a kind of heroic dream come true. But surely there would be no more Puccini or Massenet if he chose that path. I will follow his career with fascination and enthusiasm.

In short, an excellent new "Madama Butterfly". If you'd like to make comparisons, I'd suggest Scotto and Bergonzi under Barbarolli, Callas and Gedda under von Karajan, Tebaldi and Campora under Erede, dal Monte and Gigli under de Fabritiis.

Jon Vickers--or not?

Jon Vickers (b. 1926) is one of the great singers of the post-war period. He debuted as Don Jose in "Carmen" in 1956, and arrived at Covent garden the next year. I heard him in the theater only once, around '72 or so, as Otello at the Met; Sherrill Milnes was Iago. The title role in Verdi's "Otello" was one of the Canadian tenor's greatest achievements. He recorded it under Serafin in 1960 with Tito Gobbi and Leonie Rysanek, and again for Karajan a decade or so later. His other great parts included Peter Grimes in Britten's eponymous work, Parsifal, Tristan, Siegmund in "Die Walkure", Aeneas in Berlioz "Les Troyens", Samson, and, among several other roles, Florestan in Beethoven's only opera, "Fidelio."

Vickers was a unique artist. His temperament was often described as "volcanic", his interpretations were frequently idiosyncratic, and he was a famously difficult personality. He feuded famously with Solti, or there would be many more commercial recordings to follow the "Aida" he recorded opposite Price in 1960. His voice was very large, with plenty of squillo and a basically metallic quality. He was never less than thrilling, often less than lovely. In fact, "lovely" would have been a term he scorned. This is a singer who can be identified within a few seconds. Nobody sang like Vickers. Nobody sounded like Vickers.

Which brings us to Florestan in "Fidelio", one of his most celebrated roles. Vickers recorded the part commercially twice, first under Otto Klemperer in a 1963 EMI set with a great cast: Christa Ludwig as Leonore, Gottlob Frick as Rocco, Walter Berry as Pizarro, and later under Karajan, opposite Helga Dernesch (it's interesting to note that both Ludwig and Dernesch began their careers as mezzos, and both finished them as mezzos after singing the dramatic soprano repertoire for several years). There is no dearth of live performances of Fidelio with Vickers; I have three in my collection, and I'm sure there are several more. I've been listening to a very interesting live recording from the Vienna Staatsoper, under Karajan, DGG477 7364, released last year to considerable acclaim. It stars Ludwig in her role debut, with Berry (Ludwig's husband at the time) again as Pizarro, the magnificent Gundula Janowitz, who would later record Leonore in this opera under Bernstein, as Marzelline, and an excellent cast under Karajan. Who's the tenor? Well, Vickers is listed as Florestan. But it isn't Vickers on the discs.

When the set was released a common caveat in reviews was that Vickers was "out of voice" but rallied to give an impassioned performance. The liner notes say Vickers "was evidently indisposed...thereby lessening the impact of his aria at the start of Act Two...in the rest of the Dungeon Scene he too achieves moments of great expressivity, inspired—like the other singers—by the excitement of the evening...". It's amazing to me that EMI, and the Vienna State Opera, have allowed this glaring error to occur. Not only does this not sound like Vicker's voice—which is immediately recognizable—this tenor doesn't phrase like Vickers, has a very different vibrato from Vickers, and is obviously (unlike Vickers) a native German speaker. There have been plenty of live "pirate" performances in general circulation with incorrect cast lists; a starry live "Otello" from the Met (de los Angeles, del Monaco and Warren)claimed that the conductor was Melik-Pechayev because they didn't want to be sued, which the Met used to do to keep control of the broadcast material. But this is DG, releasing an offcially sanctioned performance from the Vienna State Opera. This is a real scandal.

So, who is the tenor? First of all, he doesn't sound indisposed to me, he sounds a little rusty and no longer young. Beethoven's vcal writing is notoriously awkward, and the part is very difficult, but he gives a perfectly adequate performance (that sounds not at all like Jon Vickers). Comparing several tenors from contemporaneous live performances, I believe it's the Heldentenor Hans Beirer. Beirer made few if any commercial recordings (he sings Herod in Bohm's film of "Elektra") but a number of live performances have been issued. There is a "Parsifal" under Knappertsbusch from Bayreuth, with Crespin as Kundry, available on the Gala label, and he sounds a lot like our Vienna Florestan. Beirer (1911-1993) was a valuable singer, if without much of the vocal grandeur and glamour of Jon Vickers. He would have been a little over 50 when this performance was recorded, and this tenor sounds around that age. If, indeed, this is Hans Beirer as Florestan, he deserves to be credited. It's an excellent example of a worthy singer saving a performance, since Vickers must have been announced and forced to cancel because of indisposition. And because we have relatively few recordings of Herr Beirer, this performance is of some little historical interest. Baldelli left another "Parsifal", a fascinating one, because the Kundry is Maria Callas (she also sang Isolde and the "Walkure" Brunnehilde). Beirer seems to be one of the unluckiest tenors, because in most releases of that set, sung in Italian, with Rolando Panerai is Amfortas and Boris Christoff as Gurnemanz, the tenor is identifed as "Africo Baldelli." Adding insult to injury, a famous, and possibly true, anecdote has Callas refusing to kiss him because of, um, olfactory issues. Being a tenor can be tough.

The Golden Age

Were singers really better in some long-lost Golden Age?

To refresh my memory, I turned to the Romophone "Complete recordings of Battistini (1856-1928), Volume One", intending to sample a few tracks. 70-odd minutes later, my face hurting from repeated and sustained jaw-dropping, I had rediscovered the most technically faultless vocalism on record, and perhaps the greatest baritone voice. Battistini is the oldest indisputedly great singer to make records while still in his prime. He made a sensational debut at 22 and continued to sing, unimpaired, until his death. He was lionized by the public and the proverbial Crowned Heads of Europe (the Tsar welcomed him back to Russia for decades, until there was no more Tsar). He was called "the King of Baritones" and "The Glory of Italy". To listen to him in these recordings made in the first decade of the 20th century, when he was around 50, is to hear the bel canto technique as he perfected it 25 years or so earlier. He did not invent the technique, he inhabited it as it had been practiced for decades before, so listening to him allows us to infer with a high degree of confidence how singers used their voices at least from the middle of the 19th century. For some context, I followed Battistini by listening to the tenor Fernando de Lucia (1860-1925) for another hour. My jaw will probably never be the same. These singers can do anything, anything at all, with their voices. I've "known" these recordings for decades, but it had been a long time since I'd really listened to them.

