These four variously special singers -- Margaret Price (s), Yvonne Minton (ms), Alexander Young (t), and Justino Díaz (bs-b) -- share a particular connection

MONDAY EVENING UPDATE: The post still needs some filling in and filling out, even now that all the texts and our always-intended Yvonne Minton Wagner excerpt are in place. However, as noted below there's still a bunch of other stuff of Minton's we should really hear, now while we're listening -- and so too, at least to some extent, with the others. It has occurred to me, I'm afraid to say, that we may be facing an overtime situation, by which I have in mind, over the next few days, going into one or more overflow, or "bonus," posts. Uh-oh! -- Ken

The young Margaret Price amd Yvonne Minton

MOZART: Così fan tutte, K. 588: Act I, Duet, Fiordiligi and Dorabella, "Ah guarda, sorella"

[A garden by the seashore. FIORDILIGI and DORABELLA are both gazing at miniatures hanging round their necks.]

FIORDILIGI: Ah tell me, sister,
If one could ever find
A nobler face,
A sweeter mouth.
DORABELLA: Just look,
See what fire
Is in his eye,
If flames and darts
Do not seem to flash forth!
FIORDILIGI: This is the face
Of a soldier and a lover.
DORABELLA: This is a face
both charming and alarming.
FIORDILIGI and DORABELLA: How happy I am!
If ever my heart
changes its affection,
may love make me
live in pain.

Margaret Price (s), Fiordiligi; Yvonne Minton (ms), Dorabella; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded Jan.-Feb. 1971

by Ken

No, we're not finished with Salome. I've just gotten sidetracked. Hey, as occasional visitors know, it happens. (Frequent visitors know that it happens, um, frequently.) What caused it this time was an unscheduled encounter with a composer who shares with Richard Strauss a particular gift of imagination: the ability to conjure a startling range of musics, which really is what our Salome explorations have been about. I've usually thought of it, especially in an operatic composer, as a remarkable range of empathy -- the ability to imagine all his characters from the inside. But what good is identifying with those characters if you don't have the ability to create them in arrestingly individual musical ways?

We're not going to get to our mystery composer this week, because I thought we needed to fix in our heads the musical identities of the singers who were featured in this unexpected encounter: the SATB quartet (as noted in the post title) of soprano Margaret Price, mezzo Yvonne Minton, tenor Alexander Young, and bass-baritone Justino Díaz. So that's really all we're going to do this week, hear some vocal samples. And I thought we'd do it in voice-range order, high to low. In fact, we've already heard today from our "S" and "A," both of whom, in further fact, have made frequent Sunday Classics appearances.

MARGARET PRICE, soprano
(1941-2011),
born in Blackwood,
Monmouthshire, South Wales

Boy, have we heard a lot of Dame Margaret! The retrospective series that followed her passing in 2011 extended to at least a ninth part, with at least one more promised therein, to be devoted to Price as song-singer; neither my memory nor the archives provide conclusive evidence as to whether this ever happened. (If it did, I can't trace it.)

It's hard not to keep returning to her Fiordiligi in Otto Klemperer's 1971 recording of Così fan tutte, and I haven't tried very hard to resist. It was that recoding that made her an international sensation, and it's this earlier part of the Welsh soprano's career that's going to matter most for our present purposes. Not the very earliest part, which stretches back to 1962, when she made her operatic debut with Welsh National Opera as Cherubino in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro. The following year, at the ripe old age of 23, she made an unscheduled debut at Covent Garden, as a late replacement for Teresa Berganza, whom she was understudying. Then-Covent Garden music director Georg Solti apparently didn't want her in the company, saying she "lacks charm," and she was specifically contracted only for understudying.

Price continued to work on the voice, and kept at it after the period we're looking at. Evidence of her versatility is in a Mozart-aria LP she recorded, I believe after the Così with Klemperer, where she sings all three principal female roles from The Marriage of Figaro. Taking the arias in dramatic order, we start in Act II with her first operatic role, Cherubino (a notably earnest, un-cutesy one), and proceed through her eventual role, the Countess, in Act III to Susanna in Act IV.

Salome the opera has a built-in perv-o-meter for Salome the character -- his name is Herod

Cheryl Barker as Salome and John Pickering
as Herod in Opera Australia's new Salome

HEROD: Salome, come, drink wine with me!
An exquisite wine! Caesar himself sent it to me.
Moisten your red lips with it; then I will empty the cup.

Jon Vickers (t), Herod; Orchestre National de France, Rudolf Kempe, cond. Live performance from the Orange Festival, July 14, 1974

Karl Liebl (t), Herod; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. Live performance, Mar. 13, 1965

Kenneth Riegel (t), Herod; Hamburg State Opera Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded live, Nov. 4, 1970

Ramón Vinay (t), Herod; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Dimitri Mitropoulos, cond. Live performance, Jan. 8, 1955

Gerhard Stolze (t), Herod; Vienna Philharmonic, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded October 1961

Set Svanholm (t), Herod; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. Live performance, Jan. 19, 1952

by Ken

With last week's posts ("Strauss's operatic beginnings: We don't need an excuse to listen to Till Eulenspiegel -- but the Symphonia domestica, maybe so?" and "The start of something: Here's the promised follow-up to the post spotlighting Till Eulenspiegel and the Symphonia domestica -- focusing now on the already-heard openings of six Strauss operas") stretching on and on in both time and blogspace, we have not much of a post this week, though it involved a heap of audio editing, which is at least better than having to think.


OUR QUESTION: HOW DOES HEROD GET FROM THE
CLIP ABOVE TO THE ONE WE'RE GOING TO HEAR?

The start of something: Here's the promised follow-up to the post spotlighting Till Eulenspiegel and the Symphonia domestica -- focusing now on the already-heard openings of six Strauss operas

Sure, literally speaking Guntram (with, we might note, a libretto by the composer, Wagner-style, something Strauss would attempt again only once more, still perhaps problematically but, I think, a lot more successfully, with the sort-of-autobiographical Intermezzo) was the start of something, but could anyone have guessed "of what"? (We can also note at the very top that Strauss's first opera was "Dedicated to my dear parents.")

by Ken

To recap, our subject is still Salome, Richard Strauss's third opera, focusing here on the powerful anecdotal evidence from these snatches of the operas that preceded and followed Salome of the startling transformation that took place, all at once, in Strauss's ability to make the operatic medium work for him. In the main portion of this week's post, "Strauss's operatic beginnings: We don't need an excuse to listen to Till Eulenspiegel -- but the Symphonia domestica, maybe so?" we heard these same operatic clips, in this same order, with no identification of either the operas or the performers. In this concluding portion of the post we have all those identifications available, as well as English texts for most of the sung portions of these excerpts.

