"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Midnight Meme Of The Day!
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by Noah Trump is no stable genius. He is getting more and more untethered to the gravitational pull of reality every damn day. A few days ago, Trump said that he could get elected to any office in Europe. Yeah, right. Well, maybe, just maybe he could, but only with the help of his buddies like Vlad Putin or Kim Jong-un. So that might not be quite so insane of him, at least if measured on any scale of Trump insane pronouncements or actions. But, when Trump also said that he thought he would make a great general... well, a great Benedict Arnold maybe. The way he's fighting to destroy America, he's obviously that. But Trump longs to be a great general in the 2-bit dictator sense. No wonder he keeps firing generals. He wants to be the only one. He can give himself all the medals, weighing himself down so much that he gives himself a heart attack or falls face first into a puddle and drowns. Oh, happy day!
Sunday Classics flashback/preview, part 3: Traveling with Valerie Masterson from 1994 to 1967
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At the 5th International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival in Buxton (England) in 1998, Valerie Masterson (left), lead soprano of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1964 to 1969, offered a morning of reminiscences about her career in opera as well as operetta, then posed for pictures with one of her most distinguished D'Oyly Carte predecessors, Jean Hindmarsh.
by Ken
Valerie Masterson -- whom we've been "flashback/preview"-ing for two Fridays now (first here, then here) -- was 61 when the above photo was taken. As I've mentioned, it was only four earlier, at age 57, that she recorded the role of Anna (with Christopher Lee as the King) in the Jay label's first-ever recording of the complete score of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I. We're going to hear a couple of excerpts from that recording, but first, just to register the life-distance traveled, we jump back more than 20 years, to 1972, when her career with the D'Oyly Carte company was already several years behind her, to hear one of her "calling card" numbers, Mabel's showpiece aria "Poor wandering one" from The Pirates of Penzance.
We're going to hear a fuller version of the sequence in the click-through, from Masterson's complete 1967 Pirates with the D'Oyly Carte company, but here we pick up as the beautiful young ex-pirate apprentice Frederic, encountering the bevy of beautiful daughters of Major-General Stanley on an outing to this rocky Cornwall beach, has asked whether for an outcast like himself there isn't, first, "one maiden breast which does not feel the moral beauty of making worldly interest subordinate to sense of duty" (answer: alas, no) and, second, whether there's "not one maiden here whose homely face and bad complexion have caused all hope to disappear of ever winning man's affection," which is the point at which we come in.
It turns out, to the astonishment, horror, and I dare say gnawing envy of her sisters, that there is one: the late-arriving Mabel, who gives her unfeeling sisters what-for for being "deaf to pity's name" (rhymes with "for shame!"). Note the interesting and strikingly contemporary-sounding point raised by the reproached sisters:
The question is, had he not been a thing of beauty, would she be swayed by quite as keen a sense of duty?
GILBERT AND SULLIVAN: The Pirates of Penzance: Act I, General Stanley's daughters, "Alas, there's not one maiden here" . . . Mabel, "O sisters deaf to pity's name" . . . "Poor wandering one"
Thomas Round (t), Frederic; Valerie Masterson (s), Mabel; Gilbert and Sullivan Festival Chorus and Orchestra, Peter Murray, arr. and cond. Pye/Everest, recorded 1972
Even in 1994 we can hear flickers of the perky young Valerie in the Schoolroom Scene of The King and I, as the widowed Englishwoman Anna Leonowens, newly arrived in Bangkok in 1862 to provide a proper Western education for the many children of the King of Siam, takes up her new duties. (For the record, where Major-General Stanley's daughters are all adopted, the King's offspring are all his, by his consortium of wives.)
RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN: The King and I: Act I, Schoolroom Scene, Chorus of Royal Children, "We work and work from week to week" . . . Anna, "Getting to know you"
Valerie Masterson (s), Anna; children's chorus, National Symphony Orchestra, John Owen Edwards, cond. Jay, recorded July 1994
FOR THE RECORD, THE LINER NOTES REMIND US THAT "GETTING TO KNOW YOU" . . .
was a relatively late addition to The King and I. The story goes that between the New Haven and Boston tryout runs, the creative team, having made huge cuts to the show, was looking for a way to lighten Anna's character, and star Gertrude Lawrence had suggested a song for her and the children. Mary Martin, the star of Rodgers and Hammerstein's previous show, South Pacific, had come up to see the show and reminded R&H of the song "Suddenly Lucky," which had finally been cut at a late stage, with reluctance, from South Pacific. She thought it might do the trick. With new lyrics and further tinkering, it did the trick very nicely.
