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Topic: 063) I puritani 1971
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Updated: Saturday, 1 October 2011 10:43 PM MEST
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Live performance from Carnegie Hall, April 13, 1981
Lakmé - Mariella Devia
Gerald – Nicolai Gedda
Nilakantha – Paul Plishka
Mallika – Emily Golden
Frederick – Lawrence Cooper
Miss Bentson – Carolyne James
Ellen – Maria Spacagna
Rose –Michele Boucher
Hadji – Norman Large
Conductor - Eve Queler
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Fiordiligi ....... Montserrat Caballé
Dorabella ........ Janet Baker
Guglielmo ........ Wladimiro Ganzarolli
Ferrando ......... Nicolai Gedda
Despina .......... Ileana Cotrubas
Don Alfonso ...... Richard Van Allan
Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Douglas Robinson, chorus master
Sir Colin Davis, conductor
Recording date and location: May 1974, Watford Town Hall, London
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Live performance from MET on December 27, 1962
Anna Moffo, Nicolai Gedda, George London, Jerome Hines
Conductor Ernest Ansermet
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Live performance from Boston Symphony Hall, April 1972
Tosca - Marilyn Niska
Cavaradossi - Nicolai Gedda
Scarpia - Donald Gramm
Conductor Sarah Caldwell
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Soloists:
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
Grace Hoffman
Nicolai Gedda
Jerome Hines
The Philharmonia orchestra and chorus, London, September 1964
Conductor Otto Klemperer
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Recorded in London, August 1974
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Recording from November, 1952
Lisa - Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
Gustl - Erich Kunz
Prinz Sou-Chong - Nicolai Gedda
Mi - Emmy Loose
Tschang - Otakar Kraus
Philharmonia orchestra and chorus London
Conductor Otto Ackermann
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Metropolitan Opera House
January 28, 1967 Matinee Broadcast
Don Giovanni............Cesare Siepi
Donna Anna..............Joan Sutherland
Don Ottavio.............Nicolai Gedda
Donna Elvira............Pilar Lorengar
Leporello...............Ezio Flagello
Zerlina.................Laurel Hurley
Masetto.................Theodor Uppman
Commendatore............Bonaldo Giaiotti
Conductor............ .Karl Böhm
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Fiorilla, a young Napolitana ( soprano ) - Maria Callas
Selim, the Turk ( bass ) - Nicola Rossi-Lemeni
Narciso, her lover ( tenor ) - Nicolai Gedda
Geronio, her husband ( bass ) - Franco Calabrese
Zaida, a Turk ( mezzo-soprano ) - Jolanda Gardino
Albazar, a Turk ( tenor ) - Piero de Palma
Il Poeta, Prosdocimo, a poet ( baritone ) - Mariano Stabile
Orchestra e Coro del Teatro alla Scala, Milano
Chorus master: Vittore Veneziani
Gianandrea Gavazzeni, conductor
Recorded: 31 Aug - 8 Sept 1954, Milano
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Amazon.com
Strauss's last opera is one of the wonders of lyric art: an intelligent conversation piece about aesthetic principles (which is more important, words or music?) wrapped in achingly beautiful music. Its humor and drama are subtler than we're used to, but the opera is no less pleasurable for it. Capriccio's reputation as a connoisseur's piece is well served by this 1957 recording that features a superb cast led by the distinguished Straussian Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. True, she could be mannered, but the role of the Countess who must decide between the poet and the musician fits her like a glove, and she's radiant in the final, soaring monologue. Everyone else in the cast is outstanding, and the monophonic sound is so clear that you almost won't miss stereo. Sawallisch has the Philharmonia playing with the utmost transparency. Karl Böhm's DG stereophonic version with Gundula Janowitz is almost as fine (although currently out of print), but this one, like vintage wine, just gets better and better. --Dan Davis
Countess Madeleine - Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
The count - Eberhard Wächter
Flamand - Nicolai Gedda
Olivier - Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
La Roche - Hans Hotter
Clairon - Christa Ludwig
Monsieur Taupe - Rudolf Christ
Italian singer - Anna Moffo
Italian tenor - Karl Schmitt-Walter
Philharmonia Orchestra, conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch, London 1957
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Live performance in MET, 1972
Lisa....................Raina Kabaivanska
Gherman.................Nicolai Gedda
Countess................Regina Resnik
Prince Yeletsky.........William Walker
Count Tomsky............John Reardon
Chekalinsky.............Paul Franke
Surin...................Andrij Dobriansky
Paulina.................Joann Grillo
Masha...................Carlotta Ordassy
Master of Ceremonies....Gene Boucher
Chloé...................Loretta Di Franco
Chaplitsky..............Robert Schmorr
Narumov.................Edmond Karlsrud
Dance...................Naomi Marritt
Dance...................Ivan Allen
Conductor...............Kazimierz Kord
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Narrator: Arnoldo Foà
Oedipus: Nicolai Gedda
Jocasta: Magda Laszlo
Creo: Mario Petri
Tiresias: Nestore Catalani
Nuntio: Mario Petri
Pastor: Aldo Bertocci
Orchestra and Chorus Rome Rai
Conductor Herbert von Karajan
Chorus: Nino Antonellini
Recorded on 20 December 1952, live performance (51'34).
