Zinka Milanov in one of her greatest roles – Leonora in Verdi’s LA FORZA DEL DESTINO – from a 1958 Metropolitan Opera broadcast. Flaviano Labo, Mario Sereni, and Cesare Siepi are Zinka’s co-stars, and Fritz Stiedry is wielding the baton.
Listen here.
Above: Zinka Milanov
A performance of Giordano’s ANDREA CHENIER given in 1960 by The Met on tour in Atlanta has just popped up on YouTube. Listen here.
This was at the time when I was just falling in love with opera, though I had not yet discovered the Met Texaco broadcasts. Zinka was on the very first opera LP that my parents gave me; Bergonzi was Pinkerton on the first complete opera set I ever bought (the ‘second’ Tebaldi Cio-Cio-San); and not long after, I bought the de los Angeles TRAVIATA on which Sereni sang Germont.
One of the things I loved most about finding this Atlanta CHENIER was that the cast includes three mezzo-sopranos who – over time – were to give me so many wonderful memories: Belén Amparán, Helen Vanni, and Mignon Dunn. And just look at the Met stalwarts cast in the supporting male roles:
Atlanta, Georgia (Metropolitan Opera on tour)
May 2nd, 1960
ANDREA CHÉNIER
Andrea Chénier..........Carlo Bergonzi
Maddalena...............Zinka Milanov
Carlo Gérard............Mario Sereni
Bersi...................Helen Vanni
Countess di Coigny......Mignon Dunn
Abbé....................Gabor Carelli
Fléville................George Cehanovsky
L'Incredibile...........Alessio De Paolis
Roucher.................Clifford Harvuot
Mathieu.................Ezio Flagello
Madelon.................Belén Amparan
Dumas...................Osie Hawkins
Fouquier Tinville.......Norman Scott
Schmidt.................Louis Sgarro
Major-domo..............Lloyd Strang
Conductor...............Fausto Cleva
So, despite the sometimes wonky sound quality, this recording is such a treasure to me.
Jussi Björling’s was the first tenor voice I fell in love with. After I had discovered opera in 1959, my parents gifted me with a two-LP set of excerpts from RCA’s Verdi and Puccini catalog. The singers on those records – Licia Albanese, Roberta Peters, Zinka Milanov, Jan Peerce, Robert Merrill, Leonard Warren, and Giorgio Tozzi, in addition to Björling – assumed god-like status for me.
It was the plaintive sweetness of Björling’s voice that really ignited my imagination; and thru the ensuing years, it has often been the tenors – Tucker, Bergonzi, Corelli, Vickers, Pavarotti, Domingo – who provided the greatest thrills and chills in the many performances I have seen and heard.
In the early 1930s, Björling made his first aria recordings, in Swedish. On a quiet afternoon yesterday, I was listening to – and savoring – the youthful lyricism of this remarkable voice; he had turned twenty in 1931:
Jussi Björling – TOSCA aria – in Swedish
By the end of that decade, Björling’s career was well underway, his voice was in full bloom, and he was singing in Italian:
Jussi Björling – O Paradiso – L’AFRICANA
He made many recordings in the ensuing years, including the Verdi REQUIEM under Fritz Reiner, which was recorded in June 1960; three months later, Björling died.
The great tenor was buried at Stora Tuna in the Dalarna province of his native land.
Two decades before the Reiner recording of the REQUIEM was made, Björling recorded the Ingemisco from the Verdi masterpiece:
Oberon's Glade 