But the number from The King and I that I really want you to hear is . . . well, you'll find out in the click-through.
Sunday Classics flashback/preview, part 2: We STILL haven't finished with Valerie Masterson
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"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!
Sunday Classics Preview: "How quaint the ways of Paradox!"
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Rex Smith as Frederic, Kevin Kline as the Pirate King, and Angela Lansbury as Ruth seem amazingly unembarrassed in the "Paradox" trio from the film version of the New York Shakespeare Festival production of The Pirates of Penzance. (Yes, that was the one with Linda Ronstadt as Mabel.) I'm not endorsing, just embedding.
by Ken
In case you're just coming in: Our hero, young Frederic (the slave of duty of the title The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty), has manfully honored, all the way up to the day of his 21st birthday, the unfortunate error of his hard-of-hearing nurserymaid Ruth in apprenticing him, not to a ship's "pilot," but to a "pirate," but now has put his unfortunate apprenticeship behind him and found true love with the most beautiful of Major General Stanley's many beautiful daughters, Mabel, and is sworn to destroy his onetime mates, the infamous -- and more than a little goofy -- Pirates of Penzance.
At this point fate intervenes, in the form of what Mr. Gilbert (the word guy) may already have known, at this relatively early stage in their collaboration, that Mr. Sullivan (the music guy) did better than most anything, and better than most anybody: a trio.
GILBERT AND SULLIVAN: The Pirates of Penzance: Act II, [1] Recit., Now for the pirates' lair . . . [2] Young Frederic . . . [3] Trio, When you had left our pirate fold
RECITATIVE: FREDERIC. [1] Now for the pirates' lair! Oh, joy unbounded! Oh, sweet relief! Oh, rapture unexampled! At last I may atone, in some slight measure, For the repeated acts of theft and pillage Which, at a sense of duty's stern dictation, I, circumstance's victim, have been guilty!
[2] PIRATE KING and RUTH appear, armed.
KING. Young Frederic! (Covering him with pistol.) FRED. Who calls? KING. Your late commander! RUTH. And I, your little Ruth! (Covering him with pistol.) FRED. Oh, mad intruders, How dare ye face me? Know ye not, oh rash ones, That I have doomed you to extermination?
KING and RUTH hold a pistol to each ear.
KING. Have mercy on us! hear us, ere you slaughter! FRED. I do not think I ought to listen to you. Yet, mercy should alloy our stern resentment, And so I will be merciful. Say on!
TRIO: RUTH, KING, and FREDERIC. [3] RUTH. When you had left our pirate fold, We tried to raise our spirits faint, According to our custom old, With quip and quibble quaint. But all in vain the quips we heard, We lay and sobbed upon the rocks, Until to somebody occurred A startling paradox. FRED. A paradox? RUTH. [laughing] A paradox! A most ingenious paradox! We've quips and quibbles heard in flocks, But none to beat this paradox! ALL. A paradox, a paradox, etc.
KING. We knew your taste for curious quips, For cranks and contradictions queer; And with the laughter on our lips, We wished you there to hear. We said, "If we could tell it him, How Frederic would the joke enjoy!" And so we've risked both life and limb To tell it to our boy. FRED. [interested] That paradox? KING. [laughing] That most ingenious paradox! We've quips and quibbles heard in flocks, But none to beat that paradox! ALL. A paradox, a paradox, etc.
CHANT: KING.
For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I've no desire to be disloyal, Some person in authority, I don't know who, very likely the Astronomer Royal, Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty, One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and twenty. Through some singular coincidence -- I shouldn't be surprised if it were owing to the agency of an ill-natured fairy -- You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap-year, on the twenty-ninth of February; And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you'll easily discover, That though you've lived twenty-one years, yet, if we go by birthdays, you're only five and a little bit over! RUTH. and KING. Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ho! ho! ho! ho! FRED. Dear me! Let's see! [counting on fingers] Yes, yes; with yours my figures do agree! ALL. Ha! ha! ha! ho! ho! ho! ho! FRED. [more amused than any] How quaint the ways of Paradox! At common sense she gaily mocks! Though counting in the usual way, Years twenty-one I've been alive, Yet, reckoning by my natal day, I am a little boy of five! RUTH and KING. He is a little boy of five! Ha! ha! ha! ALL. A paradox, a paradox, A most ingenious paradox! Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!, etc.
