One reason that opera and art-song lovers attend their 85th staging of Puccini's final opera, Turandot, or 35th recital of Schubert's final song cycle, Winterreise (A Winter's Journey), is to hear what a specific singer does with music they love. Compare the 1926 recording of Lìu's radiant aria, "Signore, ascolta," from Turandot, by Maria Zamboni, the role's creator under Arturo Toscanini, with Montserrat Caballé's 1972 traversal under Zubin Mehta. Considering that Toscanini knew Puccini and premiered three of his operas, Zamboni's extremely emotive performance is unquestionably definitive. Yet, how many vocal lovers would trade it for Caballé's exquisite, long-spun lines and magically floated pianissimos? As for Winterreise, the more you're willing to explore the nuances of despair, the more you can understand why vocal aficionados spend years listening to baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's seven studio and live recordings of the cycle and contrast them with versions from Hans Hotter, Gerhard Hüsch, Lehmann, Mark Padmore, and Matthias Goerne to determine which presents the most convincing union between composer, singer, and accompanist.
If you love tenors, before you settle on Luciano Pavarotti and Jonas Kaufmann as your standbys, be sure to listen to their glorious predecessors, including Caruso, Beniamino Gigli, Tito Schipa, Lauritz Melchior, Georges Thill, Jussi Björling, and Franco Corelli. Someone is about to shoot me, or maybe just write me an angry letter, for leaving out their favorite tenor.
Relevance
Context is central to the appreciation of older operatic repertoire. Mozart's great Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) may seem like a light comedy about the mores of earlier times, filled with some of the most beautiful and captivating vocal music ever composed. But it was more. Librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte based his story on the Beaumarchais play La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro, whose examination of the power of the aristocracy over the lower classes helped foment the French revolution.
To get around censorship from the state and church, Da Ponte and Mozart exercised a sometimes-subtle form of self-censorship. As baritone Ricardo Panela explains in his article, "Mozart, Da Ponte and Censorship," a play that fomented class conflict was transformed into a comic opera about love and forgiveness. Nonetheless, when Mozart allows the vocal line of the servant Susanna to intertwine with and then rise above that of her co-conspirator, the Countess, he is making a statement about power and ultimate worth.
Any plot that challenged the absolute word of the church, exposed its hypocrisy, or threatened its vast real estate empire was censored. Giuseppe Verdi's explorations of kings and queens would have packed far more punch had he been allowed to speak his truth. As explored by WQXR-FM's Fred Plotkin, after several of Verdi's early political operas incited street riots, Milanese censors and the Catholic Church began to demand rewrites. Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball), whose original libretto focused on the assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden, was transformed into an opera about the governor of Boston in the 16th century (before Boston was even founded). Verdi wrote about a king's assassination in the initial version of Rigoletto, but censors forced him to transform the King of France into the Duke of Mantua and to kill off his daughter rather than the Duke himself.
Admittedly, the stories of older vocal works can seem dated, racist, and irrelevant. If Turandot was a vast "oriental fantasy of love and death" complete with Emperor, slaves, rolling heads, and rivals for the Princess's hand, Schubert's final song cycle was a depressive winter's journey complete with horses, maidens, and a lonely organ grinder. The feelings both masterpieces evoke remain universal, but the specificities of character and action are very much passé.
Looking forward
For more than 100 years, American operas, songs, and Broadway musicals have featured realistic characters and situations we can relate to in 2021. Scott Joplin's Treemonisha, Jerome Kern's Showboat, the Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, Mark Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock, and Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti variously focused on racial issues, drugs, human rights, and stultifying conformity. One of the first enduring American operas, Carlisle Floyd's Susannah, focused on small-town small-mindedness, hypocrisy, and sexual abuse as it transposed a biblical story to the Bible Belt of eastern Kentucky. Susannah could have been written yesterday.
Just a few years later came Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's West Side Story, which explored impossible love amidst gang violence. Bernstein's political and social commentary also made its mark in the song realm, especially with Arias and Barcarolles and Songfest.
