Great Recordings
Archived Posts from this Category
Young Pavarotti at his best
Posted by John Schultz on 12 Aug 2008 | Tagged as: Great Recordings, Pavarotti
Redefining “break a leg”
Posted by John Schultz on 08 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: Great Recordings, News
Break a leg. No - two legs!
Soprano Joan Sutherland was picking flowers at her home in Switzerland, fell down and broke both her legs. Please send prayers and happy thoughts for a quick recovery. She’s 81 years old, God bless her.
Dame Sutherland made countless recordings, among them is Les Huguenots with my voice teacher, Anastasios “Taso” Vrenios.
Here’s Taso in the final scene from La Rondine with Teresa Stratas.
Roberto Alagna and his fans at La Scala
Posted by John Schultz on 02 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: Great Recordings, News
That headline sounds like a bad children’s book. And Alagna’s tantrum after getting booed in the opening minutes of Aida at La Scala is the kind of thing that you’d see in one.
Listen for yourself - it’s not a great ending to “Celeste Aida,” and it certainly doesn’t sound like the rest of the performance is going to be good. Alagna has supertenor status in Europe, but that can’t shield him from a mediocre live performance in the land where opera was born. And it looks like he won’t be going back to La Scala any time soon.
Alagna at his best are recordings like these:
Sacred Songs with a wonderful O Holy Night track (in french of course) and the obscure “La Procession” by Cesar Franck - a piece that is beautiful and quintessentially Catholic.
His opera arias CD is excellent too.
A wonderful Werther recording
Posted by John Schultz on 01 Jun 2008 | Tagged as: Great Recordings
Domingo is by far the best of the three tenors - and the proof is in listening to live recordings like this one from Act III of Massenet’s Werther with a young Domingo and Brigette Fassbaender.