RUTH and KING throw themselves back on seats, exhausted with laughter.
[1-3] Jon Mark Ainsley (t), Frederic; Donald Adams (bs), Pirate King; Gillian Knight (ms), Ruth; Welsh National Opera Orchestra, Charles Mackerras, cond. Telarc, recorded May 4-6, 1993
[2-3] James Milligan (bs-b), Pirate King; Monica Sinclair (c), Ruth; Richard Lewis (t), Frederic; Pro Arte Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded Dec. 30, 1958-Jan. 2, 1959
GILBERT AND SULLIVAN: The Pirates of Penzance: Overture
This isn't the first time at Sunday Classics that we've gone backward instead of forward. I thought this would be a good time to go back to the Overture to Pirates, as usual an artful (in this case, we might say, an especially artful) medley of tunes from the operetta. Listen for a familiar one at 5:46 of the Godfrey recording, 5:25 of the Sargent.
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded Dec. 4-8, 1967
Pro Arte Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded Feb. 6, 1958
REMINDER: YOU CAN NOW ACTUALLY HEAR THOSE CHOPIN PRELUDES (I HOPE)
A reminder that the March 21-23 posts focusing on the first two of Chopin's preludes, with performances of them by (count 'em) seven distinguished pianists, have been upgraded to include (I hope) actually playable audio clips! (What'll they think of next?)
As we sift through the entrails of the New Hampshire results, we find . . . no, wait, Major General Stanley's daughters have a better idea!
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"Let us shut our eyes, and talk about the weather."
"I still can't get terribly excited about this whole Iowa business, especially since almost everything about the caucus results is apt to be grotesquely misinterpreted and/or stretched wildly out of proportion." --some blogcrank on the night of the Iowa caucuses
Of course it's conducting unbecoming a blogcrank to say "I told you so," but as a matter of fact, this one went on to write:
Already on washingtonpost.com we hear about how Senator Clinton has suffered a "stinging setback" (Chris Cillizza, who else?), and how Huckaroo "[rode] a wave of evangelical fervor to victory" (with, oh so predictably, no mention of his populist rhetoric).
Maybe. (I guess if enough people say Senator Clinton was stingingly set back, she was.)
So let's see if we've got this straight. Just yesterday we all knew that:
* The only question about that pathetic crybaby Hillary Clinton's campaign was when she was going to withdraw in humiliation.
* The leading question about Barack Obama's hold on the Democratic nomination was when he's going to be assassinated.
* On the Republican side, well, it's hard to find even "conventional" wisdom on the Republican side. But I remember something about Minister Huckaroo riding his evangelical path to glory. After all, if Willard Romney couldn't buy Iowa, what damn state can he buy? [Apparently neither Florida nor South Carolina-- in his own campaign's assessment; they stopped the expensive TV ads which haven't done him any good. When do you think he'll throw in his hat?]
And now it's, um, Hillary vs. McCain, is it?
McCain? That thoroughly discredited pile of whoremongering electoral protoplasm? Yes, but did you notice the, er, people he's running against?
(Okay, the part about Willard is playing out. But nobody suggested that the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire are nuts.)
Sad old Tom Brokaw--who doesn't seem to have noticed that he's yesterday's noise, unless the problem is that he has--was reduced to opining that the commentariat might benefit from shutting up and just letting the voters speak. Those may not have been his exact words, but that was the spirit. This from the same Tom Brokaw who gabbed his way through every campaign silence his directors ever cued him into.
Which doesn't mean that our Tom couldn't be on to something. How about all those yammering heads simply--hmm, how to put this delicately?--shut their gosh-darned pieholes?
As it happens, I just happen to have a thought on the subject, prompted by those great Victorian philosophers W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. Okay, I'm fresh from a performance of The Pirates of Penzance, where just this situation comes up. Okay, the situations don't have a lot in common, but still, I think the solution that Major General Stanley's female-chorus-size complement of daughters come up with for their problem might work for our yammering heads.