When I was a (very odd) teenager, the stereo boom was in full flood. Although complete recordings of operas had been made from the first decade of the 20th century on, they were very unwieldy—78's were heavy and easily broken—and they were quite expensive. For all these reasons, they were rare. Things got easier with the invention of the microphone around 1925. Before that, performers sang with their faces in a horn; assistant conductors pushed them forward for lower, quieter passages, and backward when they got higher and louder. Only about 4 minutes could be recorded at a time. Across the room a pianist, or sometimes a handful of instrumentalists, made noises that it was hoped would register on the matrix as well. Since the recording device was operated by a hand crank, speed--and therefore pitch--was variable. Few "78's" actually play at exactly that speed. The microphone changed all that; "acoustic" recordings now gave way to "electrical" ones. When the Germans invented magnetic tape during World War II, things became even easier, but the 78 rpm record could still hold only about 4 minutes per side. A complete "Aida" might run close to 40 heavy, easily broken records.

With the introduction of the LP (long playing) record in the early 50's, it suddenly became much more feasible to record complete operas. Sets poured out in profusion, and they found buyers. With the introduction of stereo a few years later, the major labels raced to replace their still-recent mono sets with new, stereo versions, sometimes with nearly-identical casts. When I went to my first record stores, the browsers were full of big, beautiful boxes with large, easy-to-read, illustrated books inside. If you wanted to save some money (or, like me, buy more recordings with the money you had) the monaural versions were still available, so record shops stocked both. RCA's "Soria Series" sported slip-case boxes with 100+ page, color-illustrated books on good stock, memorably lavish productions. In those incarnations I got to know some of my first complete recordings: The Serafin "Otello" with Vickers, Gobbi and Rysanek; "Die Walkure" under Leinsdorf, with Nilsson, Brouwenstijn, Vickers and London, Karajan's "Carmen" with Price and Corelli. They were gorgeous objects, and I coveted them fiercely. But I was advised not to be dazzled by superficialities. Although these sets were certainly beautifully produced (and even at premium price, cost a fraction of those gritty, fragile old piles of 78's, in real dollars) they lacked something those old artifacts had: really great singers. Today's singers—Birgit Nilsson apart--didn't compare to the Great Old Ones (apologies to H.P. Lovecraft). Price? Well, she's not bad, but really she shouldn't be singing Verdi, her lower voice isn't strong enough, especially for Elvira in "Ernani". Vickers is an interesting tenor, but you should have heard Melchior and Martinelli in this repertoire. I was learning the Golden Rule of opera devotees: "it was a lot better 30 years ago, but not as good as it was 60 years ago".

I was somewhat skeptical, but I listened to ancient recordings from the start, so I had some inkling of what they were talking about. (Looking back to the 60's, I was closer in time to some of those "ancient recordings" than I am today to those fancy Soria Series sets.) One of the fascinating things about opera is that you can hear successive generations of singers perform the same music over a hundred years or more, and then go to the opera tonight and hear that same music performed by a young singer whose career is just beginning. This is what I think I've learned: in terms of individual vocal quality, and certainly in terms of vocal technique (as opposed to musical accuracy) it's been going downhill more or less since recordings were first made. No reasonable person could dispute that singers, as a group, are better musicians today than ever--so are violinists or bassoon players--but vocal technique, the ability to control the voice, has declined. Why should this be so? Is Battistini really that prodigious a singer? Or Plancon, or De Lucia?

The thing that's most gratifying about these singers—-among the very greatest from a technical point of view, but by no means unique in their time---is their ability to make the music entirely their own. Their techniques are so completely dependable that they can do exactly what they want expressively; they have an apparently limitless range of interpretive choices. This sent me to John Steane's wonderful book "The Grand Tradition", where I found a quote that needs sharing (such quotes are abundant in Steane's writing). Speaking of Battistini, de Lucia, and the French basso Paul Plancon (1851-1914), he writes "It was a school that exercised a singer til he had a technique that made him feel lord of creation and then allowed him the freedom to exploit his good or bad taste to the full". That, singers are no longer schooled to do—and if they could be, if techniques like this could miraculously again be taught, they would not be permitted to do. Whether this is the improvement most conductors would claim it to be, is another question.

In the Golden Age, the singer was "lord of creation". In the post World War II period, and really since at least the time of Toscanini (1867-1957), the crown was no longer the singer's, but the conductor's. Toscanini, famous for his volcanic temper, changed forever performance practice in opera. Now the performance would be given "come scritto", "as written." There is no denying that wonderful gains have resulted from Toscanini's iron will and the revolution in performance practice that has followed. And Toscanini would say, probably, that he'd restored the crown to the composer, not usurped it for himself and his musical heirs. But listening to these ancient recordings, I would suggest that more than a little has been lost as well.

Jess Thomas Says Farewell

Remembering the young Jess Thomas, one of the most consistently interesting American singers of the 60's, is a much more rewarding experience than regretting his Rhine Journey.

Jess Thomas made his professional debut at 30, in 1957, singing small roles in "Der Rosenkavalier" and Verdi's "Macbeth" at San Franciso Opera. By 1961 he had arrived at Bayreuth, where he sang Lohengrin ('62, '67), Tannhauser ('66, '67), Walther ('63,'69) in "Die Meistersinger", and Siegfried ('69,'76). His Parsifal ('61-'63,'65) was particularly celebrated—he was awarded the Bayreuth Prize in 1963—and one of the most consistently praised recordings of that work, under Knappertsbusch, captures him in the title role in 1962, opposite the Kundry of Irene Dalis. George London, caught at his peak only shortly before a vocal crisis prematurely ended his career, is a mesmerizing, huge-voiced Amfortas. Hans Hotter, one of the two or three most important Wagner bass-baritones of the century, sings Gurnemanz; and Marti Talvela, at the beginning of a great careeer, is Titurel. The magnificent Gustav Neidlinger, who owned the role of Alberich and sang it hundred of times, is a near-definitive Klingsor. The radiant young Gundula Janowitz, and Anja Silja, lead the Flower Maidens. This is an irreplaceable recording, in very fine sound.