As I'm sure you guessed, Operas X and Y were Strauss's pre-Salome operatic endeavors, the turgid late Romantic stinker Guntram (first performed in 1894) and its "satirical" successor, Feuersnot (first performed in 1901). Perhaps surprisingly, given how adept Strauss would become at devising operatic openings that plunge us directly into the action, he began his operatic career with a full-fledged overture. Oy, is it full-fledged; it just fledges on and on -- and on. (Note that it's not entirely free-standing, as we might expect an "overture" to be in one frequently proposed distinction between an "overture" and a "prelude," which not only tends to be shorter but normally flows directly into the opening scene. The Guntram whatever-you-want-to-call-it flows directly into the equally nondescript music of the opening scene.

[AFTERTHOUGHT: I have to say that rather unexpectedly the Guntram Overture has started to grow on me -- hey, this is not some no-talented musical hack we're dealing with. But it still seems to meander hopelessly, stretching this thin material many long, long minutes beyond the breaking point. -- Ken]

[X] R. STRAUSS: Guntram, Op. 25: Overture


BBC Symphony Orchestra, John Pritchard, cond. Gala, broadcast performance, 1981

Hungarian State Orchestra, Eve Queler, cond. CBS-Hungaroton, recorded 1984


MOVING ON TO "OPERA Y": FEUERSNOT

Strauss's operatic beginnings: We don't need an excuse to listen to Till Eulenspiegel -- but the Symphonia domestica, maybe so?

MONDAY NIGHT UPDATE: I think we've finally gotten this post to where it wanted to go. Thanks for your patience. [OK, maybe not "finally" -- ]
TUESDAY-THURSDAY UPDATES: I've added another performance of Till Eulenspiegel, fiddled a fair amount with the opera clips (and added English texts), and as explained below finally spun off the section of fully identified Strauss-opera audio clips into a separate follow-up post. -- Ken


In Munich's Herkulessaal, Lorin Maazel leads the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in a beautifully relaxed performance of Till Eulenspiegel.

by Ken

In listening to and thinking about Richard Strauss's Salome, as we've been doing for a number of weeks ("Some out-of-this-world sounds from a singer who proves mistress of a surprising role" [11/18], "After all, the Page in Salome does warn that horrible things are going to happen" [11/25], and "Word is that "Today we are not shocked by Salome." Really?" [12/2]), it's hard not to be aware that when the first performance of the composer's unmistakable breakthrough opera took place, on December 9, 1905, he was already 41½. With regard to Salome's "breakthrough" standing, as Wikipedia notes, "Within two years, it had been given in 50 other opera houses."

It's not that Strauss was a "late starter." After all, by the time of Salome, his Op. 54, he was already world-famous, as the composer of a stream of music that quickly joined and remains firmly ensconced in the standard repertory -- the likes of Aus Italien (From Italy, Op. 16, 1886), Don Juan (Op. 20, 1888), Macbeth (Op. 23, 1886-88), Death and Transfiguration (Op. 24, 1889), Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, Op. 28, 1894-95), Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra, Op. 30), Don Quixote (Op. 35, 1896-97), Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life, Op. 40, 1898), and the Symphonia domestica (Op. 53, 1902-03). There were also assortments of chamber music and solo-piano works, concertos for piano (the Burleske, 1886), violin (Op. 8, 1881-82), and horn (Op. 11, 1882-83; there would be another horn concerto, but not till 1942) -- and, oh yes, nearly 150 songs.


AND THERE'D BEEN TWO OPERAS BEFORE SALOME
(AND WE'RE GOING TO HEAR SNATCHES OF BOTH!)

To return to Caballé for a moment (a moment of love-death) --

How softly and gently
he smiles,
how sweetly
his eyes open -
can you see, my friends,
do you not see it?
How he glows
ever brighter,
raising himself high
amidst the stars?
Do you not see it?
How his heart
swells with courage,
gushing full and majestic
in his breast?
How in tender bliss
sweet breath
gently wafts
from his lips -
Friends! Look!
Do you not feel and see it?
Do I alone hear
this melody
so wondrously
and gently
sounding from within him,
in bliss lamenting,
all-expressing,
gently reconciling,
piercing me,
soaring aloft,
its sweet echoes
resounding about me?
Are they gentle
aerial waves
ringing out clearly,
surging around me?
Are they billows
of blissful fragrance?
As they seethe
and roar about me,
shall I breathe,
shall I give ear?
Shall I drink of them,
plunge beneath them?
Breathe my life away
in sweet scents?
In the heaving swell,
in the resounding echoes,
in the universal stream
of the world-breath -
to drown,
to founder -
unconscious -
utmost rapture!

Montserrat Caballé (s), Isolde; Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra, Alain Lombard, cond. Erato, recorded September 1977

by Ken

We're in I-forget-how-many-levels of digression from our serial remembrance of Montserrat Caballé. As of last week's post ("Word is that 'Today we are not shocked by Salome.' Really?") we've been drawn in -- by way of Caballé's (in my experience) unique recording of Salome -- to what seems to me the inescapable shockfulness of the 40-year-old Richard Strauss's breakthrough opera, which even when we're done we're going to have to pursue, without a Caballé connection, into the equally inescapable shockfulness of the Strauss opera that followed it, Elektra.

So this week I thought we'd pause that and return for a moment to just-plain-Caballé, and a recording I'd been saving for the final installment of this series, whatever and whenever that happens. Which, actually, we've now just heard: that Erato studio recording of Isolde's "Liebestod," which for me shows beautifully what Caballé could do when the big, beautiful voice was really well controlled technically and interpretively. It is, I think, just a gorgeous performance, and gorgeous in the ways that were specifically hers.


SO, AS LONG AS WE'RE HERE --

I thought we might as well bring back Liebestod performances we've already heard (I'm now enmeshed in what turns out to be the monumental job of technically rehabilitating the 2000 post that was the source for a number of them) and adding a couple more. We've got an assortment here: a couple of the all-time great Isoldes (Flagstad heard in her shimmering prime, Nilsson in what's still my favorite Tristan recording of hers), some singers who sensibly never essayed the complete role plus some who didn't but you wish had.

WAGNER: Tristan und Isolde: Act III, Isolde, "Mild und leise wie er lächelt" (Liebestod)

Word is that "Today we are not shocked by Salome." Really?

LATE SUNDAY UPDATE: Those who've visited earlier know that this post has been a construction zone. Now, though, apart from incidental fixes (if I find the courage to look at the thing), we've got our four performances of the "Dance for me, Salome" excerpt (with performance notes) and this week's four performances of the Final Scene. -- Ken

Salomé by Gustave Moreau (1876)

Salome's Dance (aka "Dance of the Seven Veils"): The musicians begin to play a wild dance. SALOME, at first motionless, reaches up high and gives the musicians a sign. At once the wild rhythm is succeeded by a gentle, rocking melody. SALOME then dances the Dance of the Seven Veils. After a moment of apparent exhaustion she leaps up, as if newly elated. For a moment she lingers in a trance-like state by the cistern in which JOCHANAAN is held prisoner; then she rushes forward and lands at HEROD's feet.

Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Heinz Rögner, cond. Berlin Classics, recorded Feb.-Mar. 1977

Vienna Philharmonic, André Previn, cond. DG, recorded October 1992

New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded Oct. 12, 1965

Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. Decca, recorded 1960

by Ken

I see that I didn't actually identify the music we heard above. As I'm pretty sure you figured out, it's "Salome's Dance" (aka the "Dance of the Seven Veils") from Richard Strauss's Salome. Actually, we've already heard an assortment of performances of the "Dance" -- two weeks ago, as "a Salome bonus" to the post "Some out-of-this-world sounds from a singer who proves mistress of a surprising role," part of our still-ongoing remembrance of Montserrat Caballé, whom we were encountering as a (to me) surprisingly remarkable exponent of the title role, at least in the RCA recording conducted pretty remarkably by Erich Leinsdorf.

(I've been listening to two other Caballé Salome performances, one earlier and one later than the recoding, as well as the still-later recording of the Final Scene, and while some of the qualities I find so remarkable in the RCA performance can be glimpsed in other performances, none of them seem really in the same class.)

In the course of playing with some of my Salome materials I happened to glance, apparently for the first time, at the background essay on the opera which Michael Kennedy wrote for the booklet of the 1985 CD issue of the classic 1961 Nilsson-Solti-Decca recording, which looks to be quite an interesting piece, but in which my eyes lit on a string of words that kind of made my blood run cold. After writing at length about the shock that the opera had caused in its early years, he writes:

"Today we are not shocked by Salome . . ."

Huh??? We're not shocked by Salome??? Huh???


"DANCE FOR ME, SALOME"

After all, the Page in Salome does warn that horrible things are going to happen

Salome (Angela Denoke at Covent Garden, 2010) finally gets to kiss the mouth of the prophet Jochanaan, who may have wished he'd let her do it when his head was still attached to him.

by Ken

It was as part of our Caballé-remembrance series that, last week, we ventured into Salome ("Some out-of-this-world sounds from a singer who proves mistress of a surprising role"). Now, having ventured there, I don't see how we can leave without some further exploring, and for this week's installment we're not even going to have Caballé at the center -- though I think you'll notice, if you compare her with the (very fine) other Salomes we'll be hearing, that she's plugged into the role in a way that is very much her own.

Just to recap, the opera is set on a terrace of the palace of Herod, the tetrarch of Judea, inside which a great feast is taking place. For a while the audience is invited to observe the wild infatuation of a handsome young captain, Narraboth, with the princess Salome, daughter of Herodias and stepdaughter (as well as niece) of the tetrarch (her father, Herodias's first husband, was Herod's half-brother), and we've been introduced to some of the many palace functionaries and guests who populate the terrace (and the opera), including a page of Herodias (presumably male) who appears as fixated on Narraboth as the latter is on Salome. We've also heard briefly from a still-invisible character: Safely locked away in a heavily guarded cistern is the prophet Jochanaan, aka John the Baptist, who despite his unfortunate incaraceration voices a soaring brand of religious ecstasy, for which Strauss found an appropriately ecstatic musical format, even as the prophet details the sea of human corruption all around.

Last week we heard Salome make her escape from the banquet to the terrace, and this week we're going to overlap a clip we heard last week, so we can immediately hear Salome switching on a dime from pouting rage to angelically youthful sweetness. One point to note: As far as I know we're not given an age for Salome, but the implication seems fairly clear that she's still a teenager, and again I would call attention to the young-girlishness that comes out so strongly in Strauss's musical setting, at least if the singer can make it come out, which it seems to me Caballé did, at least in the RCA recording of the opera conducted by Erich Leinsdorf, better than any other Salome I've heard. Again, the sound that's made by a big-voiced singer capable of scaling the voice down has an intensity and excitement that a smaller-voiced singer can't match -- as a matter of fact, as I think I've already mentioned, Birgit Nilsson, the greatest of the post-Welitsch Salomes, who pretty much obliterated the competition in the flaming outbursts, did some of her most memorable work in Salome's quiet moments.


LET'S HEAR SOME MUSIC ALREADY!

Some out-of-this-world sounds from a singer who proves mistress of a surprising role

How good it is to see in the moon.
It is like a silver flower, cool and chaste.
Yes, like the beauty of a virgin,
who has remained pure.

How sweet is the air here.
Here I can breathe.

by Ken

Yes, yes, something happens at the end of the first clip, something I couldn't edit out, which is actually kind of the point. In Richard Strauss's Salome things just kind of happen, one thing after another, and one of the miracles of Strauss's breakthrough opera -- here we might bear in mind that his operatic breakthrough didn't come till he was 40 -- is that he had music, utterly extraordinary music, for all those things that happen.

As many of you will know, the two audio clips we've already heard are reversed -- for visual effect, the visual effect being the illustration of the full moon, which clearly favors our moon-clip. In the opera, though, the "How sweet is the air" clip comes first; it's almost the first thing we hear from Salome after she makes her entrance -- fleeing from the banquet inside to the terrace of the palace of the Tetrarch Herod, her stepfather (and also her uncle, which is even worse than it sounds, but that's another sordid story for another time). We'll be hearing these musical bits in context shortly, with all participants properly identified.


OH YES, THE SINGER, OF COURSE, IS . . .

I swear, Caballé and Domingo were electrifying that night, but I will still need to scrounge to give you an idea of what I remember

AMELIA: Grant me, o Lord,
strength to cleanse my heart
and allay the inflamed
throbbing in my breast.

by Ken

No, there's nothing wrong with your computer, or your ears -- there's no singing in this audio clip. What it is -- in what I think is a pretty special performance (we'll talk more about this later) -- is a chunk of the orchestral introduction to Act II of Verdi's A Masked Ball (Un Ballo in maschera), which so powerfully recalls this crucial moment from Act I, Scene 2, when Amelia visits the fortune-teller Ulrica seeking help with a desperate problem: that she's hopelessly in love with her husband's best friend, an unfortunate complication being that the proceedings happen to be overhead by that self-same best friend, who happens to share that very passion, and who, although he too knows that he mustn't act on it, regrettably doesn't necessarily not do things he knows he mustn't, self-denial not being his strong suit.


LET'S HEAR THIS IMPASSIONED MOMENT FOR REAL

In a nutshell: It's tough to conjure Caballé up in the most electric performance I heard her give

AMELIA: Grant me, o Lord,
strength to cleanse my heart
and allay the inflamed
throbbing in my breast.
ULRICA [overlapping]: Go, do not tremble; the charm
will dry your tears.
Be bold, and in the drink you will drink
oblivion of your anguish.
RICCARDO [overlapping]: (Ah! I am on fire and am determined
to follow her, even were it into the abyss.
if only I may breathe
the air of your sighs, Amelia.)

