Author: Philip Gardner
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Licia’s Last Butterfly
On Friday, November 26, 1965, I went to a performance of MADAMA BUTTERFLY at the Metropolitan Opera House. On the following day, I had an operatic double-header: a matinee of ELISIR D’AMORE and an evening performance of FAUST. That Saturday marked the last time I ever set foot in the Old Met. The venerable theatre had been marked for demolition, while a New Met was rising at Lincoln Center.
The eight performances I saw at the Old House are very special memories for me. The singers I saw there had become gods and goddesses to me thru their singing on the Texaco Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts; I was now experiencing ‘live‘ the rituals Milton Cross described each week over the airwaves: the house lights going down, the applause greeting the conductor, the great gold curtain being drawn back for the curtain calls. It was like a dream come true.
Licia Albanese’s was one of the first operatic voices I became familiar with. She was one of the singers on the first 2-LP set of opera arias and duets that I owned. She sang Liu on a memorable Met broadcast of TURANDOT in 1962, opposite Nilsson and Corelli. And my parents had taken me to see her as Violetta (her 100th performance of the role) at the Cincinnati Zoo Opera in 1963.
In all honesty, Albanese’s voice was never really among my favorites; it was more her expressive intensity of communication and her endearing persona that I found appealing. But I understood her importance as a singer in the grand tradition, and if her singing of the Violetta and Butterfly that I saw could turn dry and almost ghostly, I can still vividly recall her stage presence and her instinctive if Olde School acting.
What I did not realize as I watched Licia Albanese taking her bows after that 1965 Butterfly was that it was the final time she ever sang the role. After playing Cio-Cio-San some eighty times on that stage, this was to be the last. Like many performances I have experienced, the evening became iconic over time when measured as part of the singer’s career.
I met La Licia after the performance – I was one of a sizeable group of admirers who had waited for her – and she was of course elegantly gowned and coiffed, chattering away to her fans in Italian. She signed my program with a flourish:
It was a happy crowd of fans and friends, and no mention was made of it being “her last Butterfly”. She did sing one more complete role at The Met: Manon Lescaut; and the following Summer she sang Mimi in LA BOHEME with Barry Morell in a concert presented by The Met at the Newport Festival.
A few days after the performance, I sent her a fan letter and received this photo in return, along with her calling card:
Licia Albanese – Ancora un passo or via ~ MADAMA BUTTERFLY
There were two further memorable moments related to the Old Met and to MADAMA BUTTERFLY in Albanese’s extraordinary life: at the gala farewell concert that marked the closing of the Old Met on April 16th, 1966, Licia sang the aria “Un bel di” and, during the applause, she knelt to place a kiss on the stage where she had appeared so frequently since her debut in 1940:
Once the demolition of the ‘old yellow brewery’ began, Licia donned her kimono and sang “Un bel di” one last time amid the ruins.
But my connection with the legendary diva was not over. One evening during the first season at the New Met, I saw her among the audience on the Grand Tier during intermission. She was talking with another elegantly-gown lady as I approached them hesitantly. The other woman gave me an encouraging smile, so I took Madame Albanese’s hand and awkwardly told her of having seen her Violetta and Butterfly. She thanked me quietly, but kept hold of my hand. Then she turned to her friend and said, in her charming accent: “It is so wonderful to be remembered! He’s so young, he will tell people about me many years from now.”
Then, some thirty-five years on, I was holding down the fort in the opera room at Tower Records one dreary afternoon when Licia Albanese came in with a companion; the soprano was rather feeble by that point in time, but when I greeted her, she smiled silently. I said to her, “I saw your one hundredth Violetta at the Cincinnati Zoo Opera!” She was silent for a moment, and I thought my remark had not registered. Her friend gave me a look as if to say that Madame’s mind might not be perfectly clear.
“The Zoo!” said the diva firmly. Then she began to roar like a lion and sing little birdcalls and make noises like chattering monkeys. Anyone who has ever attended a performance at the Cincinnati Zoo will know that these sounds were always a continuous obbligato to the opera being performed. We all laughed. And then I bade the two women goodbye, thinking to myself – as I have so often – “What a life I am living!”
Above: Licia Albanese at age 93; she passed away in 2014 at the age of 105.
~ Oberon
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Licia’s Last Butterfly
On Friday, November 26, 1965, I went to a performance of MADAMA BUTTERFLY at the Metropolitan Opera House. On the following day, I had an operatic double-header: a matinee of ELISIR D’AMORE and an evening performance of FAUST. That Saturday marked the last time I ever set foot in the Old Met. The venerable theatre had been marked for demolition, while a New Met was rising at Lincoln Center.
The eight performances I saw at the Old House are very special memories for me. The singers I saw there had become gods and goddesses to me thru their singing on the Texaco Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts; I was now experiencing ‘live‘ the rituals Milton Cross described each week over the airwaves: the house lights going down, the applause greeting the conductor, the great gold curtain being drawn back for the curtain calls. It was like a dream come true.