In the studio, he recorded "Lohengrin" under Kempe, with Elisabeth Grummer, Christa Ludwig, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gottlob Frick. "Lohengrin" has fared well on records, and this is one of the very best, with a perfectly balanced cast of great singers, all of whom (apart from Thomas) are native German speakers. They are all completely inside the tradition, and Thomas is the glowing center of a recording of great power and authority. It is also a very beautifully sung performance, with no weak links--Fritz Wunderlich sings a small supporting role--which immediately sets it apart.

From the tenor's early years are German language studio recordings of "Forza" and "Ballo". I have heard only selections from those recordings, but I'd like to hear the rest. From 1962 on, twenty or more live performances have been available, and I have yet to hear one in which he sings with anything less than faultless musicianship, committed, intelligent characterization, immaculate diction, and often thrilling vocal prowess. He is a particularly fine Emperor in "Die Frau Ohne Schatten" by Richard Strauss, and his Bacchus in "Ariadne auf Naxos", opposite Janowitz, is really splendid. New York Philharmonic concerts under Bernstein capture him with Eileen Farrell in extended excerpts from "Tristan" and "Die Gotterdammerung"; they are spectacular. Not only is the huge-voiced Farrell in wonderful voice, Thomas is her peer, and Bernstein supports them both with a deeply expressive subtlety of dynamics and line that allow them to sing quietly more often than is usual in these super-charged scenes. Both of these heroic American singers benefit. These are legendary recordings, rare, but well worth hunting for. The sound is very good, considering the source: a tape recorder on somebody's lap. There is an additional part, "Man who Coughs"; he is evidently an experienced performer, but he wants to hear the concert, so he doesn't interject very often. When he does, he creates a pretty vivid sense of being present in a theatre, which makes the singing that much more immediate and thrilling. There's also a complete Act I of "Die Walkure" with Farrell and Bernstein, unfortunately not with Thomas. His rival James King, himself a worthy artist, is Siegmund. This is a role not much associated with Thomas, although I have read that a performance exists in sound; I would be very interested in hearing it.

Thomas was invited to open the new Met in 1966, in Samuel Barber's "Antony and Cleopatra", a sumptuous, old-fashioned piece that could fairly be called Grand Opera. (Sam Barber's Aunt was the American contralto Louise Homer, one of the most famous and important singers of the first decades of the 20th century). Franco Zeffirelli directed an all-American cast, headed by Leontyne Price and featuring the very handsome young Puerto Rican bass, Justino Diaz. The production was intended to show off the new stage, a couple of blocks deep, with flies large enough to keep 3 or 4 full productions hanging while another played on stage. It was equipped with several elevators, computerized lighting, and, significantly, a gigantic turntable. On opening night, as Price sat atop a huge pyramid, just like Elizabeth Taylor in the then recently-released film "Cleopatra", the turntable started rotating, then stopped, lurched, and failed. The opera went down in flames. (Samuel Barber also wrote "Vanessa", a highly successful Met premiere in the previous decade, with Eleanor Steber, Rosalind Elias, Nocolai Gedda and Georgio Tozzi. RCA made a commercial recording soon after, and a live performance from Vienna has recently been issued.) Barber was so traumatized by the cruel reviews that he said later that it had finished his career, and he wrote little afterwards.

Thomas opened the Met again after the disastrous strike that crippled the 1969 season, as Radames (again opposite Price). It can be admitted that the voice is not Italianate without denying that it is a very well-sung characterization, and what is undeniable is that this voice has "face", it's immediately recognizable, it is always deployed with taste and imagination, and it has plenty of power. Like both his American dramatic tenor rivals, James King and James McCraken, Jess Thomas spent his career in the shadow of the eccentric, temperamental and deeply thrilling Jon Vickers. I would not have said this when I was listening to his attempts at the very heaviest roles in the Wagner canon, but 40 years on it's clear to me that Jess Thomas deserves a place among the Great Tenors.


Putting this important artist in his historical context brings us back to 1982 and Jess Thomas' farewell. He sang powerfully, with all his customary taste, imagination and conviction, and it seemed clear that he wasn't stopping because he had to. In Act III he was made up, in the pre-war tradition, as Jesus, a disconcerting, even risible effect, but probably not Thomas' decision. Parsifal is not usually considered funny, but I have to say I found the spectacle of Jess Thomas, disguised as Jesus Christ, singing powerfully in German while Tatiana Troyanos, disguised as Mary Magdalen, washed his feet and dried them with her long black hair---well, it was a Monty Python moment for me. Nobody laughed. I'm sure more than a few people were deeply puzzled and looking around a little nervously. After all, this is what caused all that unpleasantness between Wagner and Nitezsche, right?

But a few dozen people had laughed a couple or three hours earlier, during Act II. I was one of them, but I tried to laugh quietly. I cannot forget the entrance of the Flower Maidens. The designer, Robert O'Hearn, had followed Wagner's explicit (and very often ignored) instructions, and costumed 16 of them, eight singers and eight dancers, as literal flowers. They're wearing flimsy, diaphanous costumes in very lovely colors. They are very pretty, in the way things could be prettty in 1971 or so, when the production was new. Parsifal is standing up right center on the steeply raked stage as eight svelte and sexy dancers make their entrances, one after another, leaping lithely, landing lightly, pastel draperies flying. If a raked stage might be a problem for them, you couldn't tell from looking. Thomas stands rooted to the spot, only his head moving slightly as he appears to count the entrance of each beautiful young thing. He doesn't move an inch, until the "real" Flower Maidens--the ones who sing--begin to enter. Alas, these beautiful-voiced flowers do not much resemble their dancing companions, except in their identical wardrobe: these are Some Big Flowers. But as these hefty Blumenmadchen make their comparatively thunderous entrance, Parsifal is suddenly transfixed, his body language tells us that it's all he can do to get control and not throw himself on them. Indeed, once all eight singers have arrived down left center, he trots gamely after them, visibly impassioned,singing enthusiastically, studiously ignoring all those tall, nubile, (silent) young dancers just a little bit upstage of them. Jess Thomas: an actor to the last. Or maybe, after all those years singing Wagner with big women with big voices, Jess Thomas had become a Chubby Chaser. And that night in 1982, for the very last time, he was going to sing, gloriously, until the Fat Lady shut up.