-- English translation by Lionel Salter

Montserrat Caballé (s), Amelia; Erzsébet Komlóssy (c), Ulrica; Flaviano Labò (t), Riccardo; RAI Symphony Orchestra, Rome, Bruno Bartoletti, cond. Broadcast performance, Oct. 14, 1969

Montserrat Caballé (s), Amelia; Lili Chookasian (c), Ulrica; Plácido Domingo (t), Riccardo; Orchestra of the Gran Teatro del Liceo (Barcelona), Giuseppe Patanè, cond. Live performance, 1972

Montserrat Caballé (s), Amelia; Ruza Baldani (ms), Ulrica; José Carreras (t), Riccardo; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, cond. Live performance, Feb. 13, 1975

Montserrat Caballé (s), Amelia; Patricia Payne (c), Ulrica; José Carreras (t), Riccardo; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded 1978

by Ken

This week's actual post, a continuation of our series remembering Montserrat Caballé (see below), is mostly done, but it's going to be tricky to finish, and I'm not going to have a chance to do it even semi-properly till later today if I'm going to get to my walking tour of Brooklyn's Brownsville area. Meanwhile I hope this tease-post will give you some idea why I've been putting off trying to deal with this particular Caballé remembrance -- can you make head or tail of these four audio clips?

Please revisit -- there's going to be some interesting stuff, a fair amount of it non-Caballé, which I hope will be worth your while.

SUNDAY NIGHT UPDATE: Whew! Check it out!


THE CABALLÉ REMEMBRANCE SERIES SO FAR

Montserrat Caballé (1933-2018) (11/14/2018)
Yes, we have more Caballé, but mostly as a spur to reflecting on my (and others' too?) relationship to music (and other arts too?) (10/21/2018)
More Caballé: as Lauretta, Luisa, Violetta, Lucia, and Elisabeth (10/28/2018)
Queen Elisabeth stands up to King Philip, Caballé-style (11/4/2018)
In a nutshell: It's tough to conjure up Caballé in the most electric performance I heard her give (11/11/2018 [1])
I swear, Caballé and Domingo were electrifying that night, but I will still need to scrounge to give you an idea of what I remember (11/11/2016 [2])

#

Queen Elisabeth stands up to King Philip, Caballé-style

MONDAY EVENING UPDATE: In addition to making the small addition to the opening audio clips described in the revised post text, I did substantially revise that text. -- Ken

The French LP issue of the always-problematic 1971 EMI Don Carlos

ELISABETH: I dare it! Yes!
You know it well: Once my hand
was promised to your son.
Now I belong to you, submissive to God,
but I am immaculate as the lily.
And now there is suspicion
of the honor of Elisabeth . . .
there is doubt about me . . .
and the person who commits the outrage is the king.

Montserrat Caballé (s), Elisabeth; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, cond. Live performance, Apr. 29, 1972

Montserrat Caballé (s), Elisabeth; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. EMI, recorded Aug. 18-31, 1971

by Ken

We've actually heard one of the above performances (the one from the 1972 Met broadcast) of Queen Elisabeth's haunting reply to her husband in Act IV, Scene 1 of Verdi's Don Carlos, the scene in King Philip's study -- except that last week, in our ongoing remembrance of Montserrat Caballé, we heard it in its proper place in the scene, which follows the sleepless king's break-of-dawn monologue and his subsequent just-past-dawn beatdown by the Grand Inquisitor, when the queen storms into the study demanding justice for the disappearance of her jewel box, containing "all my treasure, my jewels . . . other objects still dearer to me," which the king proceeds to produce, extracting from it a portrait of his son Carlos and expressing indignation when she "dares to confess" this, and she responds with indignation of her own, and in the deepest sadness as well as anger asserts her integrity and innocence.

[UPDATE NOTE: After the original posting, I rejiggered the pair of opening clips, which originally picked up at the queen's second line, "Ben lo sapete," but now have been made to include her first line, "Io l'oso! Si!" My original thought had been that if we just skipped over that first line, we could get away with just listening to the clips, without the need for all that explanation of what exactly Elisabeth is "daring." My second thought, however, was that no, we really do need to hear the first line.]

We're going to hear the "contextual" version again (this time with the ensuing quartet edited in, and bracketed with the same span from the near-contemporaneous EMI recording conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, with which I've had a difficult, deeply disappointed relationship all its life.

For example, given the already-known sonic homogenizing of U.S. Angel editions of EMI recordings, I invested in a German edition. They did sound better, but not enough (at least in this case) to upgrade my perception of the performance

Above we hear two performances by Montserrat Caballé, mere months apart, of Queen Elisabeth's haunting reply to King Philip in Act IV, Scene 1 of Verdi's Don Carlos after he indignantly charges her with "dar[ing] to confess" that yes, inside the casket that he has presumably had stolen from her, containing (as she has put it) "all my treasure, my jewels . . . other objects still dearer to me," there's a portrait of Prince Carlos (his son, her stepson). I should add, by way of update, that in the original posting I discreetly skipped over Elisabeth's first line, "Io l'oso! Si!," thinking we could just enjoy the clips without having to bother with this lengthy explanation of what exactly the queen is owning up to daring. On reconsideration, though, I decided that no, we in fact need to hear that line to properly register Elisabeth's answering indignation along with the pain with which she asserts her integrity.

We actually heard the first clip, the one rom the 1972 Met broadcast, last week in our ongoing remembrance of Caballé, except that last week we heard it in the context of this chunk of the great scene in Philip's study, which began before dawn as the king soliloquized in his sleepless agony, followed by the brutal beatdown he absorbed in the just-past-dawn visit of the Grand Inquisitor. And we're going to hear that chunk again, this time including the quartet that ensues when Philips accuses Elisabeth outright of adultery and she faints and he calls for help for the queen and in rush Princess Eboli, whom the queen thinks of as her confandant, and the Marquis of Posa, whom the king thinks of as his.

This time, you'll note, we're hearing the 1972 Met performance bracketed with the EMI studio recording conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini (which was probably just being released as the run of Met performances took place), in which not only Caballé but our Posa, Sherrill Milnes, had taken part. It's a recording with which I've had a difficult, disappointed relationship from the time the LPs turned up in U.S. shops, having bought an imported German edition well ahead of the domestic release. Which also means that none of the disappointment can be attributed to the sonic homogenizling Angel ritually performed for the, er, benefit of American music-lovers.

I had such hopes for this recording! Both previous recordings of five-act editions of the opera had serious problems, and EMI was offering us what looked like a plausible cast, under a conductor making his first operatic recording in ages, what with his much-heralded general withdrawal from the world of operatic performance based on his deep-seated disenchantment with that world. And he was conducting an opera with which he had a history, having famously conducted, in 1958, Covent Garden's first five-act Don Carlos.

