I present Aida starring Sophia Loren! Yes, you heard me right! It's the 1951 movie. Here is the famed duet between Aida (acted by Sophia Loren, sung by Renata Tebaldi) and Amneris (acted by Lois Maxwell of MoneyPenny fame, sung by Ebe Stignani) have their legendary cat fight. It doesn't get much better than this!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Grace Bumbry as Aida and Grace Bumbry as Amneris. At the same time.



At first I thought this was some modern wizardry, splicing together two performances from the same production (more than once she sang two roles in the same production run--at least once on the same night!), but no! According to the poster on YouTube, this is from a BBC documentary from 1973 in which they highlighted Ms. Bumbry's versatility and the fact that she was singing both mezzo and soprano roles and doing wonderfully. Imagine how difficult that was in 1973!

OK, here is Wikipedia bio-blurb, and here (lip-synching to her own recording in a movie), here (another 1973 TV show), and here (2003 at age 66) are more examples of the wonderful artistry of this woman, who, remarkably is still performing concerts and teaching.

Yes, I'm posting a lot this weekend. Don't know why. It is what it is.

I give you the amazing Martina Arroyo, singing the Libera me from Mr Verdi's Requiem:



It is quite unfortunate that Ms. Arroyo is not higher on the list of mid-20th century singers, because, well, listen to this (unfortunately truncated before it's over). And this. And this. Oh, and this especially!

Here is her bio on Wikipedia. Here is her own web site. I'm happy to report she is alive and kicking, and has created an educational foundation for helping young singers prepare for a career.

I give you Anita Cerquetti. There don't appear to be any performance videos available, but here is 1996 video of her hearing a 1956 pirated recording of her Norma in Jan Schmidt-Garre's film Opera Fanatic..



( Wikipedia bio-blurb )

Here is a link to another Cerquetti jewel on YouTube, "O re del ciel" from Agnes von Hohenstaufen. I know you don't know it, but go listen. It's terrif!

I give you Risë Stevens, the Carmen of the 40s and 50s, who turns 96 today!



( Bio-blurb courtesy of WIkipedia )

Leporello's catalogue aria, auf Deutsch!, at the opening of the Deutsche Oper Berlin:



And Don Pizarro's aria from Fidelio:



Walter Berry was a remarkably versatile bass-baritone (yes, I'm featuring a bass!) with a very long career. I'll spare you the cut-and-paste bio-blurb, but this link has a blurb (that surely began life in some other language) and some interesting pictures.

In compiling this modest blogette, I often have trouble choosing just one (or sometimes two) YouTube clip(s) to feature, but it's rare I have to make a very difficult choice between two clips of the same aria, and even more rare, two clips of the same aria from the same year! But choose I did, and I give you Montserrat Caballe, whom I can't even begin to describe with my humble words, singing "Casta diva" from Sr. Bellini's tour de force Norma in 1974 at the Theatre Antique d'Orange in Aix En Provence. The wind cooperated quite beautifully with the performance, and it picks up quite noticeably in the cabaletta that follows.



The other 1974 Norma was at the Bolshoi in Moscow--also vocally amazing, and the ovation lasts forever before she raises her hand to stop the audience so that the show can go on. Chills. I hope you'll look up that clip as well.

The story? Your typical Hatfields and McCoys star-crossed lovers. Capulets and Montagues, Egyptians and Ethiopian slaves, American Naval officers and Japanese geisha girls, Druids and Romans--it's all the same. That's why it works so well. Oh, did I mention he betrays her by cavorting with her gal pal?

Here is the touching "Qual cor tradisti" from the same performance. Oh, and by the way, John Vickers is in this clip.



One more--the final scene from the same performance. I can't resist. It's simply amazing.



I'm tempted to post all the Caballe clips! The Orange performance is considered by afficionados and by Sra. Caballe herself to be her finest--some say the finest example of opera on video anywhere. One of those instances where everything worked together to make magic. It's available on DVD. If any of you love me, you might consider buying it for me.

I normally would cut and paste the Wikipedia bio-blurb, but frankly, I can't be bovvered. I want to go back to listening to YouTube clips!

Today I give you the lovely Bidu Sayão:




( Wikipedia bio--plus a bonus )

Questions for my faithful readers: How can I get a wider readership for these posts? Is this the sort of thing that would make a good RSS feed? How would I make that happen?

So today I give you Virginia Zeani:



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 against along with Elena Cernei as Amneris.



[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.
( Bio-blurb from Wikipedia )
On a personal PagerNote, your intrepid reporter 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.