Jess Thomas vs. Siegfried

I heard the American Heldentenor Thomas three times in the opera house, as Tristan opposite Birgit Nilsson in '72, a year or two later as Siegfried, and finally at his farewell as Parsifal in 1982. As Tristan and Siegfried I had found Thomas vocally unsatisfying, very rough and with a badly compromised upper voice. In fact, I thought he was in such trouble that he might not make it through the first act. Obviously I was wrong--he sang for another ten years--but it was widely believed at the time that this great Parsifal and Lohengrin had done himself irreparable damage moving into the heaviest Wagner repertoire. Since he'd been singing the young Siegfried at Salzburg and recording the part under Karajan, the latter received much of the blame for destroying yet another voice by luring a hapless singer into a role beyond his ability. Karajan had a preference for lighter voices in traditionally dramatic roles, and the title role of "Siegfried" (as well as the role of Tristan) is a notorious voice-killer. Siegfried is onstage for the entire first act except for the 20 minutes or so during which Wotan, disguised as "the Wanderer", interrogates Mime; it ends with the very long, heavy scene in which the title character forges the broken shards of his father's sword, Nothung. He has plenty to do in Act 2 besides just kill a dragon; and in Act 3 he has a very strenuous duet with Wotan (his grandfather). Then he plunges, still singing, through the wall of Magic Fire to wake up Brunnhilde, who's had nothing to do all night except wait for their final, roof-raising duet. She's fresh and rested, he's been working as hard as a tenor can work for four hours; seems almost unfair in a way. A tenor needs amazing strength and stamina just to get through the role, never mind sounding like a young Ubermensch, and most Wagner tenors leave it alone. If a tenor does sing it, he gets to come back a couple of nights later to throw himself against the "other" Siegfried, in the even-longer "Die Gotterdammerung". Casting this part is almost impossible. Jess Thomas had chosen to enter the lists and become the world's leading exponent of the role, but like many before him, he found himself in over his head. Like more than a few other Wagner roles, Siegfried is at the very edge of what's humanly possible.

After recording "Siegfried" under Karajan, Thomas had withdrawn from the "Gotterdammerung" recording, replaced by Helge Brilioth, whose own Heldentenor career was a very brief one. (I heard Brilioth at the Met as Parsifal in 1970, opposite Christa Ludwig, in an interesting cast that included Cesare Siepi as Gurnemanz and Ezio Flagello as Klingsor. Wagner wrecked Brilioth in no time, and he was back in Sweden singing comprimario parts after just a few memorable years. He sounded fine the night I heard his Parsifal, an interesting, resinous-sounding tenor, and not small.) Although Thomas sang until 1982—another decade—he made only one other commercial recording, singing Duke Waldemar in Schoenberg's "Gurre-Lieder" under Boulez, recorded in December, 1974. But he made several in the 60's that are justly famous, especially a complete "Lohengrin", and until that cynical siren Herbert von Karajan lured him deep into the Rhine, the voice was a very good one. Even after his vocal crisis, he was an intelligent artist who acted effectively, and his physical presence suited heroic roles well. He was musical, his intonation was very dependable, the voice was large enough to be heard over the heaviest orchestration, and he was a trooper. Without Jess Thomas, many performances of Wagner would just not have been possible. Somebody has to sing Siegfried, and it's often a thankless task. In retrospect he was much better than I thought at the time. Only a few tenors have sung the role as well since, and many have sung it much worse.

Eva Marton Communicates

Back in the Ancient Times, less-than-knowledgeable young opera buffs, like myself, were strongly admonished to "prepare" for an opera performance. Reading the libretto while listening to a complete recording—no cheating, listen to every bit of it, and then do that again a couple of times—was an absolute minimum. Since there is no such thing as a "definitive"recording, listen to two. Three would be better. Studying the original source material of the libretto was strongly recommended. In fact, the first issue of the EMI Callas recording of "Carmen" included not one but three booklets, "Bizet's Carmen", "The Callas Carmen", and "Merimee's Carmen", the full text of Merimee's story.

That could begin to seem time-consuming. Life got busier, and eventually an alternative was invented: super titles ("titles above"). You didn't need to know anything, just sit down and read the translation projected above the proscenium. You'll understand everything, no problem. James Levine refused to allow titles at the Met for many years, but even he finally gave in when a new system was invented and installed on the back of every seat in the house, not over the proscenium. You're supposed to look at the stage, not the words flashing above it. And that's just about ideal. But with super titles a lot hinges on the quality of the writing—because you're reading the libretto, right?--and even more, on the timing.

This was made abundantly clear to a full house at the San Francisco Opera sometime in the 90's. The opera was "La Gioconda", and the star was the Hungarian Diva Eva Marton, a no-nonsense, take-charge singer who had been a protege of Birgit Nilsson. In Act III, Gioconda's been deserted by her lover, she's just rescued her rival, Laura, from certain death, her blind old mother's been missing for a couple of days, and she's had it. In the gloom of a dead Venetian canal she sings the aria "Suicidio", which I think speaks for itself. The audience is hanging on every word as it unscrolls above the stage, and really feeling for Marton, who has a big, warm, interesting voice, plenty of stage presence, and palpable guts. Unfortunately, as she sings "Io piomba esausta fra le tenebre"--"I fall down exhausted in the darkness", something goes wrong with the titles: they speed up, get out of synch with the stage action, and go on to something that doesn't have anything to do with the suicidal Marton. Which raises something you don't want to hear in a performance of "La Gioconda", especially if you're a soprano lying on the floor in Act III. A laugh. A large, spreading, prolonged laugh.

Marton stops singing, for a second she just looks amazed. Then she gets up angrily, shakes her fist, and shouts into the auditorium, "Hey! I'm working here!". The orchestra peters out, the audience breaks into a disbelieving buzz, and a pause ensues. Marton stands there staring at the audience for a beat, and then exits briskly stage right. The buzz grows, and nobody's laughing. After what feels like a long time, Marton abruptly re-enters, glares into the house, returns to center stage, lies down on the floor. She gestures imperiously to the conductor, "La Gioconda" by Amilcare Ponchielli, first performed in 1876, starts up again, and Eva Marton sings "Suicidio." She sings it very, very well.