Licia Albanese’s was one of the first operatic voices I became familiar with. She was one of the singers on the first 2-LP set of opera arias and duets that I owned. She sang Liu on a memorable Met broadcast of TURANDOT in 1962, opposite Nilsson and Corelli. And my parents had taken me to see her as Violetta (her 100th performance of the role) at the Cincinnati Zoo Opera in 1963.
In all honesty, Albanese’s voice was never really among my favorites; it was more her expressive intensity of communication and her endearing persona that I found appealing. But I understood her importance as a singer in the grand tradition, and if her singing of the Violetta and Butterfly that I saw could turn dry and almost ghostly, I can still vividly recall her stage presence and her instinctive if Olde School acting.
What I did not realize as I watched Licia Albanese taking her bows after that 1965 Butterfly was that it was the final time she ever sang the role. After playing Cio-Cio-San some eighty times on that stage, this was to be the last. Like many performances I have experienced, the evening became iconic over time when measured as part of the singer’s career.
I met La Licia after the performance – I was one of a sizeable group of admirers who had waited for her – and she was of course elegantly gowned and coiffed, chattering away to her fans in Italian. She signed my program with a flourish:
It was a happy crowd of fans and friends, and no mention was made of it being “her last Butterfly”. She did sing one more complete role at The Met: Manon Lescaut; and the following Summer she sang Mimi in LA BOHEME with Barry Morell in a concert presented by The Met at the Newport Festival.
A few days after the performance, I sent her a fan letter and received this photo in return, along with her calling card:
Licia Albanese – Ancora un passo or via ~ MADAMA BUTTERFLY
There were two further memorable moments related to the Old Met and to MADAMA BUTTERFLY in Albanese’s extraordinary life: at the gala farewell concert that marked the closing of the Old Met on April 16th, 1966, Licia sang the aria “Un bel di” and, during the applause, she knelt to place a kiss on the stage where she had appeared so frequently since her debut in 1940:
Once the demolition of the ‘old yellow brewery’ began, Licia donned her kimono and sang “Un bel di” one last time amid the ruins.
But my connection with the legendary diva was not over. One evening during the first season at the New Met, I saw her among the audience on the Grand Tier during intermission. She was talking with another elegantly-gown lady as I approached them hesitantly. The other woman gave me an encouraging smile, so I took Madame Albanese’s hand and awkwardly told her of having seen her Violetta and Butterfly. She thanked me quietly, but kept hold of my hand. Then she turned to her friend and said, in her charming accent: “It is so wonderful to be remembered! He’s so young, he will tell people about me many years from now.”
Then, some thirty-five years on, I was holding down the fort in the opera room at Tower Records one dreary afternoon when Licia Albanese came in with a companion; the soprano was rather feeble by that point in time, but when I greeted her, she smiled silently. I said to her, “I saw your one hundredth Violetta at the Cincinnati Zoo Opera!” She was silent for a moment, and I thought my remark had not registered. Her friend gave me a look as if to say that Madame’s mind might not be perfectly clear.
“The Zoo!” said the diva firmly. Then she began to roar like a lion and sing little birdcalls and make noises like chattering monkeys. Anyone who has ever attended a performance at the Cincinnati Zoo will know that these sounds were always a continuous obbligato to the opera being performed. We all laughed. And then I bade the two women goodbye, thinking to myself – as I have so often – “What a life I am living!”
Above: Licia Albanese at age 93; she passed away in 2014 at the age of 105.
~ Oberon
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First Voice
Above: tenor Barry Morell
Opera lovers: who among you can remember the very first voice you heard in a live opera performance? I’m not talking about recordings, broadcasts, telecasts, or DVDs, but actually being there.
For me it was tenor Barry Morell, singing the Duke of Mantua in a performance of RIGOLETTO at the Cincinnati Zoo Opera in 1962.
I don’t have an MP3 of Barry Morell as the Duke, but here he is in the passionate aria of Maurizio from ADRIANA LECOUVREUR; his voice is warm, with a nice Italianate ring to it:
Barry Morell – La dolcissima effigie – ADRIANA LECOUVREUR
By 1962, Barry Morell was well-established at The Met, having debuted there in 1958 as Pinkerton in MADAMA BUTTERFLY opposite the Cio-Cio-San of Victoria de los Angeles. In the ensuing years, he sang more than 250 performances with The Met, in New York City and on tour. His co-stars were some of the Met’s reigning divas: his first Tosca was Licia Albanese, his first MImi was Renata Tebaldi, and in his first Met Duke of Mantua, Elisabeth Söderström sang Gilda.