Even now, feeling an urge coming on me to rant about the recording's unsatisfactoriness, I've gone the extra mile and invested -- after all these years! -- in a CD edition. And I have to say that listening to it again in this format has given me pause. But the more I listen to it, the more I sink back to a possibly refreshed version of the old disappointment, which I experience even in the minute's worth of the opera we hear above. I was surprised, when I dipped back into the 1972 Met performance while working on last week's post, how much more I enjoyed it than I remembered, very much including Caballé's vocally and dramatically focused Elisabeth. I also have to say that even in the context of a house like the Met that's not set up to encourage (allow?) individual conductorial statements, I hear a notably surer grasp of the opera's dramatic progress, and a noticeably more hospitable environment for the singesr to participate in that dramatic progress, with Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, a conductor about whom I didn't have a lot of good things to say back in the day, but whose considerable virtues I have come to value a lot more.


BEYOND THIS I'M NOT GOING TO SAY MORE,
EXCEPT TO NOTE TWO ADD-ONS THIS WEEK

More Caballé: as Lauretta, Luisa, Violetta, Lucia, and Elisabeth

Montserrat Caballé (1933-2018) as Violetta

by Ken

A couple of weeks ago we began taking note of the passing of Montserrat Caballé, and we began by perusing the Sunday Classics archives, which not that surprisingly held a fair amount of Caballé. So we started by hearing both arias from Caballé's extraordinary performance of Fiordiligi in Colin Davis's Philips recording of Mozart's Così fan tutte, followed by two of Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs and two recordings of "Casta diva" from Bellini's Norma.

There's still a lot to explore, both from the existing Sunday Classics archives and from newly added material. I thought we'd start today with this recording of that most beloved of soprano arias, "O mio babbino caro" from Puccini's delicious one-act opera Gianni Schicchi, which we spent some time exploring back in July-August 2010.

PUCCINI: Gianni Schicchi: "O mio babbino caro"

O my dear little daddy,
I like him. He's lovely, he's lovely.
I want to go to the Porta Rossa
to buy a wedding ring!
Yes, yes, I want to go there!
And if I were to love him in vain,
I would go to the Ponte Vecchio,
but to throw myself in the Arno!
I'm pining and I'm tormented!
O God, I'd like to die!
Daddy, have pity, have pity!
Daddy, have pity, have pity!

Montserrat Caballé, soprano; London Symphony Orchestra, Charles Mackerras, cond. EMI, recorded c1969


CABALLÉ AS LUISA MILLER AND VIOLETTA VALÉRY

Yes, we have more Caballé, but mostly as a spur to reflecting on my (and others' too?) relationship to music (and other arts too?)

Last week we had to pause our threads-in-progress to note the passing of Montserrat Caballé -- we'll get back to that really soon



Clip 1

Montserrat Caballé, soprano

by Ken

As noted above, this week brings yet another digression -- a digression from our serial digressions, if you will -- in this case from last week's post, "Montserrat Caballé (1933-2018)." There's still a lot to ponder -- and listen to -- from Caballé's career, but a small yet provocative happening this week will get us into an area I've been wanting to get into. What I've done is to press Mme Caballé into service as this week's Special Guest Artist, in a role I don't think anybody especially thinks of when they think of her. Which means dipping almost blindly into her recording of the role, which I've never though much of. But what the heck? We can listen to it together, and see what we think. (In fact, I even acquired the CD edition to make the audio-file-making easier, not to mention of higher quality, since we don't have to do all those LP dubs.)


NOW TO THAT SMALL YET PROVOCATIVE HAPPENING

So I was sitting in the dentist's chair waiting to finish up a round of work (nothing terribly threatening or invasive, unless you count the question of how it's going to get paid for) and I realized some music was playing in my head, and it took me a few beats to identify it. What I was hearing was something like what we heard in Clip 1 above. Or sometimes maybe more like this:

Clip 1 alt

Victoria de los Angeles, soprano; and --

To be honest, this has happened to me in olden days, before the memory started being not what it once was. However, of late it happens more often, and more often than I would expect with music that I know I know gosh-darned well.

I kept restarting the music in my head, and trying to get it to start earlier and/or run farther, with the result that almost at the same time I realized (a) why I was having trouble identifying the original "clip" and (b) what it was, more or less. As regards (a), my brain backed the excerpt up to a more identifiable "pickup" point, so that the excerpt was now something like this:

Clip 2

Montserrat Caballé, soprano

Or, again, sometimes maybe more like this:

Clip 2 alt

Victoria de los Angeles, soprano; and --

At least mercifully, now I at least knew who it was who was singing. The character, I mean -- it wasn't a particular singer I was hearing.The only thing was, as my brain allowed the clip to run farther, and soon enough a second voice was entering (and then again sometimes wasn't, a puzzle that was also solved eventually), meaning that, while I was pretty sure I had the character right, what she was singing wasn't what I first thought it was.


SO NO, THE MUSIC WASN'T THIS --

Montserrat Caballé (1933-2018)

Montserrat Caballé (who died a week ago yesterday, at 85):
"All the vocal virtues are here in abundance, giving us the
special thrill of hearing this music sung by a voice
of this size, beauty, and range of color"

In pity's name, my dearest, forgive
the misdeed of a loving soul;
amid this shade and these plants
forever hidden, oh God, let it be.

Montserrat Caballé (s), Fiordiligi; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded c1973

by Ken

Above we've heard the beginning of Fiordiligi's Act II rondo from Così fan tutte, "Per pietà." And yes, this is the very beginning, following directly -- as we'll hear again shortly -- with no further orchestral introduction from a stretch of orchestrally accompanied recitative. We've listened to "Per pietà" more than once, and each time I've tried to convey in words how beautiful it seems to me, and undoubtedly failed each time. So let me just say now, I'm not saying that it's the most beautiful thing Mozart ever wrote, but then again I'm not saying it isn't. It could be. From which it follows automatically: Something that could be the most beautiful thing Mozart ever wrote is one of the most beautiful combinations of sounds ever imagined by the mind of humankind.

We heard this opening chunk of "Per pietà" in a December 2015 post, "Ariadne and Fiordiligi: Real people and feelings vs. ideas about people and feelings," in which we hacked the aria into a series of chunks and made our way through them, listening to the same two performances all the way. Both were from complete recordings of Così: Margaret Price's (with Otto Klemperer, for EMI) and Montserrat Caballé's (with Colin Davis, for Philips). Eventually we heard not just theirs but a number of other fine recordings of the full recitative and aria, but none -- to my ears -- as good as Price's and Caballé's. As I wrote at the time:

Margaret Price's Fiordiligi seems to me one of the great recordings of an operatic role, fulfilling this extraordinariliy demanding music with an equally extraordinary array of vocal resources, and singing it all with such melting beauty and depth of feeling. Note in particular the handling of all those vocal skips and leaps, like that octave-and-a-fifth drop in the opening of "Per pietà"; I've never heard anyone make them sound as humanly believable. At a certain point in her career Price sensibly retired this role to move on to other things, but while she sang it, she sang it supremely.

And I would say pretty much the same for Caballé's Fiordiligi. We were just discussing her in the context of Strauss's Four Last Songs, wondering at the beauty, mobility, and size of the voice, and also venting frustration about the careless way the voice was often used. She was an unexpected choice as Philips's Fiordiligi, and, as it turned out, a spectacular choice. All the vocal virtues are here in abundance, giving us the special thrill of hearing this music sung by a voice of this size, beauty, and range of color.