It happens after that newly decommissioned pirate (and fully commissioned "thing of beauty," as the sisters describe him) Frederic has intruded on the family's outing in the "wilds" of Penzance, and sparked some compassionate interest--just a matter of duty, of course--of the beautiful Mabel.
Sister Edith opines:
What ought we to do, Gentle sisters, say! Propriety, we know, Says we ought to stay. While sympathy exclaims, "Free them from your tether-- Play at other games-- Leave them here together."
And sister Kate joins in:
Her case may, any day, Be yours, my dear, or mine. Let her make her hay While the sun doth shine. Let us compromise (Our hearts are not of leather) Let us shut our eyes, And talk about the weather.
"Yes, yes," all the sisters agree, "let's talk about the weather."
And so here is my proposed New Hampshire primary report, Penzance-style:
"How beautifully blue the sky, The glass is rising very high, Continue fine I hope it may, And yet it rained but yesterday. Tomorrow it may pour again (I hear the country wants some rain), Yet people say, I know not why, That we shall have a warm July."
Okay, bring on . . . er, aren't there a whole bunch of primaries coming up?
FINAL THOUGHT: WHAT WAS CHRIS MATTHEWS ON?
I'm reminded by a note from our friend Noah that I somehow didn't say anything about Christ Matthews' weird performance last night. No, no, weirder than usual! Usually his mash notes to the pols he's got one of his patented Chris-crushes on are at least sort of coherent. Last night he was mostly just babbling.
Remember when he had that sheet of exit-poll results, and was trying to read some significance into them? Like the peculiar number that 84 percent of voters who hate Obama voted for Clinton, which he seemed to think was so momentous--without even stopping to wonder how large a group we're talking about.
A number of people have noted that our Chris hasn't been looking well at all. Do you think he could have been on some kind of medication? Do you think he has any extra to share? (Gaunt as he looked, he seemed to be feeling pretty good.)
[1/28/2011] Flashback/preview, part 3: Traveling with Valerie Masterson from 1994 to 1967 (continued)
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RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN: The King and I: Act I, Anna, "When I think of Tom" . . . "Hello, young lovers"
When I think of Tom, I think about a night when the earth smelled of summer and the sky was streaked with white, and the soft mist of England was sleeping on a hill. I remember this, and I always will.
There are new lovers now on the same silent hill, looking on the same blue sea. And I know Tom and I are a part of them all -- and they're all a part of Tom and me. . . .
Valerie Masterson (s), Anna; National Symphony Orchestra, John Owen Edwards, cond. Jay, recorded July 1994
YES, THE SONG IS "HELLO, YOUNG LOVERS," BUT IT'S REALLY NOT THE SONG ITSELF I WANT YOU TO HEAR
When I wrote about the vicar Dr. Daly's first song in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer, I suggested that while the ballad itself, "Time was when love and I were well-acquainted," is quite lovely, it's the introductory recitative, "The air is filled with amatory numbers," that really gets to me, that rises to the level of musical magic. I would say the same thing about Anna's remembrance of her dead husband in The King and I. While the song proper, "Hello, young lovers," is just fine, and became justly famous, the emotional dynamite is in the introduction, or verse, or recitative -- however composer Richard Rodgers thought of it.
Melodically and harmonically, what Rodgers does here looks ridiculously simple, even obvious. The only thing is that nobody else did it, or I think could have done it -- with a tip of the hat to the simple but simply magical orchestration of Robert Russell Bennett. Rodgers's lyric-writing partner Oscar Hammerstein II could write corny, and I think there are traces of that in the song, but not here. The words are not only simple and beautiful but emotionally explosive.
It's all so stunningly written that the performers don't have to do much more than, well, just do it, unless you count the small (I'm being ironic) matter of meaning it, as it seems to me Valerie Masterson does so hauntingly in this recording.
Now we're going to jump back to 1967 and hear, well, not quite the full scene, but more of the early scene from The Pirates of Penzance, starting from the moment when young Frederic announces his ex-piratical presence to General Stanley's daughters, who are about to roll up their stockings, unaware that they're in the presence of (gasp) a man!
