After stoically struggling via Heartbeat Opera’s feeble Faust, I wished a extra satisfying Satanic expertise, so I turned to Boito’s Mefistofele. Chris’s Cache this week serves up three devilish treats that includes all-American Margherita/Elena doublings by Carol Neblett, Johanna Meier, and Aprile Millo seduced and betrayed by José Carreras, Ermanno Mauro, and Richard Leech beneath the malign influences of Cesare Siepi, Samuel Ramey, and Dean Peterson.
When the Met produced Robert Carsen’s manufacturing of Mefistofele in 1999, the opera hadn’t been carried out by the corporate in over seventy years. Nonetheless, it wasn’t all the time uncared for. The truth is, it was a piece the Met produced throughout its very first season starring Christine Nilsson who had earlier opened the Met in Gounod’s tackle the tragic heroine.
Absent from the Met since 1926, the American Opera Society revived it in live performance kind in 1966 with Renata Tebaldi, as each Margherita and Elena, Carlo Bergonzi, and Nicolai Ghiaurov.
There’s a reside recording with each Tebaldi and Ghiaurov from Lyric Opera of Chicago the 12 months earlier than during which Tebaldi solely sang Margherita with Elena Souliotis performing Elena in her U.S. debut at age 22; Alfredo Kraus is their Faust.
Throughout the early Nineteen Seventies in London, Denny Dayviss curated a starry live performance opera sequence modeled on New York’s American Opera Society. At the moment’s Mefistofele was one in all its choices together with Siepi in a job he had recorded however hadn’t not too long ago carried out reside. It additionally paperwork early London appearances of Neblett and Carreras. The advert for the live performance mentions Bianca Berini within the solid however presumably she received a job extra fascinating than Martha elsewhere.
The opera’s large native postwar break got here in 1969 when New York Metropolis Opera produced it for Norman Treigle with Neblett and Robert Nagy as Faust. Its nice success there continued within the mid-Nineteen Seventies with the ascension of Ramey who took on plenty of Treigle’s roles there after his passing in 1975. The NYCO Mefistofele heard right this moment comes from its first revival in 4 years and first for the reason that demise of Treigle. It’s outstanding that it will take Ramey seven extra years to debut on the Met. Meier had come to the Met in 1976 changing Montserrat Caballé in Ariadne auf Naxos, a job she’d do once more on the Met three years later when Leontyne Worth bowed out of most of her Strauss performances.
By 1999 Ramey was one of many Met’s largest stars, so the San Francisco Mefistofele was introduced in for him. Veronica Villaroel was the premiere Margheerita/Elena, Leech the Faust. Villaroel and Ramey received the printed in February 2000 when Richard Margison had taken over as Faust. Peterson was Ramey’s cowl and sang two performances through the fall, as did Millo, however they solely intersected in right this moment’s pirate recording.
Boito: Mefistofele
Margherita/Elena: Carol Neblett
Martha/Pantalis: Enid Hartle
Mefistofele: Cesare Siepi
Faust: José Carreras
Wagner/Nereo: Neil Web page
Conductor: Anton Guadagno
Finchley Youngsters’s Music Group
London Symphony Orchestra & Refrain
Royal Pageant Corridor, London
25 Could 1972
In-house recording
Margherita/Elena: Johanna Meier
Martha: Beverly Evans
Pantalis: Sandra Walker
Mefistofele: Samuel Ramey
Faust: Ermanno Mauro
Wagner: David Griffith
Nereo: Joaquin Romaguera
Conductor: Julius Rudel
New York Metropolis Opera
7 April 1977
In-house recording
Margherita/Elena: Aprile Millo
Martha: Diane Elias
Pantalis: Jennifer Dudley
Mefistofele: Dean Peterson
Faust: Richard Leech
Wagner: Tim Willson
Nereo: Bernard Fitch
Conductor: Mark Elder
Metropolitan Opera
4 December 1999
In-house recording
Every Mefistofele will be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio participant above and the ensuing mp3 file will seem in your obtain listing.
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