Sunday Classics flashback/preview, part 2: We STILL haven't finished with Valerie Masterson

"Go to death and go to slaughter!" Major-General Stanley's intrepid daughter Mabel exhorts the scared-witless police, facing certain doom at the hands of the Pirates of Penzance, in the 1983 film version of Wilfred Leach's New York Shakespeare Festival production of The Pirates of Penzance with George Rose as the general, Rex Smith as Frederic, Tony Azito as the Sergent of Police, Linda Ronstadt as Mabel, and Louise Gold as Edith. Or, in a more "standard" performance, picking up at the entrance of the police:

GILBERT AND SULLIVAN: The Pirates of Penzance: Act II, Ensemble with solos (Sergeant of Police, Mabel, and Edith), "When the foeman bares his steel" . . . "Go, ye heroes, go to glory"

Donald Adams (bs), Sergeant of Police; Valerie Masterson (s), Mabel; Ann Hood (ms), Edith; John Reed (b), Major-General Stanley; D'Oyly Carte Opera Chorus, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. Decca, recorded 1965

by Ken

We're still flashbacking to soprano Valerie Masterson's too-small contribution to our posts of two weeks ago concerning Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer, serving also as a preview to a full post of more general appreciation of Masterson's work. Last Friday in our first "flashback/preview" we heard her as Woglinde in Wagner's Rhinegold (yes, it was in English), as Cleopatra in Handel's Julius Caesar, and again as Aline in The Sorcerer. For this second flashback/preview I thought we'd focus on ensembles, from both her G&S repertory and her regular operatic one.

Party at Violetta's: Valerie Masterson as Violetta and Beniamino Prior as Alfredo in the opening scene of La Traviata in San Francisco, 1980.

That same year, 1980, Masterson recorded Violetta, in English, with English National Opera forces under Sir Charles Mackerras, in one of the early English-language recordings of complete operas made possible by the Peter Moores Foundation (which has now grown to comprise a hefty chunk of the operatic repertory, including both Alban Berg operas). Here's the opening of the opera.

VERDI: La Traviata: Prelude; Act I, Opening Scene and Brindisi

Valerie Masterson (s), Violetta Valéry; John Brecknock (t), Alfredo Germont; Della Jones (ms), Flora Bervoix; Denis Dowling (b), Marquis d'Obigny; Geoffrey Pogson (t), Gastone; John Gibbs (b), Baron Douphol; English National Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Sir Charles Mackerras, cond. EMI (now Chandos), recorded Aug.-Oct. 1980


WOULDN'T YOU THINK THAT'D BE ENOUGH FOR
ANY SELF-RESPECTING FLASHBACK/PREVIEW?

But no, we have more! More Pirates, more Traviata, more more more!

JUST CLICK HERE.

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