And when she finished, about 4,000 people in the War Memorial Opera House, reminded suddenly of how this sensational, extravagant, bastard art form can create a moment nobody present will ever forget, screamed "Brava" for a Hungarian with a hot temper and a lot of guts, who could really sing. Super titles be damned, she communicated with her audience.

Salad Days in Naples

In my continuing hunt for Corelli's vanishing caprino, I watched a DVD of a 1958 "Forza" performance from Naples. Tebaldi, Corelli, Bastianini, Christoff, and the fine Mexican mezzo soprano Oralia Dominguez. I'd seen it before, but on a much smaller screen. In the first scene or two, I thought I noticed some objects falling diagonally to the stage floor, but I figured it might just be distortion. This is a kinoscope of an ancient black and white Italian TV transmission, and although it's clear enough given all that, you couldn't call it pristine. Then later, when Corelli's finished his big aria in Act II, I noticed them again. And after he and Bastianini finish their first duet, here come several more. I finally recognized what I was looking at: vegetables. People in the audience, high up in the theater, are throwing vegetables at the stage. The singers just ignore them. The vegetables don't actually hit anybody, but I can't tell if that's a courtesy or just bad aim.

This is a great cast and they're singing brilliantly. But in 1958, in Naples at least, opera fans took rivalries between singers seriously. Stories of fist fights breaking out in Italian opera houses continue to circulate; Corelli was famous for rushing into a box and drawing his stage sword on a guy who'd booed him, and these flying verdure put that in perspective. A lot of live recordings feature drawn out battles between fans screaming "bravo" and others not only booing, but shouting invective. Sometimes the whole audience gets in an uproar while the singers stand around and wait.

I have never seen anyone throw anything at the stage--except flowers--in my 40 years of opera-going. I remember old actors in my youth saying things like "that looks like a good throwing tomato", but I never actually saw any in use. These looked more like bunches of carrots, anyway. Which reminds me of a funny story. Singers are quite accustomed to flowers being thrown at them, and many become adept at catching them in mid-air. Maria Callas was quite near-sighted, but at a curtain call at La Scala she demonstrated her fielding technique with a clean, easy catch, pretty impressive for a half-blind woman staring across a bank of footlights. Unhappily, what she'd caught so gracefully turned out to be a bunch of turnips.

Franco Corelli Begins

Corelli was largely self-taught. There are conflicting accounts of formal training, but it was brief and unsuccessful. His friend Carlo Scaravelli was studying with a voice teacher, Arturo Melocchi, whose unconventional method was based on lowering the larynx. After each lesson he'd demonstrate for Corelli what he'd just been taught. (Melocchi was also the teacher of Mario del Monaco and Luigi Ottolini). It is a dangerous way to sing, in part because it requires great athleticism and stamina, "and vocal cords of steel". Many voices have been ruined in this way. Corelli had been an athlete, and his powerful physique was the very instrument this challenging technique might reward. (As Corelli neared 50, I believe he was simply no longer strong enough to sing like this.) Apart from these second-hand lessons, Corelli taught himself, but he never abandoned Melocchi's raised larynx. At first Corelli didn't have a very strong upper voice, but he worked obsessively with a tape recorder, and his upper register improved. He won an important competition, and soon after made his debut, in 1951, as Don Jose.

Radames was his originally scheduled debut, but he was unable to sustain the high tessitura of that role—one of the most difficult Verdi tenor parts—and he made his debut instead as Don Jose in Bizet's "Carmen", which he later called his favorite role. Besides the RCA 1963 commercial recording, with Price, Freni and Merrill under Von Karajan, there are at least 4 complete live recordings of Corelli in his youthful prime in this role, more or less readily available. (He recorded the role again in the early 70's, with Anna Moffo as Carmen, for Eurodisc. I think this may have been Franco's last commercial recording.)

By 1956, Corelli had tamed his recalcitrant upper range enough to record Radames commercially for Cetra, with Mary Curtis-Verna, Miriam Pirazzini, Gian-Giacomo Guelphi and Giulio Neri. This is a strong, visceral performance, and a good example of Corelli's singing in the studio in the middle-fifties. (By happy coincidence, Curtis-Verna's last performances before her retirement were as Desdemona in Verdi's "Otello", at Baltimore Opera. She was happy to leave the stage under the wing of Rosa Ponselle, and I was fortunate to hear what an aging diva could accomplish in a nurturing environment. The Met comprimario Robert Nagy was Otello, and I can report that he sang the hell out of it. I saw all three peformances, and I learned a lot. Richard Fredericks was Iago.) A radio broadcast of one of his Naples "Aida" performances exists, and, like the Cetra set, it shows a quite pronounced caprino. Caprino is an Italian cheese made from goat's milk. Applied to a singer—especially to a tenor-- it means that he displays a quick vibrato reminiscent of a bleating goat. This problem is caused by imperfect breath control and support. Corelli's sound is already big, beautiful and exciting, but he has not yet perfected his technique:"contents under pressure".

Franco Corelli at the Met

In 1968, Corelli was at the pinnacle of his fame and in the full flood tide of his vocal glory. Tall, handsome and so athletic, the Italians called him "Golden Thighs", and pictures of him as "Werther" (Massenet), "Andrea Chenier" (Giordano), or "Poliuto"(Donizetti) make it easy to see why. He was a real stage animal. There was a palpable thrill about him, an incandescent vibration. He had a thoroughly masculine stage presence, a sense of a very strong, young man (although in 1968 he was already 45), but he created also the impression of great sensitivity and sadness. He was, in fact, the living image of the Romantic Hero, right out of Byron. He wasn't an actor in the sense that Norman Treigle or Jon Vickers or Teresa Stratas were actors. The role became Corelli, not the other way around. There was something beyond acting about his electric stage presence. When Franco Corelli made an entrance, you knew that something important was about to happen. He would have had a career even if he'd had a mediocre voice, just on looks and presence alone. But he also happened to have a very large, dark, gorgeous voice and stunning high notes. (He produces what may be the single most exciting tenor High C on records at the end of Act III of Gounod's "Romeo et Juliette", recorded by EMI in June and July 1968, and co-starring Mirella Freni.) Many commentators believe his was the greatest tenor voice of his time--certainly that's my belief--and some consider it the greatest tenor voice since Caruso.