Ladies and gentlemen, today I give you Leyla Gencer, seen here in a 1963 production of Aida at Verona's outdoor theater, from Italian TV:




And another from 1966:




( abridged Wikipedia bio-blurb behind cut )

From the NY Times obituary (5/13/08):

Pre-empted by better-known contemporaries like Callas and Renata Tebaldi, Ms. Gencer did not have a contract with a major commercial record label. But her voice traveled the globe many times over in bootleg recordings, earning her the nickname the Pirate Queen.

If she “never made a lira” from these recordings, as Ms. Gencer told Opera News in 2003, they had other compensations.

“All the young people know me,” she said at the time. “They write me long letters. They tell me: ‘It’s as if we were in the theater. We see you. We hear you through your discs as if we were there.’ This is a great miracle!”

I give you Swedish tenor Gösta Winbergh. True, he's a little later in the 20th century than the mid-century singers I usually feature, but he was a very fine singer. And he's dead. He's a tenor I admired very much in my student days, and although my voice is a different sort than his (he later moved into heavier repertoire I, in middle age, remain a light lyric tenor), I admire his Mozart singing. These are two arias I studied and used as audition arias.





(Yes, I know the quality on this second video clip isn't good, but the singing is!)

( Wikipedia bio-blurb within )

Ask me some time how it came about that I saw him in his underwear.

Here is Pilar Lorengar, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, apparently the same 1961 Berlin production that featured Elisabeth Grümmer (see below), sung auf Deutsch:




( Wikipedia bio-blurb )

Several clips of historic singers in Die Fledermaus

First Gundula Janowitz in a 1972 movie sings the Csardas:


Hermann Prey, Benjamin Luxon, Kiri te Kanawa in the Act II party scene (what I call the Du-Du Chorus), 1977 at Covent Garden:



Joan Sutherland is sooooooo sad to see her husband (unnamed) leave!


Finally, comedy duo Hinge & Brackett performing in the party scene gala (OK, it's not part of the operetta per se, but it's part of the fun!)

Today I give you Elisabeth Grummer, here singing Donna Anna at the opening of the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1961:



Here she is singing the same aria in Salzburg in 1956:




( Wikipedia's too-brief bio-blurb )

Today I give you the lovely Rita Streich. The best videos I can find are from televised concerts in the early 60s like this one. There are some clips on YouTube that have sound recordings with one or several pictures of her--those are quite good, too. (This is a representative sample.) Some are as early as the 1940s, when she was quite young.




Rita Streich (December 18, 1920, Barnaul - March 20, 1987, Vienna) was one of the most significant coloratura sopranos of the post-war period.

Rita Streich moved to Germany with her parents during her childhood, where she grew up bilingual, something that was extremely helpful during her later career. Among her teachers were Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender, Erna Berger, and Maria Ivogün.

Her debut as an opera singer was during the Second World War at the Stadttheater (city theatre) of Ústí nad Labem in Bohemia, in the role of Zerbinetta in Richard Strauss' opera Ariadne auf Naxos. Three years later she secured her first engagement at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (State Opera) in Berlin, where she stayed until 1952. In that year she moved to Bayreuth, in 1953 to Vienna, and in 1954 to Salzburg. Appearances at La Scala in Milan and at Covent Garden followed.

From 1974 she taught at the Folkwang Academy in Essen and the Music Academy in Vienna. She gave master classes during the Salzburg Festival from 1983.

Her repertoire included roles in Idomeneo, Così fan tutte, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Die Zauberflöte, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and others. Since she had grown up bilingual, she could also sing the works of Rimsky-Korsakov in their original Russian without a trace of an accent. Apart from this Rita Streich was a great operetta-singer. She made recordings of many classical Viennese operettas, for instance Die Fledermaus, Eine Nacht in Venedig, Der Zigeunerbaron, Boccaccio, Der Bettelstudent, and Der Zarewitsch.

Rita Streich was brought to modern audiences in 2007 in the film "Mr. Bean's Holiday" when Rowan Atkinson lip sings her famous recording of Puccini's "O mio babbino caro" with the Deutsche Oper Berlin Orchestra directed by Reinhard Peters.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the incomparable Tito Schipa (pron. skee-pah), singing the first verse of "Una furtiva lagrima":





Tito Schipa (27 December 1888 – 16 December 1965) was an Italian tenor. He is considered one of the finest tenore di grazia in operatic history. He was endowed with a natural, sensuous voice which he deployed with great intelligence and taste.

Schipa was born Raffaele Attilio Amedeo Schipa in Lecce, his birthday was recorded as January 2, 1889 for conscription purposes. He studied in Milan and made his operatic debut at age 21 in 1910 at Vercelli. He subsequently appeared throughout Italy and in Buenos Aires. In 1917, he created the role of Ruggiero in Puccini's La rondine.

