Sir John Eliot Gardiner turns 69 today.

The founder of the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists, and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, Gardiner has led some riveting performances of Verdi in recent years. I am especially fond of his recording of the Manzoni Requiem, which was released (along with the Quattro pezzi sacri) in 1995. It is based on David Rosen’s critical edition of the score, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1990.

We listeners are blessed to have many fine recordings of this masterwork from which to choose, but none to my mind tops Gardiner’s for clarity and sizzle.

Bon week-end à tous !

George Gordon, Lord Byron, died on 19 April 1824 at the age of 36. He had contracted a fever in Missolonghi fighting in the Greek War of Independence (Ελληνική Επανάσταση) against the Ottoman Empire.

Two of Verdi’s operas, Il corsaro and I due Foscari, are based on works by Byron. (By the way, Donizetti also wrote two Byronic operas.)

Today’s selection is an excerpt from Act II of I due Foscari, “Nel tuo paterno amplesso.” This 1980 or 1981 performance is untidy but features some splendid singing by Carlo Bergonzi as Jacopo Foscari and Renato Bruson as his father Francesco. Margarita Castro-Alberty portrays Lucrezia, and Eve Queler conducts.

P.S. Regular blog posts should resume now, though there are server problems and I sometimes cannot upload or save files. Also, I covered New York City Opera’s 2012–2013 season announcement for The Classical Review.

Natalie Dessay is scheduled to portray Violetta in La traviata at the Metropolitan Opera starting on Friday, 6 April, with a radio broadcast on 14 April.

This is her performance of “Addio, del passato” from the 2011 Aix-en-Provence Festival. Louis Langrée conducts.

P.S. In somewhat related news (French gals of dubious virtue, etc.), I reviewed the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Massenet’s Manon for The Classical Review.

Bon week-end à tous !

Dear hearts, I am very sorry for the long silences around here! Spring allergies have knocked me for a loop this year, and the remedies, sadly, are worse than the ill. (“Non-drowsy” allergy meds may as well be sleeping pills for me.)

Anyway, this is an opportunity to dip into the Re-visioning Callas archives.

• First of all, I reviewed New York City Opera’s gripping production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte and caught some other shows around town.
• Listen to Maria Callas in La traviata (with more good stuff in the blog archives).
• Have you heard Callas in Il trovatore, c. 1950?
• I have posted many excerpts from Forza sung by Callas, at the main site and in the blog archives.

We are supposed to have cooler weather and rain next week, so pollen counts should be lower. Back at you then! Bon week-end !

Last week—9 March, to be precise—marked the 168th anniversary of the world premiere of Ernani at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice.

In earlier posts, I wrote about Ernani as a turning-point in Verdi’s career, thanks to his encounter with the librettist Francesco Maria Piave. I also posted clips of Renato Bruson, Maria Callas, and Plácido Domingo and Mirella Freni singing music from Ernani—Dame Joan Sutherland, too.

Gabriele Baldini wrote about Ernani with especial insight. My Baldini post doesn’t quote from his Ernani essay, but you can read part of it at Google Books. (Why not purchase Baldini’s book?)

Finally, here is the Act III finale from the current season’s Metropolitan Opera revival of Ernani. Dmitri Hvorostovsky is Don Carlo; other cast members include Angela Meade, Ferruccio Furlanetto, and Roberto De Biasio. Marco Armiliato conducts.

Giovacchino Antonio Rossini was born on 29 February 1792. If I calculated correctly, this means that tomorrow is his fifty-fourth birthday.

In 2010, I wrote a post about Verdi and Rossini that offers audio clips, including a French-language performance of the Guillaume Tell finale.

Over at Re-visioning Callas and in the blog archives, you can hear Maria Callas giving many unsurpassed performances of Rossini’s music.

Buon compleanno, Maestrissimo !

Late February is a period rich in anniversaries associated with Verdi.

Nowadays Francesco Maria Piave is remembered only as a librettist for Verdi. But he had one other great success in the operatic world: Crispino e la comare by Luigi and Federico Ricci, which had its world premiere on 28 February 1850 at the Teatro San Benedetto in Venice and took Europe (and Calcutta, and the Americas) by storm.