It has to be admitted that there is another school of thought. In his live Met performances, Corelli often seems unmusical: note values are ignored, and his rhythm is often slack. Once he settles into a high pianissimo, he might be there a long time, and when he throws a forte high note into the auditorium, it can seem as if there's no conductor present at all. There are exceptions, such as his Calaf opposite Nilsson's Turandot, under Stokowski, in his first Met season. After he conquered the Met, he largely abandoned performing in Europe. Rudolf Bing needed Corelli, protected Corelli, and in a way, I think, damaged Corelli. Bing's Met was not a conductor's house. Corelli, Bing's biggest star, worked with few strong conductors, and he learned to get his way with weak ones, to his detriment. In a way, Corelli's triumph at the Met halted his growth as a serious artist. He became The Greatest Tenor in the World, something more than a working musician, but perhaps something less. In his later seasons at the Met his musical habits became sloppy and inelegant, but I can tell you from my own experience, they often produced a very exciting performance. There was a real sense of danger, of risk-taking, every minute he was onstage. This was often opera not as high art, but as blood sport.

The Great Franco Corelli

The Great Franco Corelli

For me, Franco Corelli personifies Italian opera. The first time I went to the Met, in 1968, I heard Franco Corelli as Cavaradossi in "Tosca" opposite Birgit Nilsson. That's a cast that can't be bettered, especially with the fine singing actor Gabriel Bacquier as Scarpia, although a case could be made that only Corelli was appropriately cast. Certainly it was opera in the international style, with Italians beginning to thin out in the opera world, replaced by everyone else, especially former Soviets and Americans. Corelli is my favorite tenor. No apologies or excuses. Not the patrician Kraus, or the cool and elegant Bjoerling, the immaculate Bergonzi or the thrilling Vickers. Domingo will always be Corelli's understudy (unfair as that is to the endless achievements of one of history's greatest tenors), because the '69 Met strike robbed me of what would have been Corelli's last Manrico and gave me Domingo's in his place. Domingo is a sovereign artist, but he was never happy in "Di quella pira". Ask Schuyler Chapin. Pavarotti was a spectacularly gifted, heart-warming singer, but I'll let him speak for himself about Franco: "He was the greatest dramatic tenor who ever lived." But every great career moves in an arc, as the stupendous Italian baritone Titta Ruffo, rival of Caruso and Chaliapin in the early decades of the 20th century, expresses so poignantly in his autobiography, "My Parabola".

Corelli made his belated debut in 1951, the year before I was born, and arrived at the Met in 1961, with Leontyne Price in "Trovatore". Until his retirement in 1975, he was the Greatest Tenor in the World, apologies to Richard Tucker's many fans. He left too few commercial recordings, but still a dozen or so complete sets and a number of recitals, and a lot of live recordings, many of them thrilling. I heard him at his peak, in 1968, and 7 times more before he retired. In the next few posts, I'd like to examine his recorded legacy, and my experience of him in the theater.

Boito's "Mefistofele"--comparing complete recordings

The last week or so I've spent in Heaven (at least during the Prologo), listening to some of the complete recordings of this fascinating work. Some operas have been really lucky on disc, and this is certainly one of them. Because I'd been remembering Norman Treigle so vividly, I started with his EMI set. He was a newcomer to international opera, but his conductor was Julius Rudel, who'd led many performances of this work with Treigle at NYCO; they breathe together, and the music breathes a unique atmosphere with them. The young Domingo, who spent some of his early career at NYCO, with Caballe as Margarita--and Thomas Allen as the only baritone Wagner I can find in any of these sets (many of the rest feature "the prince of comprimarios", Piero de Palma, in that role) provide excellent support. No disrespect to de Palma--Allen's the best, although the score clearly calls for a tenor Wagner.

I listened to several others: Siepi, a suave and very well-mannered Devil for Decca, with Mario del Monaco (not so well-mannered) and Renata Tebaldi, under Tulio Serafin; Ghiaurov, a little past his prime but still very impressive, supported by Pavarotti and Freni, with Caballe again, as Helen of Troy this time. A strangely cut version (EMI again, with no Helen of Troy at all, but many other inexplicable cuts as well--were these traditional theatrical cuts, or imposed on this recording for cost-saving reasons?)under the venerable Vittorio Gui, starring Boris Christoff; and one of the strongest sets, the 1932 La Scala recording under Lorenzo Molajoli. Starring the prodigious Nazareno de Angelis in the title role, the wonderfully intense Mafalda Favero, chest tones amply displayed, as Margarita, and the almost-forgotten Antonio Melandri as one of the finest interpreters of Faust. What a star he'd be today, but in the 30's, his competition--Gigli, Pertile, Martinelli--was overwhelming, and their recordings have almost erased his memory. He's an excellent Alvaro in a complete "Forza", too. From the early 50's comes a Cetra recording, remastered badly, squelching the overtones and draining excitement, with the "black bass" voice of Giulio Neri taunting Marcella Pobbe and Ferruccio Tagliavini. This set is an unfortunate example of an old recording "improved" very nearly to death.

I'll return to these sets soon for a closer look at a work that's provoked a very wide range of critical reactions. But for now, I'd like to point listeners to about 15 minutes of *live* recordings from Covent Garden, made in 1928, just after the invention of the microphone made such things possible (Col. Mapleson's much earlier experiments aside): Fyodor Chaliapin's "Ave Signor," and the climax of the Walpurgisnacht scene, featuring the bass interpolating cries of "Saboe, Saboe!" It's difficult to imagine any conductor, or stage director(!) today allowing a star such liberties; but Chaliapin was a law unto himself, and in these ancient echoes we can really hear what he was about. It's outrageous--and very, very exciting.

A Wonderful New Recording of Bellini's "La Sonnambula"

Today I listened to the new complete recording--the first peformed on period instruments and at 19th Century pitch--of Bellini's wonderful opera, "La Sonnambula," starring Cecila Bartoli, Juan Diego Florez and Ildebrando Arcangelo, magnificently conducted by Allesandro de Marchi. This is an opera that's fared very well on record, but even with very strong competition (Callas in multiple celebrated recordings, Sutherland, the wonderful Mariella Devia, Scotto, and others including, just last year, Natalie Dessay) this new recording is a vocal and musical feast. It's also beautifully produced, with an excellent essay and lots of beautiful (shopped) photographs. I'll write at greater length about the glories of this set, but if you've been considering buying it, don't wait: it's great. I thought I knew this fascinating work very well, but I learned a lot from this thoroughly enjoyable, meticulously prepared recording, and I'm sure it has much more to teach me.