After that initial RIGOLETTO at Cincinnati, we returned for two more Summers, seeing Barry Morell as Alfredo in TRAVIATA (Albanese was singing her 100th Violetta that night) and as des Grieux in Massenet’s MANON, with Adriana Maliponte singing the title-role.
On November 26, 1965, Licia Albanese sang her last Madama Butterfly at The Met; Barry Morell was her Pinkerton. I was there.
In the Summer of 1966, we went up to Saratoga where the Philadelphia Orchestra was giving FLEDERMAUS in concert, conducted by Eugene Ormandy. Barry Morell was Alfredo, with Hilde Gueden (Rosalinda), Roberta Peters (Adele), and Kitty Carlisle (Prince Orlofsky).
Soon after that FLEDERMAUS, I made made first solo trip to New York City to join the first ticket line for the opening season at the New Met. Among the performances I saw in the first season or two at the Lincoln Center venue were TRAVIATA in which Barry Morell’s Violetta was Anna Moffo, and a BOHEME with Morell and Tebaldi.
Barry Morell sang at The Met until 1979; he passed away in 2003.
~ Oberon
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Met Opera All-Stars
Helping Placido Domingo celebrate the 50th anniversary of his Met debut, four great stars who sang with him often came backstage to greet the “tenoritone” after his prima of GIANNI SCHICCHI. Above: Sherrill Milnes, Martina Arroyo, Placi, Teresa Stratas, and James Morris in a Met Opera photo.
Having already seen him several times at New York City Opera, I was at Placido Domingo’s Met debut – the night he stepped in (on very short notice) for Franco Corelli – as Maurizio in Cilea’s ADRIANA LECOUVREUR:
My fondest memory of that evening was of Renata Tebaldi, as Adriana, turning her back on the audience so that Placi could look over her shoulder to watch conductor Fausto Cleva during his Act I aria, “La dolcissima effigie“. During the ensuing ovation, Renata kept patting Domingo’s shoulder and saying “bravo! bravo!” They went on to be good colleagues and friends:
While that ADRIANA was Domingo’s first performance from the Met stage, he had sung a single concert performance of CAV & PAG with the Company at Lewisohn Stadium in August, 1966:
Metropolitan Opera @ Lewisohn Stadium
August 9th, 1966
In ConcertCAVALLERIA RUSTICANA
MascagniSantuzza................Irene Dalis
Turiddu.................Plácido Domingo [First appearance]
Lola....................Joann Grillo
Alfio...................Russell Christopher
Mamma Lucia.............Carlotta OrdassyConductor...............Kurt Adler
Sherrill Milnes had made his Met debut during the final season at the Old Met (in the same performance of FAUST that Montserrat Caballé made hers); Martina Arroyo and Teresa Stratas had already established themselves at the Old Met by the time the Company moved to Lincoln Center. James Morris made his Met debut in 1971, and I saw him there in one of his very first performances, as Raimondo in a student matinee of LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR.
Now let’s hear from each singer in the “reunion” photo at the top:
Martina Arroyo – Ritorna vincitor! – AIDA – Buenos Aires 1968
GHOSTS OF VERSAILLES ~ final scene – Teresa Stratas & Hector Vasquez – Met bcast 1995
James Morris – RHEINGOLD ~ Abendlich Strahlt Die Sonne – w M Lipovsek
Sherrill Milnes joins Domingo on the final note of their OTELLO duet…such an exciting moment:
Domingo & Milnes – OTELLO duet – Met bcast – 2~2~85
To finish this reminiscence, here’s Domingo in a opera The Met could/should have staged for him, Meyerbeer’s L’AFRICAINE:
Placido Domingo – O Paradis! – L’AFRICAINE
~ Oberon
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@ The Guggenheim: Hilma af Klint
Above: Svanen by Hilma af Klint
Presenting one of the most fascinating art exhibits I’ve ever had the chance to experience, The Guggenheim’s gone all out to bring us a panorama of works by the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944).
Born in Stockholm in 1862, Hilma af Klint started out as an academy-educated painter of landscapes and portraits, including some striking botanical pieces. The Spiritualist movement and an interest in scientific progress led af Klint to visualize a world beyond daily realities. She began creating radically abstract paintings in 1906.
Feeling that her art would be beyond comprehension during her lifetime, she shunned exhibits of her work and avoided publicity-seeking. af Klint passed away in 1944; she remained an unknown until the 1980s.
The Guggenheim’s exhibition thrilled me, and I hope to return for another look at af Klint’s magnificent work. Although the slanting floor of the long, winding Guggenheim gallery threw off my equilibrium (and similarly affected my friend Deb Hastings, who was with me), this is art that one could study for hours and still not grasp it all.
Much of the magic of af Klint’s work is in the details; here are a few examples:
Some of af Klint’s largest canvases are displayed on the museum’s main floor:
Her colours dazzle:
But photos don’t do the work full justice: you have to be there.