GILBERT AND SULLIVAN: The Pirates of Penzance: Act I, Frederic, "Stop, ladies, pray" . . . "Oh, is there not one maiden breast?" . . . Mabel, "O sisters deaf to pity's name" . . . "Poor wandering one"
Philip Potter (t), Frederic; Jean Allister (ms), Edith; Pauline Wales (ms), Kate; Valerie Masterson (s), Mabel; D'Oyly Carte Opera Chorus, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded Dec. 4-8, 1967
As we've heard in Masterson's Julius Caesar, Faust, and Traviata excerpts, the voice retained most of the brightness and flexibility of her D'Oyly Carte years for a couple of decades. Here, from the 1982 G&S program with tenor Robert Tear from which we've already heard excerpts, is a 1982 "Poor wandering one" (without chorus).
GILBERT AND SULLIVAN: The Pirates of Penzance: Act I, Mabel, "Poor wandering one"
Valerie Masterson (s), Mabel; Bournemouth Sinfonietta, Kenneth Alwyn, cond. EMI, recorded June 23-24, 1982
NOW WE HAVE TWO BONUSES (WHICH I THINK SOUNDS MORE DIGNIFIED THAN "LEFTOVERS")
I made these two audio clips thinking I might find a place for them in a flashback/preview that has already grown to more-or-less full post length. I hate to waste them, though.
First, from the complete King and I recording, we have the lovely "March of the Siamese Children." I imagined using it to lead into the Schoolroom Scene, but for technical reasons that didn't work out.
RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN: The King and I: Act I, "March of the Siamese Children"
National Symphony Orchestra, John Owen Edwards, cond. Jay, recorded July 1994
Finally, another excerpt from the 1972 "Gilbert and Sullivan for All" series, recordings made in conjunction with the hour-long film versions of eight G&:S operas (plus the Burnand and Sullivan Cox and Box) featuring the touring troupe of that name assembled by former D'Oyly Carte tenor Thomas Round, with (by then also former) bass Donald Adams. Masterson sang four of the heroines: her old standbys Mabel, Yum-Yum (The Mikado), and Josephine (HMS Pinafore), all of which she recorded complete during her tenure with the D'Oyly Carte company, plus a role she hadn't sung much, the "strolling singer" Elsie Maynard in The Yeomen of the Guard.
As you may have suspected from "Poor wandering one," these are not among Masterson's happier recordings (that 1972 "Poor wandering one" is significantly less easily and luminously sung than the 1967 and 1982 ones we've also heard tonight), which I suspect reflects the conditions of haste and lack of care under which they were made. Nevertheless, given her suitability to the almost totally serious role of Elsie, here she is with her performing partner and fiancé, the jester Jack Point (sung by John Cartier, longtime backup to D'Oyly Carte principal comedy baritone John Reed, whose contributions are one of the most interesting things about the "Gilbert and Sullivan for All" series), introducing themselves to (hopefully) interested onlookers.
GILBERT AND SULLIVAN: The Yeomen of the Guard: Act I, Duet, Jack Point and Elsie Maynard, "I have a song to sing, O"
John Cartier (b), Jack Point; Valerie Masterson (s), Elsie Maynard; Gilbert and Sullivan Festival Chorus and Orchestra, Peter Murray, arr. and cond. Pye, recorded 1972
I THOUGHT WE WERE GOING TO GET TO VIOLETTA's BIG SCENE FROM ACT I OF LA TRAVIATA, BUT . . .
As I said, we're already pretty well over the border for a flashback/preview. I did kind of want to have Violetta's "Sempre libera" on hand here, since a lot of people think Sullivan had it in mind when he wrote "Poor wandering one," but, well, you can't always get what you want.
I still don't know when we're going to get to the promised Valerie Masterson post. Or maybe we'll just keep doing flashback/previews.
[1/21/2011] Flashback/Preview, part 2: We STILL haven't finished with Valerie Masterson (continued)
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In this clip of "Handel reminiscing" (maybe somebody out there knows what it's from?), Masterson as Galatea and tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson as Acis sing the duet "Oh, happy we" from the composer's Acis and Galatea.
