Sidetracked, or, I know what I did last night
Going to find those recordings with José Bros was a bad idea. Putting me in front of my CDs always is. I will generally either stand there paralysed by indecision, or else be overcome by a succession of enthusiasms for whatever catches my eye, hop from one thing to the next, and thus ensure that I never get to listen to what I started out to find, or indeed anything else, for more than a few minutes put together. Last night's listening was of the second type. I'll write it up, but more because I happen to feel like it, than because it's either profound or interesting to anyone but me. :-)
As I say, I went to check out the two Nightingale recordings where I'd heard José Bros previously. Before I'd even got them over to the CD player, they had been overtaken by my remembering that the same label's Semiramide has Juan Diego Flórez as Idreno. So I listened to bits of that instead.... JDF is pretty remarkable on the whole, his biggest single downfall being some absolutely disastrous phrasing in 'Là dal Gange'. I only hope it was miscalculation in a live performance, rather than intention.
This all put me in mind of seeing Chris Merritt, very different, in the same role in 1986. So, off with the Semiramide, and dig out Merritt's Heroic Bel Canto Tenor recital. I should have known better: this CD is always a bad idea, likely to induce pain in almost unbearable quantities. It doesn't even offer the horrified fascination engendered by his earlier Bongiovanni recital disc, where (as I recall) he inserts a high E flat into Argirio's Act II aria from Tancredi. Good god, man.
At this point, I was in serious need of cheering up, and the session could have ground to a complete halt. To the rescue came... Luciano Pavarotti. I remembered that one of his early recitals has an aria in common with the Merritt recital. And then that one of his slightly later recitals contains a totally outrageous version of 'Di quella pira' from Il Trovatore, outrageous not only in some of the semiquavers, but also in his determination to hang onto the final note beyond all bounds of reason and my ability to keep a straight face.
Thus cheered, I moved on, briefly, to a rather saner recording of the same opera, with Roberto Alagna, Angela Gheorghiu et al having a jolly good sing. And from there to Alagna's solo Verdi recital, where he treats us to interesting and lovely things in almost every piece. Quite why, given singing of such unusual intelligence and taste, it was thought appropriate to have him appear topless on the front cover, I really don't know.
Topless opera singers was a place that I really didn't want to go, so I moved swiftly on with jumps that were too fast for me to even make it to the shelf, never mind to the CD player. Via Angela Gheorghiu's first solo recital, which contained an aria from Falstaff, and Solti's recording of Falstaff with Alfredo Kraus as Fenton, I wound up with the Muti recording of La Traviata, starring (a much older) Kraus and Renata Scotto, teamed with Renato Bruson as a father who sounds young enough to be the son of either of them. It's one of my favourite recordings of the opera (it would yield to the London performance from June 1958 with Callas, but I didn't get that one out last night), and so I spent some time wallowing around in that.
The session continued in much the same vein, being sidetracked from one thing to the next. I never did get to listen to José Bros in La Sonnambula and Anna Bolena, but I did do a good deal of wandering round everywhere else. At the end, I remembered a recent LJ entry where the current music had been Tosca, and decided that I wanted to finish with Cavaradossi's outburst 'Qual occhio al mondo'. And at that point, indecision struck. Should it be Alagna, lovely of voice but (as I recall) disappointingly over-emphatic here? Di Stefano? After all, the de Sabata recording is a classic, and I don't play any of it often enough. But then, the sound is dated. Carreras? But if so, which one? All this angst for an excerpt that lasts about two minutes! For the record, I eventually opted for the younger Carreras, under Colin Davis, and jolly good it was, too.
[Edited to note that the LJ item with Tosca belonged to trixieleitz. Sorry, I couldn't remember at the time.]
As I say, I went to check out the two Nightingale recordings where I'd heard José Bros previously. Before I'd even got them over to the CD player, they had been overtaken by my remembering that the same label's Semiramide has Juan Diego Flórez as Idreno. So I listened to bits of that instead.... JDF is pretty remarkable on the whole, his biggest single downfall being some absolutely disastrous phrasing in 'Là dal Gange'. I only hope it was miscalculation in a live performance, rather than intention.
This all put me in mind of seeing Chris Merritt, very different, in the same role in 1986. So, off with the Semiramide, and dig out Merritt's Heroic Bel Canto Tenor recital. I should have known better: this CD is always a bad idea, likely to induce pain in almost unbearable quantities. It doesn't even offer the horrified fascination engendered by his earlier Bongiovanni recital disc, where (as I recall) he inserts a high E flat into Argirio's Act II aria from Tancredi. Good god, man.
At this point, I was in serious need of cheering up, and the session could have ground to a complete halt. To the rescue came... Luciano Pavarotti. I remembered that one of his early recitals has an aria in common with the Merritt recital. And then that one of his slightly later recitals contains a totally outrageous version of 'Di quella pira' from Il Trovatore, outrageous not only in some of the semiquavers, but also in his determination to hang onto the final note beyond all bounds of reason and my ability to keep a straight face.
Thus cheered, I moved on, briefly, to a rather saner recording of the same opera, with Roberto Alagna, Angela Gheorghiu et al having a jolly good sing. And from there to Alagna's solo Verdi recital, where he treats us to interesting and lovely things in almost every piece. Quite why, given singing of such unusual intelligence and taste, it was thought appropriate to have him appear topless on the front cover, I really don't know.
Topless opera singers was a place that I really didn't want to go, so I moved swiftly on with jumps that were too fast for me to even make it to the shelf, never mind to the CD player. Via Angela Gheorghiu's first solo recital, which contained an aria from Falstaff, and Solti's recording of Falstaff with Alfredo Kraus as Fenton, I wound up with the Muti recording of La Traviata, starring (a much older) Kraus and Renata Scotto, teamed with Renato Bruson as a father who sounds young enough to be the son of either of them. It's one of my favourite recordings of the opera (it would yield to the London performance from June 1958 with Callas, but I didn't get that one out last night), and so I spent some time wallowing around in that.
The session continued in much the same vein, being sidetracked from one thing to the next. I never did get to listen to José Bros in La Sonnambula and Anna Bolena, but I did do a good deal of wandering round everywhere else. At the end, I remembered a recent LJ entry where the current music had been Tosca, and decided that I wanted to finish with Cavaradossi's outburst 'Qual occhio al mondo'. And at that point, indecision struck. Should it be Alagna, lovely of voice but (as I recall) disappointingly over-emphatic here? Di Stefano? After all, the de Sabata recording is a classic, and I don't play any of it often enough. But then, the sound is dated. Carreras? But if so, which one? All this angst for an excerpt that lasts about two minutes! For the record, I eventually opted for the younger Carreras, under Colin Davis, and jolly good it was, too.
[Edited to note that the LJ item with Tosca belonged to trixieleitz. Sorry, I couldn't remember at the time.]