In 1919, Schipa traveled to the United States, joining the Chicago Opera Company, singing with it until 1932, whereupon he appeared with the Metropolitan Opera from 1932 to 1935 and again in 1941. From 1929 to 1949, he continued to perform regularly in Italy, and returned to Buenos Aires in 1954. In 1957, he toured the USSR.

Schipa's repertoire eventually encompassed about twenty Italian and French opera roles, such as Massenet's Werther, Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore and Cilea's L'Arlesiana, where he achieved his best results. In concert, Schipa performed opera arias as well as Neapolitan and Spanish popular songs.

Schipa made numerous recordings during his career, including a famous recording of Donizetti's Don Pasquale in 1932, which was one of the first complete opera recordings, and is still in circulation.

Although some considered Schipa's voice to be ordinary in size and timbre, he caused riots in the streets on some occasions not only by his superior musicianship but a solid, masterful technique.

Schipa retired from the stage in 1958 to teach voice in Budapest and he died from diabetes in 1965 at the age of 77 in New York, NY while teaching there.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Grace Moore singing "Casta diva" in the movie A Lady's Morals.




Here is a link (embedding disabled) to a clip of her singing "Depuis le jour" from Louise, the leading role of which was among her greatest triumphs.


( abridged Wikipedia bio )

Kathleen Ferrier CBE (22 April 1912 – 8 October 1953) was an English contralto, born in Higher Walton, Lancashire. She came to prominence as a singer during and immediately after the Second World War, and was especially remembered for her courageous performances during her final illness. Offstage, she had a vivacious personality, and gave herself the nickname "Klever Kaff".

Ferrier left school at 14 and worked as a telephone operator in Blackburn. On a bet, she took part in a music competition and won in two categories - singing and piano. It was this which brought her talents to public attention, and was a significant factor in her deciding to pursue a career in singing. During the early days of the war she gave concerts for the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) and then, on the advice of Malcolm Sargent, moved to London in 1942, where her main career began.

Ferrier excelled in the music of Mahler, in Bach and in Handel. Her recitals often included songs by Schubert, Schumann and Brahms and towards the end of her career she sang Chausson's "Poeme de l'amour et de la mer" - her only major work from the French repertory. Ferrier is perhaps best-remembered for her interpretations of British folk songs, including "Blow the wind southerly." She was in demand throughout the UK, and also sang regularly in the Netherlands, where she was extremely popular, and in France, Germany, Italy and in Scandinavia. She paid three visits to North America (1948, 1949 and 1950) and sang at each of the first six Edinburgh International Festivals .

Benjamin Britten wrote several works specifically for her, including Lucretia in The Rape of Lucretia, Abraham and Isaac (also written for Peter Pears), and part of the Spring Symphony (1949). Among other composers who wrote specifically for her were Lennox Berkeley, Arthur Bliss and Edmund Rubbra. She worked with many famous conductors, including Bruno Walter, John Barbirolli, Malcolm Sargent, Clemens Krauss, Otto Klemperer, Herbert von Karajan, Eduard van Beinum and also with Benjamin Britten. She also worked with other famous singers such as Isobel Baillie, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Julius Patzak and Peter Pears.

Her final role was in Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice at Covent Garden in February 1953. Already seriously ill with breast cancer, which had spread to her bones, she got through the opening night of Orfeo successfully, but at the second performance a bone in her leg broke while she was on stage. She managed to finish this performance, and left the theatre on a stretcher. It was her final performance: not long afterwards, she died on 8 October 1953, aged 41.

This recording was made in October of 1952, when she was undergoing treatments for her final illness. This aria from Messiah is always moving, but listening with the knowledge that it was made during her final recording sessions brings tears to my eyes.

All except the final comment is taken from the Wikipedia article about Kathleen Ferrier. Yes, librarians and scholars on my list, I know Wikipedia isn't a definitive source.

Today's singer is Leopold Simoneau, a French Canadian tenor with a beautifully sweet voice. Here is a recording of "Una furtiva lagima", that boring tenor warhorse, made less boring by Simoneau's singing:



Yes, it's just a picture over an audio recording, but there aren't many good videos. Here links to two videos (embedding disabled) from a 1962 all-Mozart program--in both he is singing with his wife, fellow French Canadian singer PIerrette Alarie:

Belmonte-Constanze duet from Die Enführung aus dem Serail
Ferrando-Fiordiligi duet from Così fan tutte

(These are two of my favorite Mozart operas, but in both cases the tenor-soprano duets are far from the most interesting moments for the tenor or the soprano.)

( Wikipedia bio behind cut )