I still haven't quite figured out how to handle this planned Valerie Masterson post, so for now we're just going to do the originally planned second "flashback/preview." I know the main post isn't going to come this week, when we're going to be concerned with Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, or next week, when we're still going to be concerned with Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. To complicate matters, I've gotten some more material I want to share, including a complete recording of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I, in which Masterson, at 57, did some lovely work as Anna. We'll definitely be hearing some of that.
For now I thought we'd hear the other Traviata we heard Rosanna and Carteri and Cesare Valletti sing awhile back, the great duet from Alfredo and Violetta's first scene alone together, "Un dì felice."
VERDI: La Traviata: Act I, Duet, Alfredo and Violetta, "I saw a vision ethereal"
Valerie Masterson (s), Violetta Valéry; John Brecknock (t), Alfredo Germont; English National Opera Orchestra, Sir Charles Mackerras, cond. EMI, recorded Aug.-Oct. 1980
Okay, one more Traviata excerpt: the moment in Act II when Violetta, at the desperate urging of Alfredo's unexpectedly arrive father (eventually we're going to hear that whole scene, prepares to brush him off -- "Amami, Alfredo" in the original.
VERDI: La Traviata: Act II, Scene 1, Scene, Violetta and Alfredo, "What's that?" . . . "Love me, Alfredo"
Valerie Masterson (s), Violetta Valéry; John Brecknock (t), Alfredo Germont; English National Opera Orchestra, Sir Charles Mackerras, cond. EMI, recorded Aug.-Oct. 1980
Now I thought we might pin down the Pirates of Penzance excerpt we heard at the outset of this post, the great ensemble beginning with the Sergeant of Police's "When the foeman bears his steel." First I thought we'd hear a performance of the Pirates Overture I don't think we've heard, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner. Two tunes to note: the lovely lyrical one at 2:38, Mabel's "Ah, leave me not to pine," and the theme of the great "Paradox" trio at 5:04.
GILBERT AND SULLIVAN: The Pirates of Penzance: Overture
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. Philips, recorded February 1992
In that opening performance of "When the foeman bears his steel" we heard Donald Adams as the Sergeant of Police; his role in Pirates was the Pirate King, one of his great roles. Now, as bad as the constables' predicament seems in this great ensemble, it gets worse when they learn that they are not to be led into gory battle against the Pirates of Penzance by the intrepid former apprentice pirate Frederic. As a reminder of this comes about, we're going to listen to an excerpt we've already heard, the aforementioned "Paradox" trio, from the glorious 1957 D'Oyly Carte Pirates:
GILBERT AND SULLIVAN: The Pirates of Penzance: Act II, Recitative and Trio, Frederic, Pirate King, and Ruth, "Now for the pirates' lair" . . . "Young Frederic" . . . "When you had left our pirate fold"
Thomas Round (t), Frederic; Donald Adams (bs), Pirate King; Ann Drummond-Grant (c), Ruth; New Symphony Orchestra of London, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded Oct.-Nov. 1957
When Frederic breaks this extraordinary news to his beloved Mabel, she tries to persuade him that he really doesn't owe the pirates any more time, leading to the great duet that begins with Mabel singing the aforementioned "Ah, leave me not to pine alone and desolate." This is a recording Masterson made long after leaving the D'Oyly Carte company (in 1969).
GILBERT AND SULLIVAN: The Pirates of Penzance: Act II, Duet, Mabel and Frederic, "Stay, Frederic, stay" . . . "Ah, leave me not to pine alone and desolate" . . . "Oh, here is love"
Valerie Masterson (s), Mabel; Robert Tear (t), Frederic; Bournemouth Sinfonietta, Kenneth Alwyn, cond. EMI, recorded June 23-24, 1982
Finally I thought we might sneak in another duet from that record, Here's a How-De-Do! A Gilbert & Sullivan Gala.
GILBERT AND SULLIVAN: The Mikado: Act I, Duet, Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum, "Were you not to Koko plighted"
Valerie Masterson (s), Mabel; Robert Tear (t), Frederic; Bournemouth Sinfonietta, Kenneth Alwyn, cond. EMI, recorded June 23-24, 1982
IN TOMORROW NIGHT'S PREVIEW --
We're going to be hearing the first half of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition on Sunday, in three versions (the composer's original piano version and the orchestral versions by Maurice Ravel and Leopold Stokowski). Tomorrow night we preview that first half.