Closer to the present day, American operas inspired by contemporary events increasingly receive audio and/ or video recordings. The operas Nixon in China, The Death of Kinghoffer, and Doctor Atomic flowed from the pen of John Adams. One of Adams's most moving works for choir and orchestra, On the Transmigration of Souls, was written in response to 9/11 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally's heart-wrenching Dead Man Walking, which quickly became one of the most frequently performed 21st century operas worldwide, addresses the death penalty. Heggie's three equally moving one-act works, Another Sunrise; Farewell, Auschwitz; and For a Look or a Touch are based on stories of Holocaust survivors. All are commissions from Seattle-based Music of Remembrance, whose other Holocaust-themed commissions include Paul Schoenfield's sardonically witty Camp Songs. Heggie's song cycles, including those on the superbly recorded collection Unexpected Shadows, are recommended as much for their alternately hilarious, evocative, and shattering subject matter as for the extraordinary partnership between pianist Heggie and the larger-than-life, must-hear mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton.
Just as Susannah won the 1957 New York Music Critics' Circle Award, so have recent topical operas received Opera Awards from the Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA). Of these, I cannot recommend strongly enough Prism (footnote 3), Ellen Reid and Roxie Perkins's brilliantly conceived, heart-stopping opera about sexual abuse. That it also won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Music should provide sufficient impetus for a listen. Other MCANA award–winning operas include Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek's Breaking the Waves, about love and misogyny; David Hertzberg's The Wake World, from a story by Aleister Crowley; and Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson's Blue, about police violence. Blue might have been recorded by now if COVID-19 had not intervened. Equally recommended are two MCANA runners-up that I've reviewed, Gregory Spears's Fellow Travelers, about the 1950s Lavender Scare, and Mason Bates's The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs. What Stereophile reader doesn't know what the latter is about? The music to these operas is accessible, the stories real. I love a great tune as much as anyone, but how many people make love, murder, or commit suicide by singing a lovely melody capped by a high E-flat?
Footnote 3: You can find my recording review here.
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COMMENTS
... Carlo Bergonzi.
So much for your credibility as a classical music reviewer, IMO.
Try this album of duets with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7942616--carlo-bergonzi-dietrich-fischer-dieskau-famous-duets
Then there's Richard Tucker. That's two strikes.
Try this album of duets with Robert Merrill.
https://www.allmusic.com/album/release/richard-tucker-robet-merrill-live-from-carnegie-hall-mr0002699106
Brilliant commentary!
Over these recent years, a person might feel that Streophile was entirely populated by reviewing lovers of Rock&Roll reissues for Dark side of the Moon along with everything Rock from 1960 thru 1988ish. Jazz too gets mention ( as long as it's from one of the few all-time-favorites like Miles ). It's like a Queen, Stadium Rock & V8 Mustang mentality dominates.
On the other hand:
Your well written ( very well written ) singing voice histories took me back to my own Singing Mother serenading us children ( every morning ) before and during breakfast and as we left for School. Mother rehearsing, mother's performances and her various traveling performers stopping by for dinner and more Performance rehearsing. I never quite understood that there was something ( or anything ) special about living in a Opera Household until late in life and reading this wonderful piece that you share with us. Thank you
How did you end up at Stereophile, you seem Odd Shaped peg for a Sterophile shaped hole but then again, where else would a sensible person want to belong ?
You are outstanding in front of a camera ( I think ), and you can write brilliantly!
I'm an Engineer and can't quite see you as a technical reviewer or having peering insights into electronic circuit performances.
My mother favoured Marylin Horne as the most beautiful voice in her extensive memories. I favour Joan Sutherland.
Bravo,
Tony in Venice
As you may have noticed, I don't pretend to offer peering insights into electronic circuit performances. Rather, if I like a product, I hope to offer enticing invites to partake.
jason
I'd thought ( incorrectly ? ) that you were a technical note taker and ponder of technical aspects.
Anyway, you helped me notice that Stereophile isn't a Classical Group but a Rock & Roll sort. Of course, it should've always been obvious that Mr.JA is a Rock & Roll musician with a rather pronounced lean to British Working man music. ( and Jimmy Hendricks ). For me, Mr.JA is one of the few HiFi 'Higher-Authorities'!
My personal love is Classical, never having an interest or access to Jazz or Motown or Rock or Pop. The LS3/5a playing Butterfly ( in an English HiFi specialist Shop 1982ish ) was the Catalyst for my entry into the still exciting Audio Industry.
Thank you for writing back,
Tony in Venice
ps. the future is now and it's streaming. ( my considered opinion, of course )
Both JA1 and JA2 frequently attend classical concerts and love classical music. There are, of course, many varieties of classical, from "pleasant classics" meant for unwinding to intense fare that takes you right to the center of humanity's love, foibles, and transgressions. And that doesn't even begin to address preferences for small scale or solo orchestral fare over or under solo piano, string quartets, opera, and art song. Ditto for rock, blues, country, and jazz. It's definitely a case of different strokes for different folks.