Luigi Ricci was brother-in-law to Teresa Stolz, the soprano who sang in the world premieres of the Manzoni Requiem, the revised Forza, and the revised Don Carlo, as well as the European premiere of Aida. He was a colorful character who lived with and had children by both of Stolz’s sisters, the twins Francesca and Ludmilla. Federico was Luigi’s younger brother.

Dame Joan Sutherland recorded an aria from Crispino, “Io non sono più l’Annetta,” in 1962.

Daniel Auber was born in 1782, making him some thirty years older than Verdi. The two socialized in Paris, and Verdi apparently liked and respected Auber a great deal.

Auber’s Gustave III had its world premiere on 27 February 1833 at the Opéra. Gustave III is the same subject that ultimately became Un ballo in maschera. (The Wikipedia article on Gustavo III offers details on the tribulations of that opera.)

Excerpts from Gustave III are available on YouTube. Today’s selection: the title character’s “Vieille sibylle, qu’on dit habile,” which is more or less parallel to Verdi’s “Di’ tu se fedele.”

Mirella Freni was born on 27 February 1935.

I love this woman so much that just writing about her makes me blubber. I had the pleasure of interviewing her around the time of her Met farewell, and she is a smart, gracious, and utterly endearing person, as one might expect.

Her Verdi rôles on stage and disc included Nanetta, Alice Ford, Desdemona, Aida, Violetta, Elvira (which she considered a mistake), Elisabetta, and Leonora (Forza).

Today’s selection is from the DG recording of Simon Boccanegra led by Claudio Abbado, to my mind the greatest of all Verdi sets. Freni sings “Come in quest’ora bruna.” (Read what Fabio Luisi, a Genovese, had to say about this music.)

Hear Mirella Freni in other music by Verdi.

“The voluntary servitude I consecrated to that just, most noble, and truly great man is the act of my life that gives me most satisfaction.”

So wrote Arrigo Boito of his work with Verdi. Boito was born on 24 February 1842, and he died in 1918.

Boito’s marvelous writings about Verdi are quoted in many of this blog’s posts. While most scholars agree that we “owe” to the immensely tactful and patient Boito Verdi’s last operatic masterpieces, Otello and Falstaff (plus the Boccanegra revision), Boito’s reputation as a librettist has been on a downswing for several decades.

Gabriele Baldini compared Boito with the once-maligned Francesco Maria Piave:

The meeting with Piave was far more important to Verdi’s artistic formation than the one with Boito… and the reason for this is quite simple: working with Piave was Verdi’s first opportunity to work with himself… [Piave’s] libretti are in fact those best suited to Verdi’s music—even from a literary point of view they are much finer, in the sense of being better finished, than Boito’s—simply because, in detail as well as in general shape, Verdi himself composed them. Furthermore, Piave was undoubtedly much more intelligent than Boito in artistic matters. Boito was an artist and a man of letters, but he never fully understood Verdi and so continually tried to bend him towards his own ideas. Piave, with profound critical insight, immediately appreciated the situation, and simply let libretti fall into Verdi’s lap…

The great William Weaver published an invaluable volume for all Verdians: The Verdi–Boito Correspondence. Among very recent books about Verdi, Verdi’s Shakespeare: Men of the Theater by Garry Wills considers the Verdi and Boito relationship in depth.

In honor of Boito’s birthday, here are words and music by him: “Ave, Signor!” from Mefistofele (1868, rev. 1881 and several other times). Ildebrando d’Arcangelo is the Dark Lord, and Riccardo Muti conducts this 2005 performance from Ravenna.

Incidentally, if you click through and watch the video on YouTube, you can have fun wading through the heart-rending laments by the passatisti. I mean, for Pete’s sake, I saw and heard Samuel Ramey in this rôle at New York City Opera, San Francisco, and the Met; and he was wonderful; and why on earth should this keep anyone from enjoying the admirable D’Arcangelo?