The Guggenheim exhibit, titled Paintings for the Future, runs thru April 23rd, 2019.
~ Oberon
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Elena Zilio Today
Mezzo-soprano Elena Zilio (above) made her operatic debut in 1963 and went on to sing dozens of roles – everything from Cherubino to Dame Quickly – throughout the world.
One of my favorite Zilio souvenirs is her passionate singing of Suzuki, Madama Butterfly’s faithful servant who, in this trio, foresees the story’s tragic ending:
BUTTERFLY scene Zilio P Dvorsky Stilwell Chicago 1985
Here she sings the aria of a distraught mother, Rosa Mamai, from Cilea’s L’ARLESIANA:
Elena Zilio – Esser madre e un inferno ~ L`Arlesiana
More recently, Elena Zilio has carved out a lovely niche for herself in character roles.
Earlier this year, Ms. Zilio had a personal triumph as Mamma Lucia in CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA at Covent Garden. In 2019, she alternates that role and Madelon in ANDREA CHENIER in performances at Firenze, Naples, London, and Munich.
~ Oberon
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Jeannine Crader
Above: Jeannine Crader and Placido Domingo in Ginastera’s DON RODRIGO; photo by Fred Fehl
Soprano Jeannine Crader was a member of the San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program in the late 1950s, and sang Magda Sorel in Menotti’s THE CONSUL with the San Francisco Opera’s Spring Program in 1969.
She performed with the Metropolitan Opera Studio Company (above, in COSI FAN TUTTE, with Gimi Beni and Marcia Baldwin) before joining New York City Opera where she sang in the US premiere of Alberto Ginastera’s DON RODRIGO, opposite Placido Domingo, in 1966.
I saw Ms. Crader only once – as Donna Elvira at New York City Opera in 1966. With the Company, she also sang Tosca, Butterfly, and Giorgetta in IL TABARRO. In 1967, she and Domingo sang in ANDREA CHENIER together at the Cincinnati Opera.
Ms. Crader appears on Maurice Abravanel’s recording of the Mahler 8th, and there is a complete recording of DON RODRIGO available from Opera Depot. Beyond that, I can only find two Puccini souvenirs, both with Mr. Domingo:
Jeannine Crader & Placido Domingo – E Ben Altro Il Mio Sogno ~ TABARRO – NYCO 1968
Jeannine Crader & Placido Domingo – TOSCA scene ~ Act III – NYC Opera
Jeannine Crader sings a William Mayer duet, “Barbara, What Have You Done?” with Dorothy Renzi (audio only) on YouTube. I like it a lot.
Ms. Crader taught at the University of North Texas from 1970-1997.
~ Oberon
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Catherine Gallant’s THE SECRET
Above: The Secret in rehearsal; the dancers are Janete Gondim and Eleanor Bunker
Catherine Gallant’s The Secret, one of my favorite danceworks experienced in recent seasons, may be seen on Vimeo here.
Seeing The Secret in 2016 prompted this response from me:
“The evening could not have a had a more propitious start than Ms. Gallant’s The Secret; like white-clad angels, the two dancers – Janete Gondim and Eleanor Bunker – continually conveyed the sense of wonder which permeates this dancework like a delicious fragrance.
With Ygor Shetsov at the piano, playing the Scriabin Poeme in F-sharp major, the two dancers moved about the space with a sort of quiet urgency, pausing to marvel at the treasure they had found, and which they were holding in the palms of their hands. The choreography flows gorgeously on the music: simple moves which take on a poetic resonance in the personalities of the two women; Janete and Eleanor were captivating to watch, and The Secret joins a short list of danceworks I’ve encountered in the past 20 years that ideally meld music, mood, and movement, leaving a lasting impression.”
~ Oberon
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Catherine Gallant’s THE SECRET
Above: The Secret in rehearsal; the dancers are Janete Gondim and Eleanor Bunker
Catherine Gallant’s The Secret, one of my favorite danceworks experienced in recent seasons, may be seen on Vimeo here.
Seeing The Secret in 2016 prompted this response from me:
“The evening could not have a had a more propitious start than Ms. Gallant’s The Secret; like white-clad angels, the two dancers – Janete Gondim and Eleanor Bunker – continually conveyed the sense of wonder which permeates this dancework like a delicious fragrance.
With Ygor Shetsov at the piano, playing the Scriabin Poeme in F-sharp major, the two dancers moved about the space with a sort of quiet urgency, pausing to marvel at the treasure they had found, and which they were holding in the palms of their hands. The choreography flows gorgeously on the music: simple moves which take on a poetic resonance in the personalities of the two women; Janete and Eleanor were captivating to watch, and The Secret joins a short list of danceworks I’ve encountered in the past 20 years that ideally meld music, mood, and movement, leaving a lasting impression.”
~ Oberon
Oberon's Glade 