I want a high end system to do justice to it all.
I think you achieved it, your gear can do anything well.
I live with music as a companion, something like the man I met at Walmart the other day, he had a leather purse with a real, live dog in it -- his life companion ( although he's married and his wife was with him at the store ). I don't think that they were friends as much as they shared their lives in some sort of harmony.
My headphone transducers are significantly better transducers than any Loudspeaker system I've owned. So, I've achieved sufficiently high levels of satisfaction.
I hadn't realised the JAs were Orchestra fans but it's easily available in NY, so, why not!
I was a frequent visitor to Manhattan when my Son lived on 59th & 9th ( Hells Kitchen area ). The place is horribly filthy and for some reason they smell up the street for the two days before Garbage Pick-up. A person has to live there a couple of years to not notice the whole of it. ( a luxury 1/2 bedroom 4th floor walkup only $2,100/mo., a view of the street ). Now I live in god's own Paradise with a Pool featuring weightless Nirvana at 89F, I'm never leaving ( I hope ).
Thanks again for writing,
Tony in Venice listening to Tracy Chapman's: Fast Car
Both JA1 and JA2 frequently attend classical concerts and love classical music. . .
To address Tony's description of me as "a Rock & Roll musician with a rather pronounced lean to British Working man music," while bass guitar was indeed my instrument when I was a professional musician, I started off playing violin in school and youth orchestras, and later played viola da gamba and recorders in classical early music ensembles.
John Atkinson
Technical Editor, Stereophile
"It's definitely a case of different strokes for different folks."
So true! I like different types of music.Rock doesn't appeal to me anymore. I've tried listening to Opera,but it doesn't appeal to me.That was decades ago, so perhaps I'll try again after reading this article. I'm not a music "expert" of any kind. I can't even read the notes! But,I know what I like to listen to.
"I want a high end system to do justice to it all." That's key right there. I want the "best" system I can afford, which isn't much, hence my name here! Thanks again, Larry
... studying a copy of this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/0521809266
Did you notice his piece was an introductory column in a Hi Fi gear magazine, not a doctoral thesis?
I suggest you toss him a pile of cash and ask for a 25,000 word follow up with more detail.
JVS: your piece was absolutely the perfect invitation.
I learned electronics from that book way back in the 1980s. Here's hoping they found a proper editor since then: It was the worst-written textbook I ever encountered, in any subject.
Jim Austin, Editor
Stereophile
This was the best article about **music** that I have ever seen in Stereophile. I particularly like your invitation to readers to listen to older recordings as well as newer ones.
"This is one reason why we are audiophiles: We yearn to get closer to the creative essence of the artists and composers we cherish."
YES!! The gear is great, but this is what it's about IMHO.
I played most of the music JVS mentioned in the subject review. The Hunt Lieberson music is heavenly, as JVS would say, transporting the listener to another place. Both audio quality and musical impact are exemplary, beyond my usual faire.
Jason, some of the music in your Essence review is saved in one of my playlists. Consider this an invitation to hear those songs if you attend an audio show with an AudioKinesis exhibit room.
I look forward to hearing the music JVS listed in this current piece. IMO Jason's play lists alone justify the Stereophile subscription price.
Beyond his wonderful music, you have to love someone like Jason (and award winning reporter Glenn Greenwald) who loves and cares for dogs rescued from terrible circumstances.
Nice. Thanks, Jason.
My first gripping experience into the classical voice music was Franco Corelli singing E lucevan le stelle. Still grips.
Last year, I took my teenage son to Tosca (in Copenhagen). He had his first "wow" with opera and an early start.
While I probably do listen more to rock and jazz music, classical, and opera, is important to me as well. One thing though: I have yet to love Wagner's operas, with the singing parts that is. Without those, it's some of my favorite music. Please don't be angry.
I am not really angry - just dissappointed - about your comments on a suffering "Golden analog age".
Thanks again.
Since I didn't mention a suffering "Golden analog age" - I referred to the first Golden Age of opera on record, which roughly extended from 1902 through the early 1920s and coincided with the era of acoustic analog recordings - I'm not sure what you're referring to. As for Wagner, if the first act of Die Walküre, especially the second half once Hunding is drugged, as recorded by Bruno Walter, Lotte Lehmann, Lauritz Melchior, Friedrich Schorr, Emmanuel Liszt in 1935 doesn't get you, nothing will. When I visited one of the Mad King Ludwig's castles and heard Lehmann singing that music in the reconstructed fantasy Hunding's Hut, I almost broke into tears. The Naxos transfer is by far the best on CD, although there may also be a superior file version at Pristine Audio, remastered by a different engineer.