OK, THIS IS AN ODD WAY TO MEMORIALIZE A SINGER,
BUT LIFE WITH LA CABALLÉ WAS, UM, COMPLICATED

Yet another digression that will be explained (eventually): Revisiting Sir Malcolm Sargent

MIDNIGHT UPDATE: Okay, I think we're just about there. For anyone who's been following along as this post filled out from its original "preliminary version," thanks for your patience and persistence. -- Ed.

It all started when I couldn't resist a too-cheap-to-pass-up copy of this 18-CD EMI set devoted to "The Great Recordings" of Sir Malcolm Sargent (from which some of the music files we're hearing today are drawn).

by Ken

Yes, as it says above, another digression, following upon last week's "'Spurn not the nobly born': No, not the proper post planned for this week, but we do make a little progress, and we hear some really nice music." And yes, we're still enmeshed in Wagner's Die Meistersinger, going back to September 23's "Still on the trail of our two classic Operatic Bad Days, we pause to sniff an elder tree."

In fact over the past week I've gotten enmeshed-er, which is far from an unpleasant thing, except for the expanses of lower-male-voice growling and rasping and grinding one is expected to endure -- and indeed lots of apparent Wagner fans smile and nod, as if this is perfectly normal and acceptable. Yikes! Of course in other Wagner operas the problem becomes even more acute, especially in the higher vocal categories: the heroic soprano and tenor roles (Isolde and Brünnhilde; Tannhäuser, Tristan, Siegmund, and Siegfried).


SO HOW DID SIR MALCOLM SARGENT (1895-1967) OF ALL
PEOPLE BECOME THIS WEEK'S DESIGNATED DIVERSION?

"Spurn not the nobly born": No, not the proper post planned for this week, but we do make a little progress, and we hear some really nice music

"Spurn not the nobly born," exhorts Earl Tolloller to the no-way-no-how-interested-in-high-rank Phyllis (who has much else to say and sing on the subject); here they're John Elliott and Kate Holt, in a 2009 Iolanthe production by Woodley Players Theatre (Stockport, U.K.). You won't hear much in the video clip, but naturally we've got a slew of audio clips --

GILBERT and SULLIVAN: Iolanthe: Act I, Phyllis, "Nay, tempt me not, to wealth I'll not be bound" . . . Earl Tolloller, "Spurn not the nobly born"

PHYLLIS: Nay, tempt me not;
to wealth I'll not be bound.
In lowly cot
alone is virtue found.
CHORUS OF PEERS: No, no; indeed high rank will never hurt you,
the peerage is not destitute of virtue.
EARL TOLLOLLER: Spurn not the nobly born
with love affected,
nor treat with virtuous scorn
the well-connected.
High rank involves no shame --
we boast an equal claim
with him of humble name
to be respected!
Blue blood! Blue blood!
When virtuous love is sought,
the power is naught,
though dating from the flood,
blue blood!
Spare us the bitter pain
of stern denials,
nor with low-born disdain
augment our trials.
Hearts just as pure and fair
may beat in Belgrave Square
as in the lowly air
of Seven Dials!
Blue blood! Blue blood!
Of what avail art thou
to serve us now?
Though dating from the flood,
blue blood!
CHORUS OF PEERS: Of what avail art thou
to serve us now?
Though dating from the flood,
blue blood!

Elsie Morison (s), Phyllis; Alexander Young (t), Earl Tolloller; Glyndebourne Festival Chorus, Pro Arte Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded Oct. 21-24, 1958

Mary Sansom (s), Phyllis; Thomas Round (t), Earl Tolloller; D'Oyly Carte Opera Chorus, New Symphony Orchestra of London, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded September 1960

Elizabeth Woollett (s), Phyllis; Phillip Creasy (t), Earl Tolloller; D'Oyly Carte Opera Chorus and Orchestra, John Pryce-Jones, cond. Jay Productions-Sony, recorded June 28-July 2, 1991

by Ken

No, as noted above, we have no proper post this week -- it just got too hard, and too stressful, and even though I got most of the audio clips made and had a pretty good idea (I think) of where and how the real post was/is intended to go, I just couldn't do it. (And after all, to anybody but me what does it matter?) Still, I've rallied enough to cobble together a sort of coulda-shoulda post-substitute, drawing on some of those already-made audio clips, which we'll hear in the click-through, but also with some additional clips made to order.

In the later stages of the time spent so busily not producing a post, I found myself reflecting me that the plight facing the operatic character we'll be hearing from in the click-through of this non-post, society's unyielding prejudice against persons of rank and privilege, isn't unique on the musical stage, which is how we come to be hearing from the implacable Phyllis and the imploring Earl Tolloller and chiming-in fellow lords.


JUST WHAT MIGHT A PERSON OF RANK ENDURE TO
OVERCOME SOCIETY'S SCORN FOR THE PRIVILEGED?

Still on the trail of our two classic Operatic Bad Days, we pause to sniff an elder tree

Friedrich Schorr as Hans Sachs

We're early in Act II of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The scene is a street with houses on the left and right, separated by a narrow alley that winds toward the back of the stage. The right-hand house, grand in style, is the goldsmith and mastersinger VEIT POGNER's; the left-hand house, simple in style, is the cobbler and mastersinger HANS SACHS's. In front of POGNER's house there is a lime tree; in front of SACHS's an elder. -- As the act began, not long before, it is a pleasant summer evening, and in the course of the action of the act night falls.

At this point SACHS is in his workshop, unable to get out of his head the audition "mastersong" presented to him and his fellow mastersingers this morning, breaking all the rules, and yet, and yet -- Now, having just said good night to his apprentice, DAVID, he arranges his work, sits on his stool at the door, and then, laying his tools down again, leans back, resting his arms on the closed lower half of the door.

HANS SACHS: How sweet the elder smells,
so mild, so strong and full! --
It relaxes my limbs gently,
wants me to say something. --
What is the good of anything I can say to you?
I'm but a poor, simple man.
If work is not to my taste,
you might, friend, rather release me;
I would do better to stretch leather
and give up all poetry. --
[He tries to work, with much noise, but leaves off, leans back once more, and reflects.]
And yet, it just won't go. --
I feel it, and cannot understand it --
I cannot hold on to it, nor yet forget it;
and if I grasp it wholly, I cannot measure it! --
But then, how should I grasp
what seemed to me immeasurable?
No rule seemed to fit it,
and yet there was no fault in it. --
It sounded so old, and yet was so new,
like birdsong in sweet May: --
whosoever hears it
and, carried away by madness,
were to sing it after the bird,
it would bring him derision and disgrace! --
Spring's command,
sweet necessity
placed it in his breast;
then he sang as he had to;
and as he had to, so he could --
I noticed that particularly.
The bird that sang today
had a finely formed beak;
if he made the Masters uneasy,
he certainly well pleased Hans Sachs!