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Approached as an essay in words and music on a particularly resonant historic moment, when music, church and international politics stood at the same crossroads, Palestrina is an inspiring and often inspired work. It has at its heart one of the most visionary scenes in all opera, the apparition to Palestrina of the ghosts of his musical ancestors, urging him to save the art of polyphony by composing a Mass that will confound counter-reformation zealotry; it is followed by a still more moving tableau in which the heavens open to reveal a choir of angels from whose dictation Palestrina writes the Missa Papae Marcelli. Judged by conventional operatic criteria, however, the work is awkward and gravely flawed. The main line of its plot is furthered hardly at all by the Second Act, which is a lengthy, albeit brilliantly dramatized, resume of ecclesiastical politics at the Council of Trent, in which the composer's name is mentioned briefly, almost in passing, twice. The proportions of the opera are ungainly, too (the acts last roughly 100, 75 and a bare 30 minutes respectively), and to make matters apparently worse, the music and the text seem at times to be out-of-phase.
Perhaps the most affecting scene in Act 3 is the reunion of Palestrina and Cardinal Borromeo. Moved to tears by literally heavenly music, the Prince of the Church (who had commissioned the Mass and imprisoned Palestrina when he failed to deliser it) throws himself at the composer's feet and begs his forgiveness. Pfitzner's orchestra, as Borromeo falls to his knees and as Palestrina gently raises and embraces him, says all that is in both men's hearts and says it most movingly, but the rather plain lines of dialogue between those two orchestral passages add very little to them. At other times plainness of dialogue is just what you feel you need: Pfitzner's orchestral writing is so richly eventful, his counterpoint so cunningly wrought (and yes, I suppose one must admit, at times so unremitting) that you long either for a moment or two of thinly accompanied simple recitative or for the words to get out of the music's way. And yet I would not have the libretto (Pfitzner's own) a line shorter. Complex though it is, it is of remarkable quality, full of incident and beautiful imagery; it would work well as a spoken play.
In the opera house this sense of a play and a sequence of orchestral meditations upon it being performed simultaneously could be a problem; so could the long and densely populated scenes that seem to come from another opera (called Borromeo, perhaps). But in a fine recorded performance it is easier to accept that this is, so to speak, an opera with footnotes and appendices. The great passages (apart from the apparition scenes they include the eloquent preludes to all three acts, the culminatory pages of Borromeo's and Palestrina's monologues in Act 1, two impressive addresses in Act 2 and the beautiful end of the opera as Palestrina, left alone, returns to his music) are in an odd sort of way justified by what only a severe critic would dismiss as the pages of finicking detail between them. They are no more tiresome than those quarts-d'heure in which Wagner's characters remind the audience of what has been happening so far, and once you have allowed them to set the nobler moments in context, you can always skip them on later hearings (DG have provided plentiful cuing bands).
You will probably not want to when even the minor character roles are as strongly cast as they are here. There is not a weak link among them, and primus though Gedda's stalwartly eloquent Palestrina and Fischer-Dieskau's grandly authoritative Borromeo are they are very much inter pares with the likes of Ridderbusch, Weikl, Steinbach and Nienstedt around. Donath is bright and touching as Palestrina's young son, Fassbaender an impulsively eager pupil. Some of the real urgency that all these singers bring to their parts must be due to the inspired choice of a conductor in whom passion and intellect are ideally balanced, it sounds as though this opera was very close to Kubelik's heart and head, and he directs with noble eloquence. The recording copes with Pfitzner's vast resources very well, with an excellent sense of a space having depth as well as breadth. The sound is a little bright at times (Donath's purity is slightly edged), but for the most part both clear and sumptuous. An exceptionally welcome CD reissue.
-- Michael Oliver, Gramophone [7/1989]
Nicolai Gedda, Karl Ridderbusch, Bernd Weikl, Herbert Steinbach, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Victor von Halem, John van Kesteren, Peter Meven, Hermann Prey, Friedrich Lenz, Adalbert Kraus, Franz Mazura, Helen Donath, Brigitte Fassbaender, Gerd Nienstedt; Bavarian Radio Chorus; Tölz Boys' Choir; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rafael Kubelík, conductor
Recorded in Munich, 1973
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1. Funiculi-funicula (Denza)
2. Du bist die Welt für mich (Tauber)
3. Non ti scordar di me (de Curtis)
4. Granada (Lara)
5. Schlaf ein, mein Blondengelein (Perez)
6. Gute Nacht, mein holdes, süsses Mädchen (Meyer)
7. Tiritomba (Traditional)
8. Mamma (Bixio)
9. Ein Stern fällt vom Himmel (May)
10. La Danza (Rossini)
11. Berceuse (Godard)
12. Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame (Rotter)
Graunke Smphony Orchestra Munich 1964
Willy Mattes, conductor
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Recording from 1955
Butterfly - Maria Callas
Pinkerton - Nicolai Gedda
Sharpless - Mario Boriello
Suzuki - Lucia Danieli
La Scala Theater Orchestra, conductor Herbert von Karajan
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LINK: DOWNLOAD