I'm sorry this one isn't actually a video, but rather a pastiche of images and text, but please do listen and read the narrative. This is an amazing recording!
For video, I'm afraid the only thing on YouTube is the following, in which Signora Zeani is singing Aida
[Edit: Spoke too soon. Out of synch but still great!]
Virginia Zeani (born October 21, 1925) is a Romanian soprano, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, especially the role of Violetta in La traviata.
Zeani was born Virginia Zahan, in Solovăstru, Transylvania, Romania. She studied first in Bucarest, with famed coloratura soprano Lydia Lipkovskaia, and in Milan, with the great tenor Aureliano Pertile. She made her professional debut in Bologna, as Violetta in La traviata, a role she would sing an estimated 648 times around the world during her career.
Her career was first primarily focused in Italy, where she sang at most opera houses, but soon her reputation led to invitations at major opera houses of Europe as well. Violetta was her debut role in London, Vienna, and Paris. She made her debut at La Scala in Milan in 1956, as Cleopatra in Handel 's Giulio Cesare, opposite Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, whom she married shorthly after.
Zeani also appeared in Leningrad, Moscow, Philadelphia, and the New York's Metropolitan Opera, as Violetta, in 1966.
She won considerable success in belcanto roles, such as Lucia di Lammermoor, Gilda in Rigoletto, Elvira in I Puritani, Linda di Chamounix, before turning to more dramatic roles, such as Manon Lescaut, Tosca, Fedora, Adriana Lecouvreur. She also tackled a few Verdi and Wagner roles, such as Lina in Stiffelio, Elsa in Lohengrin. She created the role of Blanche in Dialogues des Carmélites in 1957, at La Scala.
She sang with tenors such as Beniamino Gigli, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Carlo Bergonzi, Alfredo Kraus, Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, etc. A warm-voiced singer with an affecting stage presence, she made few commercial recordings, but a number of her live performances exist as bootleg recordings.
Following her retirement from the opera stage in 1983, Zeani remained active as a voice instructor at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, where she and her husband, Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, were both distinguished teachers. Zeani has since retired from Indiana University after her husband's death in 1991, and currently resides in West Palm Beach, Florida, where she continues to teach.
On a personal PagerNote, your intrepid report auditioned for Miss Zeani's studio when he was a student at Indiana University, and was invited to study with her, but foolishly listened to someone who advised him to study with a famous tenor also teaching there. Said tenor turned out to be a dolt.
Bio once again ganked from Wikipedia.
Gianna d'Angelo (born on November 18, 1934, some sources say 1929), is an American coloratura soprano, primarily active in the 1950s and 1960s.
She was born Jane Angelovich in Hartford, Connecticut, and studied first at the Juilliard School in New York City with Giuseppe de Luca. In the early 1950s, she moved to Venice, Italy, where she became a pupil of Toti dal Monte, who also advised her to italianize her name.
She made her debut in 1954 at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome as Gilda in Rigoletto, a role that would remain one of her greatest success throughout her career. She was rapidly invited at all the major opera houses of Italy, Naples, Florence, Bologna, Trieste, Parma, Milan, etc., or Barcelona opera house. She also made appearances at the Paris Opera and the Glyndebourne Festival as Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia and at the Edinburgh Festival as Norina in Don Pasquale.
She made her debut at the San Francisco Opera on March 8, 1959, in the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor, and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, on April 5, 1961 as Gilda, and remained there for eight seasons, appearing in roles such as: Lucia, Amina, Rosina, Norina, Zerbinetta, The Queen of the Night. She also appeared in Philadelphia, Houston, New Orleans, etc.
Gianna d'Angelo made a few commercial recordings most notably as Musetta in La Bohème with Renata Tebaldi, Carlo Bergonzi and Ettore Bastianini under Tullio Serafin. Other recordings include Il barbiere di Siviglia and Rigoletto both with baritone Renato Capecchi. A live performance of I Puritani from Trieste in 1966, has also been recently released on DVD.
After retiring from singing Gianna d'Angelo turned to teaching at the Jacobs (Indiana University) School of Music, from 1970 to 1997. Your intrepid reporter
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pagerbear met her there when he was a grad student in 1984. She hated his Italian diction.Bio once again ganked from Wikipedia.
