Attended the performance at The MET last Saturday afternoon. I was absolutely bowled over by Radvanovsky's performance. Shame on the record companies for ignoring her for the twelve years between her Verdi Recital and 'The Three Queens'. (I met her and her husband in Toronto after 'Anna Bolena' some years back. Lovely woman!)
As was pointed out by several critics when Callas' studio recording of 'Medea' was released, it is a pretty dull opera until Medea makes her first entrance. No amount of fine singing from Bridges, Polenzani, and Pertusi could enliven it. Radvanovsky was thrilling.
It occurred to me that some record company needs to record the Cherubini/Lachner version of 'Medea' in German, as Lachner conceived it. The two recordings of the original French version with spoken dialogue are, in varying degrees, inadequate.
I was sitting at the performance right in the middle of three rows of military cadets. One of them amusingly said about the opera "It is like 'The Parent Trap in Italian!". Of course, the parents in 'The Parent Trap' didn't kill their children!
Attended the performance at The MET last Saturday afternoon. I was absolutely bowled over by Radvanovsky's performance. Shame on the record companies for ignoring her for the twelve years between her Verdi Recital and 'The Three Queens'. (I met her and her husband in Toronto after 'Anna Bolena' some years back. Lovely woman!)
As was pointed out by several critics when Callas' studio recording of 'Medea' was released, it is a pretty dull opera until Medea makes her first entrance. No amount of fine singing from Bridges, Polenzani, and Pertusi could enliven it. Radvanovsky was thrilling.
It occurred to me that some record company needs to record the Cherubini/Lachner version of 'Medea' in German, as Lachner conceived it. The two recordings of the original French version with spoken dialogue are, in varying degrees, inadequate.
I was sitting at the performance right in the middle of three rows of military cadets. One of them amusingly said about the opera "It is like 'The Parent Trap in Italian!". Of course, the parents in 'The Parent Trap' didn't kill their children!