-- English translation (mostly) by Peter Branscombe

Friedrich Schorr (b), Hans Sachs; London Symphony Orchestra, Leo Blech, cond. EMI, recorded May 10, 1930

Franz Crass (bs), Hans Sachs; Bavarian Radio Orchestra, Kurt Eichhorn, cond. EMI, recorded c1971

by Ken

Two weeks ago I set out to explore some of what I'm calling Operatic Bad Days ("On an operatic bad day you can sometimes see forever -- but oftentimes not"), offering as a sort of model, though a far from ideal one, Sir John Falstaff's massively self-pitying monologue at the start of Act III of Verdi and Boito's Falstaff, after dragging himself out of the Thames, decrying our "Thieving world! Villainous world! Wicked world!" (Eventually, believe it or not, this is going to tie up with our still-ongoing discussion of the underlying link between Schubert's "An die Musik," Richard Strauss's "Zueignung," and the Prologue to Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos.)

Then last week I revealed ("Promissory note for one of our still-to-come Operatic Bad Days") that one of the OBDs I'm targeting takes place in a Wagner opera -- maybe Tannhäuser, maybe Tristan und Isolde, maybe Die Meistersinger, maybe Parsifal, or maybe even Lohengrin. In the process last week we heard a lot of music, and if you haven't taken it all in, it's still there.


I STILL FEEL BAD FOR NOT TALKING ABOUT LAST
WEEK'S PERFORMANCES, BUT I HAD MY REASONS

Promissory note for one of our still-to-come Operatic Bad Days

Along the way, we hear how Wagner made it
possible for folks everywhere to get married

MONDAY NIGHT UPDATE: Okay, I think we've got something more like a post. There's still work to be done, notably the addition of texts, but for now, whew!
TUESDAY NIGHT UPDATE: I wound up substantially rejiggering and in some aspects entirely reconstituting the Tristan and Meistersinger lineups, in addition to adding the promised texts for each, so progress is being made. I feel a keen need for fuller context-setting of the "days" dramatized in these excerpts, but fear that trying to plug the gap will lead to utterly exploding the post. Hmm. Still to come for sure: texts for Lohengrin [done!] and Tannhäuser.
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: I've not only done the Tannhäuser texts but popped in as-brief-as-possible situation-setters for Tannhäuser, Tristan, and Meistersinger. At least for now, I think we're there, wherever "there" is, except for whatever cleanup of the wreckage I'm able to undertake.



by Ken

Last week we started talking about Operatic Bad Days ("On an operatic bad day you can sometimes see forever -- but oftentimes not"), looking first at the case of Sir John Falstaff (courtesy of Maestro Verdi), dragging himself out of the Thames to drown his sorrows at the Garter Inn. Sir John, I think we can agree, got what he deserved and deserved what he got, but not so much with the two OBD sufferers whose cases always crowd my mind. By way of setting the mood, while I struggle with what was supposed to be an "easy" post, here's a tease. [SUNDAY UPDATE: Now filled out a little more!]

WAGNER: Tannhäuser: Act III Prelude


Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded Oct.-Nov. 1961

Staatskapelle Berlin, Daniel Barenboim, cond. Teldec, recorded June 2001

London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. EMI, recorded Dec. 13-14. 1972

WAGNER: Tristan und Isolde: Act III Prelude


Symphony of the Air, Leopold Stokowski, cond. RCA, recorded 1960-61

Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Carlos Kleiber, cond. Recorded during a live performance of the opera, Oct. 7, 1973

Staatskapelle Berlin, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. From a live performance of most of Acts II and III, Oct. 3, 1947

WAGNER: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Act III Prelude


London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. EMI, recorded January 1974

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik, cond. From a broadcast performance of the complete opera, October 1967

Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded during concert performances of the opera, Sept. 23-27, 1995

WAGNER: Parsifal: Act III Prelude


London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. EMI, recorded January 1973

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Hans Knappertsbusch, cond. Philips, recorded live at the 1962 festival

Welsh National Opera Orchestra, Reginald Goodall, cond. EMI, from a recording of the complete opera, June 1984

THEN AGAIN, IN CASE YOU THINK YOU'VE STARTED
TO SENSE A PATTERN HERE, THERE'S ALSO THIS

On an operatic bad day you can sometimes see forever -- but oftentimes not

"Wicked world. -- There's no more virtue. -- Everything's in decline."

-- A man who knows a thing or two about, you know, things

A man staggers up to an inn . . .

The exterior of the inn, which along with its name bears the motto: "HONNY SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE." A bench beside the door. It's the hour of twilight.

Our man is seated on the bench, meditating. Then he stirs himself, pounds on the bench with a big fist, and turning toward the interior of the inn calls to the host.

by Ken

Even if we make clear that by "an operatic bad day" I don't mean a bad day for the audience (of which I often feel I've experienced not just my own share but a whole bunch of other people's) but a bad day for the main character(s) onstage, it may seem oxymoronic to be talking about "operatic bad days." Aren't they mostly pretty rotten? Isn't this what opera is usually about? Isn't it a significant part of what we normally think it means for something to be "operatic"?

The kind of bad day I'm thinking of, though, isn't just a day when everything seems to go wrong, even disastrously wrong. I'm thinking of the kind of day when the victim realizes that he/she has played a major role in setting off the unfortunate chain of events, and as a result, despite a certain lack of totally accurate perspective, owing to the inevitable bleakness of spirit, sees truth(s) stretching out as far as the imagination can see.

The part about the victim realizing that he/she has played a major role in setting off the unfortunate chain of events clearly excludes out companion today. In Sir John Falstaff's imagination nothing is his fault, and never mind that it was his own crackpot scheme to seduce one or maybe two of the merry wives of Windsor, not even for libidinous satisfaction but to tap into their not-so-merry husbands' coffers to provide himself with a bit of working capital, blindly falling into separate traps set by both the women and men of Windsor, that resulted in his being dumped unceremoniously into the Thames in that giant basket full of rank laundry.


SIR JOHN'S FEELING OF VICTIMHOOD CERTAINLY
IS EPIC, THOUGH -- RUNNING DEEP AND, ER, WIDE

Sunday Classics' "Sicilienne"-style sendoff for Chuck McGill -- as prélude to a tasting table of morsels from Gabriel Fauré

Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't watched any Better
Call Saul episodes since before the Season 3 finale


The McGill brothers, Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) and Chuck (Michael McKean), are seen here in . . . um . . . well, not-that-much-happier times -- this scene is from "Klick," the final episode (No. 10) of Season 2 of Better Call Saul.

by Ken

It's kind of embarrassing that it wasn't till the premier episode of Sieason 4 of Better Call Saul that I registered the death of Chuck McGill (Michael McKean), the big brother of our new-old friend Jimmy McGill, previously known to us, in Breaking Bad, as his later self, Saul Goodman. I mean, flashing back even in my dim memory, I had to have known from the Season 3 finale that Chuck was a goner in the fire that consumed his house. Still . . . . I guess I couldn't believe that the show's creative team, headed up by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, would let go of such an extraordinary character (which everyone on the creative team has told us in interviews was heavily influenced by the extraordinary and largely unexpected qualities Michael McKean brought to the role), with so much about him still to be explored. And I guess I had enough faith in the devious story-telling skills of Vince, Peter, and their team that I wasn't prepared to believe Chuck was really gone until the proverbial last nail was pounded into the coffin.