Edit: Am I the only one who does this? Buys the reusable shopping bags but forgets to take them to the store with him?
I can't stop watching to Purcell clips this morning! It's keeping me from getting anything done!
Lisa Della Casa (born in Burgdorf on February 2, 1919) is a Swiss soprano who was famous for her interpretation of works by Mozart and Richard Strauss as well as for her great beauty. Born to an Italian-Swiss father (a doctor) and Bavarian-born mother, she studied singing under Margarete Haeser at Zurich Conservatory and made her operatic debut as the title role in Puccini's Madama Butterfly at Zoloturn-Biel Municipal Theater in 1940. She joined the ensemble of Zurich Municipal Opera House in 1943 (staying there until 1950) and sang various parts; from the Queen of the Night in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte to Dorabella in Così fan tutte. Della Casa sang the part of Zdenka in the performance of Richard Strauss' Arabella at Zurich Municipal Opera House to Maria Cebotari's Arabella in 1946. Cebotari recognized her talent and introduced her at the Salzburg Festival in 1947, where she sang Zdenka again in Arabella - starring Maria Reining and Hans Hotter. After the performance, Richard Strauss himself commented, "Miss Della Casa will become new Arabella some day."
[lots of text snipped covering more debuts and roles she became identified with, including Arabella in Arabella]
Della Casa's delicate, silvery-toned beautiful lyric voice fitted ideally the heroines of Mozart and Strauss operas. Some commentators have claimed that although she lacked the brilliant vocal technique of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, it was the naturalness in her singing that gave it another kind of charm. She was a critical and reflective person, admitting that she did not like "music business" with its intrigues and vanities.
She has left several complete opera recordings mainly for the Decca label; her interpretations of Countess Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro (Erich Kleiber conducting) and the title role in Arabella (Georg Solti conducting) are still regarded as amongst the finest ever recorded. She made the first commercial recording of Richard Strauss' Vier letzte Lieder (Karl Böhm conducting) in 1953 for Decca, and many classical music lovers claim this recording to be the greatest available.
Bio once again ganked without apology from Wikipedia.
theoctothorpe, who stole it from bearfuz's journal)Governor Patterson has said that NY will recognize legal same-sex marriages from other states and countries. He's doing a poll on whether people support it.
If you're interested in taking 15 seconds to lodge your support, just call 1-518-474-8390 - and say "I support the Governor's directive on marriage," then give them your 5 digit (New York) zip code. No other info is requested.
Call now!!
Nowadays he would have been pushed early into much larger roles because of the full-throated quality of his sound, but fortunately he sang many Mozart roles during his brief life on stage.
I can't resist including this amazing clip of Wunderlich with Hermann Prey singing Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) in German in 1959:
Fritz Wunderlich (September 26, 1930 - September 17, 1966) was a German tenor, born in Kusel, Rhineland-Palatinate. His mother was a violinist and his father was a choir-master. The family lived with difficulties especially after Fritz's father committed suicide when Fritz was five years old. The story regarding Wunderlich's discovery parallels many of his contemporaries (notably Nicolai Gedda and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau). As a young man Wunderlich worked in a bakery. At the insistence of neighbors and passers-by who had witnessed his musical gifts and beautiful voice, Wunderlich decided to begin studies in Music. He managed to obtain a scholarship in order to pursue his studies at the Freiburg College of Music where he studied French horn and voice.
Wunderlich was soon noted as a brilliant young tenor, especially in Mozartian roles, but he later expanded his reach to the full range of the lyric tenor repertoire. It was the fashion during Wunderlich's career for German theaters to perform operas in the local rather than original language. Therefore, most of his recordings of the standard operatic repertoire are sung in German, including Verdi's Rigoletto and Don Carlo. Wunderlich achieved the highest distinction within the German repertory. Of special importance is a recording of Mozart's Magic Flute in which Wunderlich stars as the Prince Tamino opposite famed baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in the role of Papageno.
