My graduate school roommate Tom tipped me off that today was World Opera Day; you’d think Etiquetteer would already have known! To celebrate the day, let me share some favorite selections, some of which I haven’t taken the trouble to seek out for a very long time.
All good operas begin with an overture (I can just hear the late Mame Dennis now, “I can’t wait to hear that overture!” — but of course she was thinking of Chu Chin Chow, which is not my fault), so I have to begin this escapade with the overture to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg (which i discovered by chance in college). This is wonderful music if you have to practice going up and down stairs without looking down.
Even more important is Smetana’s overture to the Czech national opera The Bartered Bride. To me this is what sailing must sound like. Two stories:
World War II cryptoanalyst George Kreamer (also the organist at my parents’ wedding) told me the story at least once (and likely twice) about being part of the Allied liberation of Prague. The Nazis had forbidden performances of Bride, and as soon as they where gone chalk notices appeared on sidewalks throughout the city: “Bartered Bride tomorrow noon.” George managed to get there. “How was the performance?” I asked him. “It didn’t matter,” he told me. “Everyone was crying too much.”
When I went to Paris in 2008 for my erty-farf birthday, I was fortunate enough to see a matinée of Bride at the Opéra Garnier. And I’ll admit to having shed a few tears during the overture.
The very first opera I saw live was La Boheme*, when I was nine years old. Some small touring company was doing it on the Community Concerts circuit at the Civic Center, which must have been barely a year old. We got to sit in the front row (Mother was a long-serving vice president of membership), and I can still see the scaffolding-style sets with slide projector images of Paris on screens, the soloists hanging paper lanterns in the Café Momus to misspell NOEL as LEON, and especially the appearance of Musetta, in emerald green velvet carrying a peacock feather fan. So I must begin with Mirella Freni singing Musetta’s Waltz.
Mother used to play Chopin’s nocturne opus 9 no. 2 - you know, the famous one that everyone used to play - and Gramma had played it, and at some point when I was still taking lessons I could stumble through it, too. (And I still love it.) So you can imagine the wildness of my teenage enthusiasm when the 1943 Phantom of the Opera** came on TV and . . . and there was an opera using that nocturne! It comes at a pivotal point in the story, when Mlle. Biancarolli has been poisoned and Christine has to go on as her understudy. The nocturne had been turned into a duet between Susanne Foster (one of the bird-like sopranos so fashionable then) and Nelson Eddy as Himself. I wish I could show you the clip from the film, but all the Yewtybbe can offer me this evening is the audio.
The 1943 Phantom begins with the Paris Opéra performing Martha, and for awhile I was obsessed with what I discovered many years later is “Mag der himmel euch vergeben,” one of the most famous parts of the opera (which no one performs any more). Who cares what it means, just pass the Kleenex!
In college I discovered the famous sextette from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, which I will always regard as one of the greatest achievements of the 19th century, right up there with anesthesia, indoor plumbing, and the color mauve. I have written about this before; no need to repeat. This evening I give you the famous 1955 Callas performance conducted by Karajan (my God, listen to that applause before the sing it a second time!), and … AND … Enrico Caruso Himself in the famous “Seven Dollar Sextet” recording:
HONK!
Speaking of Caruso, dahlings, that inevitably leads up to “that famous Irish tenor, Mari O’Lanza” as Caruso in 1951’s The Great Caruso. Of course the best line in the whole film is from the indignant Viennese soprano — “Tenor isn’t a voice. It’s a DISEASE!” — but the best moment is when Caruso has to do Lucia while his wife (Ann Blyth) is giving birth to their first child. You have to watch to find out what happens. It always made my daddy laugh, which is a happy memory to have.
I’ve gotten to see some amazing live performances in the last 40 years, including (but not limited to):
2000-1: Aida, Salomé, The Magic Flute, all Boston Lyric Opera, part of the Egypt in Boston season.
October, 2008: Rigoletto, Opéra Bastille, Paris. Here, an impossibly young Pavarotti sings “La donna é mobile.”
Hallowe’en, 2013: Madama Butterfly, La Fenice, Venice - and on closing night! I’ve always loved Licia Albanese and James Melton singing the duet at the end of Act I. My God, the urgency!
Autumn, 2019: Pagiiacci, Boston Lyric Opera, an astonishing production
At different times different arias and selections have been musical obsessions, including (but far from limited to):
Leontyne Price singing La Mamma Morta at her 1965 Carnegie Hall recital. Somehow it sounds more immediate without an orchestra, only a piano.
In the 1990s I was given a CD of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf songs, including Einer Wird Kommen (“One will come”) from The Tsarevitch by Léhar. I can’t find the English translation now, but I know it includes the lyric “Will I tremble at his kisses?”)
“Libiamo,” the fabulous drinking waltz from La Traviata.
January, 1996, I was vacationing with friends on Kauai, and snapped up the four-CD set of Callas tracks, La Divina. And I was instantly obsessed with “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” from Samson et Dalila. My poor friends had to listen to that with me over and over.
I love me some Richard Tauber, and seeing and hearing him since Schumann’s Devotion in Heart’s Desire is a real treat:
But his “My Heart and I” from his own opera In Old Chelsea. I mean, it’s in English, but who cares what it means, just pass the Kleenex! It’s not at ALL overdone!
My ambition now is to hear Der Rosenkavalier in Vienna. I had daydreamed this winter about going over — there were performances in April on the schedule — but the coronavirus pandemic put an end to that.
Just for Tom, Fritz Wunderlich’s rendition of the tenor aria, what my friend Michael calls “my favorite interrupted aria,” because the Baron abruptly silences the tenor while he is singing to the Marschallin.
And to conclude (because sweet mercy goodness, this could obviously go on ALL NIGHT), the final trio and duet. Love triumphant and acknowledgment of having reached a certain age. Who cares what it means, just pass the Kleenex!
I don’t mind telling you, I’m a vibrating mess. But then Anna Russell would be likely to say that’s because I have resonance where my brains ought to be.
Hallowe’en: at La Fenice, Venice, for the closing night of Madama Butterfly.
*I believe most Americans know at most two operas, and they are very likely to be La Boheme and Aida, though I gather that Madama Butterfly runs a close second.
**Other versions of Phantom are better than this one - one might argue that all of them are - but with all its faults, you’ll pry this one from my cold dead fingers.