However, from the start of Episode 1 of Season 4, it became clear that Chuck was indeed kaput, gone, good-bye. Naturally one of the first things I thought of was -- well, here's how I put it in that unprecedented Monday edition of Sunday Classics of Feb. 23, 2016, "Special late-Monday Better Call Saul edition: Chuck McGill plays the Fauré Sicilienne!" (Set in front of Chuck on his baby-grand piano was an edition of the Sicilienne for violin or flute and piano.)


Original (2/23/2016) caption: Sure enough, there's a piano in Chuck McGill's living room! Given the light level, don't hold me to it, but isn't this Howard (Patrick Fabian), the managing partner of Chuck's law firm, arriving for his "delivery for McGill" in tonight's Better Call Saul episode, "Cobbler" [Season 2, Episode 2]?

At the time I wrote in part:

If there's one thing probably none of us expected to see, it was Chuck McGill (Michael McKean) at the piano playing the piano part of Fauré's Sicilienne. But there it was, at the top of tonight's Better Call Saul episode, with something like this score page just visible to Chuck, and to us, with the little bit of natural light that found its way into his otherwise-dark living room -- Chuck can't, of course, have electric light.

Eventually, of course, Better Call Saul masterminds Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould and their team would gradually fill us in, in their patented time-hopping, circuitious way, but at this point I don't think we knew much of anything except that there was all too clearly a huge something-or-someone missing from Chuck's life, and now suddenly we had him playing the piano, with the obvious indication that the missing something-or-someone had something to do with classical music, specifically either the violin or the flute -- the version of the Sicilienne Chuck was playing from was for violin or flute and piano. (It took two subsequent episodes in Season 2 and another in Season 3 to fill for us the void left in Chuck's life left by the implosion of his marriage to Rebecca, indeed a violinist. Ann Cusack, who has played Rebecca, was back for the first episodes of Season 4, in -- kind of literally -- the wake of Chuck's passing.)

And at that time we heard the Sicilienne three ways --

For violin and piano:

Krzysztof Smietana, violin; John Blakely, piano. Meridian, recorded c1993?

For cello and piano:

Steven Doane, cello; Barry Snyder, piano. Bridge, recorded in Rochester (NY), January 1992

For orchestra, with flute solo (no. iii from Fauré's Suite from the incidental music for Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80):

Orchestre de Paris, Serge Baudo, cond. EMI, recorded June 1969


WE HAVE ANOTHER VERSION OF THE SICILIENNE,
BUT WE'LL ALSO NEED TO BACKTRACK A LITTLE

So I slapped on this CD I'd picked up -- and had to share this little Intermezzo, Cavatine, and Andante con moto

Yehudi Menuhin, violin; Jacques Février, piano. EMI, recorded Nov. 22-30, 1971

by Ken

Yes, I know we still have important work to complete on Schubert's song "An die Musik," Richard Strauss's song "Zueignung," and the Composer's memorable declaration in the Prologue to Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos that "Music is a holy art," dealing with the important (to me, anyway) questions: (1) What links them? (2) What the hell does it matter? The next, and hopefully final, installment is mostly written, though I suspect that a good part of what keeps me from trying to push it to completion is the fear that it isn't as near to completion as I'm pretending.

Meanwhile, did you listen to the little Intermezzo above? Is that beautiful or what? And did you note Yehudi Menuhin channeling an inner Gypsy I didn't know he had in him. That Intermezzo is one of three movements that grabbed my attention on a CD I slapped on while doing something-or-other at the computer -- all, interestingly, slow movements, from three different works by the same composer. And if you don't know who he is as we listen to the other two, so much the better, because if I hadn't known, I doubt that I would have guessed, and especially not from these slow movements, because even though this is a composer I'm reasonably familiar with, I don't have very good "markers" to identify his music, especially not music of this sort. Or rather these sorts, since these three slow movements are hardly peas in a pod.

So let's listen to a little Cavatine and a little Andante con moto.

Sonata for Cello and Piano:
ii. Cavatine

Pierre Fournier, cello; Jacques Février, piano. EMI, recorded Nov. 22-30, 1971

Trio for Piano, Oboe, and Bassoon:
ii. Andante con moto

Jacques Février, piano; Robert Casier, oboe; Gérard Faisandier, bassoon. EMI, recorded Jan. 20-21, 1964


"THE GUITAR MAKES DREAMS WEEP"

Dept. of Unfinished Business: Lean to the left, lean to the right, stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight!

"The people all said, 'Sit down! Sit down, you're rocking the boat!"
[Watch this Tony Awards clip based on the 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls (which includes a full-cast version of the song "Guys and Dolls") on YouTube.]


Walter Bobbie (Nicely-Nicely Johnson); from the 1992 Broadway Cast Recording, Edward Strauss, musical dir. RCA, recorded May 3, 1992

Stubby Kaye (Nicely-Nicely); Original Broadway Cast recording, Irving Actman, cond. American Decca, recorded Dec. 3, 1950

David Healy (Nicely-Nicely); National Theatre Cast Recording, Tony Britten, cond. EMI, recorded April 1982

"Stand, Old Ivy! Stand firm and strong!"
[Watch the this whole scene from the 2011 Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, albeit in murky video and audio, via this YouTube clip. ("Grand Old Ivy" begins at 2:11.)]


Daniel Radcliffe (J. Pierrepont Finch), John Larroquette (J. B. Biggley); from the 2011 Broadway Cast Recording, David Chase, cond. Decca Broadway, recorded Apr. 10-12, 2011

Robert Morse (Finch), Rudy Vallee (Biggley); Original Broadway Cast Recording, Elliot Lawrence, musical dir. RCA, recorded Oct. 22, 1961

Robert Morse (Finch), Rudy Vallee (Biggley); film soundtrack recording, Nelson Riddle, music supervision. United Artists, recorded 1967

Matthew Broderick (Finch), Ronn Carroll (Biggley); 1995 Broadway Cast Recording, Ted Sperling, cond. RCA, recorded Apr. 2, 1995

by Ken

It's just a coincidence, I swear, more or less, even as I was thinking of a way into this unexpectedly fraught question of when to stand up and when to sit down I happened to be gradually working my way through Thomas L. Riis's 2008 Yale University Press study Frank Loesser (in a $2 thrift-shop purchase of a pristine hard-cover copy). After all, on any given subject it's likely that we can find toe-tapping wisdom from the master.


COULD WE TAKE A QUICK SECOND LOOK AT THESE VIDEO CLIPS?