Wunderlich's crystal-clear voice and intelligent, restrained interpretation also led him to impressive renditions of the Lieder cycles of Schubert and Schumann; of special note are his collaborations with pianist Hubert Giesen. His famous recording of Dichterliebe, Schumann's most beloved cycle, remains the golden standard of this genre. Many tenors since have emulated Wunderlich's interpretation of this cycle; noteworthy examples include John Aler, Stanford Olsen and Robert Swensen.
Wunderlich's promising career was cut short by an accident: he fell from a stairway in a friend's country house in Oberderdingen near Maulbronn, and died in the University Clinic of Heidelberg just days before his 36th birthday. He is buried in Munich's Waldfriedhof cemetery. In 2008, Wunderlich was voted the fourth greatest tenor of all time by BBC Music Magazine.
Bio stolen once again from Wikipedia
First it was the film and the book. Now the next stop for Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" is opera.
La Scala officials say the Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli has been commissioned to produce an opera on the international multiformat hit for the 2011 season at the Milan opera house. The composer is currently artistic director of the Arena in Verona.
La Scala also announced Thursday that Daniele Gatti will conduct next season's gala premiere of Verdi's "Don Carlo" on Dec. 7.
(ganked from the adorable
jimwnyc)
In the first, "Deh vieni non tardar" from Le Nozze di Figaro, Susanna is singing a serenade to attract and entrap her mistress's scoundrel of a husband, knowing that her own beloved, Figaro, is listening but not aware of the plot. The tender words she is singing are really to her lover, although he doesn't know it.
In the second, "Et incarnatus est" from Mozart's Great Mass in c minor, is simply amazing. The quality of the of video is not very good, but you can her qualities in her voice that make me love her.
Lucia Popp (born Lucia Poppová) (November 12, 1939–November 16, 1993) was a Slovak noted operatic soprano . She was born in Uhorská Ves, (at the time a city in Slovak Republic, now Záhorská Ves, Slovakia). She began her career as a soubrette soprano, and later moved into the light-lyric and lyric coloratura soprano repertoire and then the lighter Richard Strauss and Wagner operas. Her career included performances at Vienna State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden, and La Scala. Popp was also a highly-regarded recitalist and lieder singer. Twice married, Popp died of brain cancer in 1993, at the age of 54.
Popp initially entered the Bratislava Academy to study drama. While she began her vocal lessons during this period as a mezzo-soprano, her voice developed a high upper register to the degree that her professional debut was as Mozart’s Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflote in Bratislava, a role she revived in a 1963 production directed by Otto Klemperer. In 1963, Herbert von Karajan invited her to join the Vienna State Opera, where she debuted as Barbarina in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. Popp had strong ties to the Vienna State Opera throughout her career, and in 1979 was named an Austrian "Kammersängerin". She made her Covent Garden debut in 1966 as Oscar in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera, and her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1967 as the Queen of the Night (production by Marc Chagall).
During the 1970s, Popp turned from coloratura roles to lyric ones. Then, in the 1980s, she added heavier roles to her repertoire, such as Eva in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. As a result of this vocal progression, Popp sang various roles in the same opera at different stages in her career, including Zdenka and Arabella in Richard Strauss's Arabella; Susanna and Contessa in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro; Queen of the Night and Pamina in Mozart's Die Zauberflote; Zerlina, Donna Elvira, and later Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni; Adele and Rosalinde in Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus; Annchen and Agathe in Weber's Der Freischutz; and Sophie and the Marschallin in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier.
Once again, bio stolen unabashedly from Wikipedia.
by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)
The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair,
There's men from the barn and the forge and the mill and the fold,
The lads for the girls and the lads for the liquor are there,
And there with the rest are the lads that will never be old.
There's chaps from the town and the field and the till and the cart,
And many to count are the stalwart, and many the brave,
And many the handsome of face and the handsome of heart,
And few that will carry their looks or their truth to the grave.
I wish one could know them, I wish there were tokens to tell
The fortunate fellows that now you can never discern;
And then one could talk with them friendly and wish them farewell
And watch them depart on the way that they will not return.
But now you may stare as you like and there's nothing to scan;
And brushing your elbow unguessed-at and not to be told
They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,
The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.
(From A Shropshire Lad, which was first published in 1896, but which gained popularity during the Boer War and the First World War for its nostalgic depiction of brave English soldiers.)
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