Sunday Classics special: Remembering Margaret Price, Part 4 -- in search of Pamina in "The Magic Flute"

Pay no attention to the "staging"; this is actually a pretty darned good performance of the Magic Flute Overture, by Colin Davis and the Covent Garden orchestra. (It may go a teensy bit far in the other direction -- i.e., being a bit too tautly structured, but it's still a significantly better performance, I think, than the Davis-conducted one we're going to hear in the click-through.)

by Ken

Not surprisingly, considering the important role Mozart played in Margaret Price's career, in our remembrance of her career, Mozart roles have figured prominently, including "extended glimpses" of her Countess in The Marriage of Figaro. and her near-peerless Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte. We're going to hit just one more before moving on to other composers.

I don't know that the lyric soprano role of Pamina in The Magic Flute would have seemed an obvious choice for her in the early years of her international celebrity, when the vocal fireworks of which she was so demonstrably capable -- as demonstrated so spectacularly in her Fiordiligi, of course -- might rather have suggested the coloratura pyrotechnics Queen of the Night. I don't know that she ever sang the Queen of the Night, or for that matter how important a part Pamina ever actually played for her, but it is a role she grew into, and I think the results are worth our attention.

FOR OUR QUICK TOUR OF DAME
MARGARET'S PAMINA, CLICK HERE

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