It reinforces my strong belief that Bellini is the equal of any opera composer (a view shared by Richard Wagner, among many others, who wrote an additional aria for Oroveso for a production he conducted of "Norma" in his young years).

It's saddening that the state of the classical recording business in our troubled times makes it unlikely that many more recordings of this quality will emerge--but that's another story. Here's a set for the ages.

The Baltimore Opera, the House that Rosa Ponselle Built, Goes Dark

Having just relived my first opera performance, at Baltimore's Lyric Theater, I learned with deep sadness that the Baltimore Opera is bankrupt. After a run of performances of Bellini's "Norma", with the distinguished Armenian soprano Hasmik Papian (b. 1961) in the title role and Ruth Ann Swenson (b. 1960) singing her first Adalgisa, the company has canceled the rest of the season; Rossini's "The Barber of Seville" and Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" had been scheduled. Originally known as the Baltimore Civic Opera, the company was founded in 1950 under the aegis of the American soprano Rosa Ponselle (1897 - 1981), one of opera's legendary figures.

An Italian-American from New Jersey, Ponselle (originally Ponzillo) was discovered by Enrico Caruso (1873-1921). The most celebrated singer of his time, Caruso had heard about Rosa, who was headlining in the vaudeville circuit with her sister Carmela as "Those Tailored Girls". The Met was mounting Verdi's "La Forza del Destino" for the tenor, an opera with a prodigiously difficult soprano part, and they didn't have a Leonora. (In the deeply superstitious world of Italian opera, "Forza" is feared much as Shakepeare's "Macbeth" is feared on the English-speaking stage.) Caruso talked his nervous friend Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the general manager of the Met, into taking a very big chance on a totally green, 21-year-old girl. After several auditions, Gatti finally said yes: they were desperate. After intensive coaching, she made her triumphant operatic debut (1918) opposite Caruso, singing the very demanding role of Leonora in the Met's first staging of that dark, sprawling, and possibly cursed work. This young American girl from vaudeville, who'd never been to Europe, was hailed as "a Caruso in petticoats". She rose quickly, against the most formidable rivals, to become Prima Donna Assoluta of the Met, and she reigned until she walked away at the pinnacle of her career 19 years later. Caruso, who was dead at 48 just three years later, had discovered the greatest "Italian" dramatic soprano of the 20th century, and, by common consent, the greatest on records.

She sang rarely in Europe: a handful of performances in London, where she was greeted with the kind of enthusiasm British audiences rarely exhibit, a few in Italy where she aroused frank delirium. She conquered the world, made uneasy peace with her terrible stage fright, and returned home to the Met. Her most important role was "Norma", the final work performed in Baltimore this month by the company she helped found. Norma is considered the most taxing role in the Italian repertoire; Lilli Lehmann (1848-1929), one of the most important singers of the late 19th century and later a distinguished teacher -- her pupils included Geraldine Farrar (1882 -1967) and Olive Fremstad (1871-1951) -- declared that it was harder to sing one "Norma" performance than the entire role of Brunnehilde, who sings, at enormous length and over far heavier orchestration, in "Die Walkure", "Siegfried", and "Die Gotterdammerung", about 13 hours in performance over three nights. Lehmann was world famous in both roles. I'm inclined to accept her judgment.

Ponselle's repertoire included Rachel in "La Juive", opposite the doomed Caruso, in his last new role; Santuzza in "Cavalleria Rusticana"; the title role in her friend Romano Romani's "Fedra", which she created; and Spontini's "La Vestale". She triumphed in Verdi's "Ernani", "Aida", "Don Carlo", "La Traviata", and "Il Trovatore"; Montemezzi's "L'Amore dei tre re"; Meyerbeer's "L'Africaine"; Giordano's "Andrea Chenier"; Ponchielli's "La Gioconda"; Spontini's "La Vestale"; and as Rezia in Weber's "Oberon". In her debut season she also sang Carmelita in "The Legend", by one Joseph Carl Breil. She held this work in such contempt that she later incinerated the score, noting tartly that the opera "would stink up a cat box". She was opera's greatest prima donna, but she was a tough girl from vaudeville, too. Her last performances were on tour as Carmen in Bizet's masterpiece (two live performances exist in sound) but when Olin Downes, critic of the New York Times, heaped scorn on her interpretation, Ponselle was enraged -- and hurt. Then Edward Johnson, Gatti's successor as head of the Met, refused to stage Cilea's "Adriana Lecouvreur" for her, and she walked away from the Met. Her career in opera, at its peak in 1937, was over.

Rosa moved to Green Spring Valley just outside of Baltimore, where she built a grand house, Villa Pace, the name inspired by the aria "Pace, pace mio Dio", (Peace, peace, my God") Leonora's climactic aria in the last act of "Forza". She remained active for many years as a radio artist. Rosa Ponselle is commonly considered one of the greatest voices on records. Many of her recordings (she recorded steadily throughout the 20's and 30's) have never been out of print. Her finest sides are among the undisputed glories of the phonograph. As late as 1954, Ponselle recorded songs and arias after RCA brought their equipment to Villa Pace; these recordings reveal a magnificent, dark, ruby-colored voice, still intact.

Ponselle's presence lured many famous singers to the Baltimore Opera, more for the chance to be coached by her than for their modest fees. Budgets were always tight, and many Baltimore Opera productions were graced by furniture from Villa Pace. James Morris (b. 1947), a Baltimore-born protege of Ponselle, and for many years the world's most important interpreter of the role of Wotan in Wagner's Ring Cycle, made his debut as Angelotti in Puccini's "Tosca". A little later I heard his role debut as Sparafucile in Verdi's "Rigoletto". Another young singer was making his role debut in the title part in that production: the splendid American baritone Sherrill Milnes (b. 1935), who prepared the role with Ponselle. Among many other famous singers, Rosa coached the Bulgarian soprano Raina Kaibaivanska (b. 1934) for Lyric Theater performances in the role of Puccini's Manon Lescaut. Kaibaivanska, a very good actress, had an important European career; she made few commercial recordings, but she can be heard in a number of exciting live performances.