I referred, in misunderstanding and in a failed attempt to joke with all the anger in matters of personal preferences it would seem ;-), to the Golden analog age you comment on when writing of Callas, Sutherland and Solti.
I know the legendary Walter recording you mention. I'll give it some more listening, but fear I will respond as I generally do to Wagner's opera music.
Again, Jason, thanks - I think your article is a very informative and enjoyable read.
Thanks Jason,
I became a Cathedral Chorister in 1960, the year my father died from war causes I turned 9! ? High Church Anglican. In Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia!
Quite soon after (1961/2) I was introduced to hi-fi audio, and the sound of the choir as recorded R2R in simple stereo - in the Cathedral - by 'our ABC' (~= BBC?). This by one of the baritone/tenors and his wife. Big stone early-19C 2-storey house, high ceilings. BIG floor to ceiling corner enclosures with an 18"? and a Tannoy DC (Red?). Two-box bespoke Valve pre - BIG valve power amps, two R2Rs, two TTs one for 78s. And two Tuners one AM (broad audio BW) and one Mono FM tuner for the test broadcasts, by ... the ABC. Ortofon and Decca heads.
Another experience was caused by the shut-down and rebuild of the main BIG Organ. We were lent a tall chamber organ, a tracker action type & 18C build. That led to Newcastle getting a baroque society orchestra which performed in the Cathedral, always with us!
An early introduction to that other form of fidelity - to what the composer expected - AKA HIPerformance. Hunt Liebeson's work in that area is beyond criticism.
Oh yes, *vibrato-less* singing, which was in any case long a part of the Anglican choral tradition. Especially for soloists, which I soon was.
I became a Leader at 11 under Royal School of Church Music rules having passed the courses and exams.
For me Opera is something to watch on a big screen HT system or live on a stage. The sound on its own is just NOT enough. LBNL I prefer operas of the classical era. And only a few from the early romantic period. I have a few modern era boxed sets, one/two by Britten.
Why? Shrill & *wobbly* sopranos and mezzos! ;-) Let alone way too many silly plots.
Bizet's Carmen - done as a film - is an exception, I suppose.
I agree with you about Wagner, magnificent music, but - mostly horrible plots, driven by a vicious personal world-view!
Two stations you might like to try via their web-pages are.
https://www.abc.net.au/classic/listen-live/player/
https://artsound.fm/programs/show-schedule/
They are free-to-air.
The second one uses just a little more compression.
... the visual component - is something that I experienced on many a Saturday afternoon when growing up since my Dad always tuned into the live Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts.
that I haven't. There is so much that I haven't heard, actually. I keep dreaming of that desert island where all there is to do is eat fruit that drops from the trees and listen listen listen to that multi-million dollar system that somehow washed ashore intact at the same time as I, and that was attached to remarkable 100% waterproof solar power sound system.
There are quite a few on eBay right now prices range from $1,500 for a near mint box set to $100,000 for a new sealed one. I'd love to have it but not paying $1,500, even though it is a fair price.
are like $15-25 in NM/EX condition (and they sound like Wilkinson intended)
hr
Already have them and the Karajan box set as well. Always amazed how these box sets consistently are in stellar condition, as if they have never been played. On the lookout for the Bohm live version as well.
Two ways to ask the same question:
If you had a near mint box set, would you sell it for $1,500?
If you had $1,500, would you buy a near-mint box set with it?
Aye, there's the rub....
if you have a good Blu-ray player, especially one with a digital output to an excellent DAC, you can play the 24/48 (or perhaps it's 24/44.1) Blu-ray that UMG derived from the original master tapes. You can also find the Ring in 24/44.1 MQA on Tidal and 24/44.1 on Qobuz.
The next question would be how the Esoteric SACDs compare to the MQA versions. The only proper way to compare them, IMHO, would be to use both an SACD and file player from the same company. One example would be the dCS Rossini CD/SACD transport into the MQA-equipped Rossini DAC, but there are many possibilities. You'd also need to ascertain that the company's SACD and file playback are on the same sonic footing. Many products excel in one playback medium over others.
And then, of course, there are the original LPs. Have fun with that one. No fair comparing the sound of the LPs on a six figure turntable to the Blu-ray on an Oppo.
Whatever you do, never lose sight of the fact that it all comes to naught in the end when Valhalla burns to a crisp and only the music remains.
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