I am posting this American tenor not because I think that he is a great singer, but rather because what he does and should not do is instructive. This was...
Read MoreAnna Moffo was an American lyric soprano (born June 27, 1932, Wayne, Pa.—died March 10, 2006, New York, N.Y.), whose glamor, radiant beauty onstage, and warm voice made her a...
Read MoreElenor Steber was a great lyric soprano. She commissioned a piece from Samuel Barber, one of the most famous American composers of the 20th century. And Barber wrote Knoxville Summer...
Read MoreIt can be said, and I will say it, that Richard Strauss was the last great German Romantic composer. These works, the Four Last Songs, were his last to be...
Read More"Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen", one of Mahler's so-called Rückert lieder, is Mahler's finest song. I have been told that the word "Weltschmerz" or "world pain" is used much...
Read MoreElisabeth Schumann was an extremely famous German-American soprano who came to this country to be a faculty member at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia just before the outbreak...
Read MoreBidu Sayao was a Brazilian soprano whose gossamer voice and vivacious personality made her one of the most popular stars of the Metropolitan Opera from the late 1930's through the...
Read MoreIn this prologue to Boris Godunov, I have selected Lev Sibiryakov to sing the monk Pimen. It is an extraordinary performance, especially when you take into account the it was...
Read MoreI'm not going to try to put all the lyrics in because there are so many excerpts, and I go half crazy with the formatting of the translations. Rysanek was...
Read MoreDer Rosenkavalier – the Presentation of the Rose, Tiana Lemnitz (Octavian), Maria Cerbotari (Sophie)
This is the Presentation of the Rose from the 2nd Act of Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. It is a wonderful recording with two singers in their prime. I did a fairly...
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