Until shortly before her death, Rosa took a curtain call after every Baltimore Opera performance. Wearing a black floor-length brocaded caftan, looking every inch the Diva, she was helped to center stage, a strapping young usher on either side holding the grand old lady up. With a still-dazzling smile, she blew kisses to the audience, as love and devotion washed over her. "Applause is the most wonderful sound, just like rain on the roof." The Lyric Theater, built in 1894, was visited by countless great opera singers. None was greater than Rosa Ponselle, who built a company there that nourished many more greats ones. This week, after 58 years, the Baltimore Opera went dark. It's my heartfelt wish that someday, the lights will come back up.

Remembering Norman Treigle

The first opera I saw in the theater, in 1967, was Mussorgsky's “Boris Godunov”, in English, performed by the Baltimore Lyric Opera. This was the Rimsky-Korsakov “orchestration” – actually Rimsky's changes to his dead friend's opera go a lot further than that word suggests – since Mussorgsky's original was considered too crude and amateurish to perform until quite recently. The sets, stark, stylized and very effective, were by Ming Cho Lee, and Leo Mueller conducted. My friend Tristan Rhodes, who later worked with Herbert von Karajan at the Salzburg Festival, was the assistant conductor. The stage director was Tito Cappobianco. Helen Vanni, who Like Mueller, taught at the Peabody Conservatory, sang Marina. The distinguished American tenor Brian Sullivan, then near the end of his career, was Grigori; Raymond Wolanski sang Pimen, and Spiro Malas, Varlaam. I don't have a very clear memory of their performances, although they were all fine singers and competent actors, but I will never forget the Boris: the New Orleans-born Norman Treigle (1927-1975).

Treigle was the epitome of the “singing actor,” a mesmerizing stage animal. Tall and thin, gaunt almost, Treigle made the guilt-stricken Tsar, one of the greatest roles in opera, absolutely believable. Majestic in the Coronation scene, he inspired true pity and terror in the Clock Scene; when the hallucinating Boris saw the murdered Tsarevitch's ghost appear upstage left, the whole audience shifted audibly, staring upstage trying to see the child's ghost that Treigle made you believe must really be there. By the time Treigle collapsed and fell head first down the flight of stairs from the throne in the Death Scene, as 3,000 people gasped out loud, not only was the fate of Boris Godunov sealed, mine was too. I've been to the opera hundreds of times since that great performance, but I never saw Norman Treigle again.

After the performance I wrote him a fan letter, and Mr. Treigle sent me a signed photograph of himself in the role. He also wrote me a very kind letter. Over the next several years we corresponded a few times; he sent me a great photo of his terrifying makeup for “Mefistofele,” in which he made a huge sensation at NYCO, with Carol Neblett wearing nothing as Helen of Troy, and Treigle wearing a body stocking that was more scandalous than nothing.

Treigle was often compared to the great Russian bass Fyodor Chaliapin (1873-1938), whose acting was one of the artistic wonders of the world. Stanislavsky wrote that Chaliapin's acting helped inspire him to develop his famous Method. Like Chaliapin, Treigle was willing to sacrifice musical values for theatrical effect, using rubato and parlando very freely, and like Chaliapin tall, physically commanding and extremely lithe, nearly balletic. That fall down the stairs was business devised by Chaliapin. In the theater, even great actors “borrow.”

Treigle's voice was dark, very large and powerful, capable of many colors, even throughout the whole range, with a secure top and commanding low notes. This was a voice with “face,” unique as the man's own face, and like it, somewhat gaunt. Some critics considered the voice less than beautiful, and although the question of vocal beauty is always subjective, I would agree that there have been more beautiful bass voices. It was, however, a voice of the highest quality, instantly recognizable (for me, the essential ingredient of vocal greatness), and it was always deployed with the finest musicianship and taste.

Treigle made his debut in 1947 in New Orleans in the small role of the Duke in Gounod's “Romeo et Juliette”. In 1953 he reached what was to become his artistic home,the New York City Opera. For twenty years he was the most important bass in the Americas. He never sang at the Met, and he died, tragically, as he was reaching international fame, especially in the title role of Boito's “Mefistofele”. Because his voice was dark, powerful and saturnine, he specialized in villainous roles. He was Boito's Devil, a role he also took in the works of Gounod (“Faust”) and Berlioz (“The Damnation of Faust”). He made few commercial recordings, but some very fine ones. His Mefistofele (EMI) menaces Montserrat Caballe and the young Placido Domingo; With Sills, he recorded “The Tales of Hoffmann,” (Westminster) playing all three villains; and Handel's “Giuilo Cesare” (RCA), a performance that launched the Handel vogue in the US, although in a version that sounds strange to today's Handelians. Two recital records appeared on the Westminster label, but to my knowledge they have never been released on CD. Live recordings exist of “Giulio Cesare”, “The Tales of Hoffmann”, Rimsky-Korsakov's “Le Coq D'Or” (all with Sills), Carlyle Floyd's “Susannah”, “Markheim”, and “The Sojourner and Mollie Sinclair”, and a few others. More may well exist, as yet unknown.

As with many great singers, there is a tantalizing "lost recording" that should have happened, but never did. He was scheduled to record Henry the Eighth in Donizetti's “Anna Bolena” with Sills, but died too soon. (Paul Plishka sang instead.) I know this because he told me he was planning to record it in London “if all goes well,” in the last letter I received from him. Only recently, in Brian Morgan's biography of him, “Strange Child of Chaos: Norman Treigle”, I learned that he suffered from chronic insomnia, and died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills, probably not long after he wrote that last letter to me. He was a great musician, a great actor, and a good man who treated a young fan he never met with kindness and respect. He was my first great singer, and it was my good fortune to hear him in one of his most important roles on my very first night at the opera.

Welcome to VOCAL

I went to my first opera performance around 1965. It was Boris, in English, with Norman Treigle. His performance remains the best acting performance I've seen on any stage. I've heard most of the important singers who've performed in the United States since then. I've been collecting opera recordings since before I went to my first opera. This blog will be about my experiences in the opera house, and comparing and appreciating these recordings (e.g., 35 complete recordings of Aida, 22 of Tristan, 15 of Werther, plus countless arias from these works, some ancient).