Something sort of like a post, in which you might say we 'say hello [again!] with a little good-bye in it'

Detective Chief Inspector Morse (John Thaw)
at home -- though not from this episode

"Morse often relaxes at home to opera. It is a way to throw off the pressures of the day. He is listening to this [we'll get to "this" in a bit, promise: for now, patience -- Ed.] when he is disturbed by reporters attempting a new 'angle' on a murder story."

-- from the booklet for the Virgin Records CD
The Essential Inspector Morse Collection

by Ken

It's been so long that, in the interest of getting a post up (finally!), any sort of post, or even a non-post like this, I decided to go with the bare bones of a number of possible-posts-in-progress that have been piling up on my bloghost's dashboard page. While a great deal has happened during my silent time, and a fair amount of it is stuff I'd like to write about (I think), the idea here was to (re)open with a musical "hello."


THE ONLY PROBLEM: WAY MORE "GOOD-BYE"
THAN "HELLO" MUSICS POPPED INTO MIND

And I'm still playing catch-up on noteworthy musical "hellos." I'll keep thinking. Meanwhile, reader suggestions are fervently invited. The "hello"-ish things I've thought of so far didn't quite work. There was, for one, Groucho Marx's famous greeting as "Hooray For" Captain Spaulding the African explorer in Animal Crackers:


"Did someone call me schnorrer?" asks the great African explorer.

No, not exactly what we're looking for, I think.

Still not quite it, but the best thought I came up with, and one I started playing around with, was "Shalom" from Jerry Herman's much under-appreciated first Broadway-musical score, Milk and Honey, wherein Metropolitan Opera veterans Robert Weede and Mimi Benzell honored a word that "means twice as much as hello," enabling one to "say good-bye with a little hello in it." The plan, insofar as it can be called "a plan," would have been to make my own audio clips of "Shalom" and perhaps some of Weede's other songs from the show. Alas, as has been the fate-so-far of all the assorted possible-posts-in-progress I've tinkered with, I never got that far.

Semi-happily, though, "Shalom" turns out to be readily accessible on YouTube. "Semi-happily" because naturally, presumably for copyright reasons, the clips aren't embeddable. So you'll have to put your clicking finger to work to make this semi-solution work.


[Access the YouTube audio-only clip by clicking here.]
Robert Weede (b), Phil Arkin; Mimi Benzell (s), Ruth Stein; Original Broadway Cast Recording, Max Goberman, musical dir. RCA, recorded Nov. 15, 1961

Veteran Sunday Classics readers wouldn't have been surprised if at this point we digressed to some other samples of these singers' singing -- in Weede's case, perhaps starting with his earlier and better-known Broadway outing, as the title character of Frank Loesser's virtually operatic musical The Most Happy Fella, like for example this excerpt from the Original Broadway Cast Recording (which you'll recall stretched to an unprecedented three LPs), which we've heard before, making this audio clip readily reusable. [As an afterthought, however, I thought it would be worth incorporating the top-of-scene stage directions, so I typed it all out. -- Ed.]

LOESSER: The Most Happy Fella: Act I, Scene 2,
Opening scene ("Tempo di Tarantella"),
Postman, "Come a-runnin'!" . . . Tony, "The most happy fella"

The main street corner of Napa, California, in April. It is midday. At stage right we see the facade of the Post Office. Back at center is a grain and feed establishment, and the edge of another store is visible downstage left. In the distance behind the entire street scene we see the rolling California grape lands bathed in sunlight. Running diagonally up and off between the three buildings are streets now populated with various Napa townspeople, walking, talking, shopping, etc. The people are dressed in western rural style. Among those crossing the stage is MAX, the town peddler and part-time photographer, who pushes a cart advertising "Photographs While You Wait."

The POSTMAN emerges from the road and walks down center. He is a rural-type past middle age with a scraggly moustache, eyeglasses, and a beat-up old hat. He carries his mail sack slung over one shoulder. A packet of letters are in one hand, as with the other he lifts his whistle and blows it shrilly calling to attention the people in the scene.

Robert Weede (b), Tony Esposito; with Lee Cass (b), Postman, and other members of the original Broadway cast plus ensemble and orchestra, Herbert Greene, musical dir. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded May 1956

Naturally this would likely have led to some examples of Weede's and perhaps also Benzell's' "legit" singing, and any or all of this could yet happen, but not in time to get some sort of post up right now. So in the end I'm going with one of Sunday Classics's two triedest-and-truest "farewell" musics, both courtesy of W. A. Mozart, on the ground that, as often as we've listened to the sublime terzettino (little trio) "Soave sia il vento" from Così fan tutte, and in as many renderings, I've got one to share that we haven't previously heard here. Actually, I've got two of 'em.

[Interrupting afterthought: I notice that I failed to identify our other "go to" Mozart farewell: the quintet in which the Three Ladies of the Queen of the Night send Tamino and Papageno off on their rescue mission in Act I of The Magic Flute. (If anyone's interested in a link or two or three I'd be happy to dig that out -- I know I keep saying it, but one of these days I've really got to do something about a proper index of Sunday Classics posts.) Now back to our regularly scheduled program. -- Ed.]

First off, there's the version pointed at above, recorded for the March 1992 Inspector Morse episode "Happy Families."


SPEAKING OF INSPECTOR MORSE . . .

As it happens, one of the things I've done during my "silent" period is to rewatch the whole of the Inspector Morse canon in sequence (and then move on to the successor series Inspector Lewis, with a retrospective of the still-ongoing prequel Endeavour no doubt lying ahead), which led me to the much-belated discovery that a series of CDs had been issued way back when (in addition to The Essential Inspector Morse Collection, I've got Inspector Morse, Volumes 2 and 3) containing many of the recordings made for the show under the musical direction of its brilliant musical overseer, Barrington Pheloung (who has continued in that role through the entire run of Inspector Lewis and now Endeavour), including this rendering of "Soave sia il vento," which features the shows' esteemed "house" soprano Janis Kelly.

The booklet for the first Essential Inspector Morse CD by happy chance contains a helpful context-setting for the terzettino:

Fiordiligi and Dorabella watch their lovers leave for active service. Don Alfonso joins their farewell, and at the same time reflects on his wager that the women will not remain faithful in their lovers' absence.

So -- finally! -- let's hear the Morse version of "Soave sia il vento," the "this" that the chief inspector is listening to "when he is disturbed by reporters attempting a new 'angle' on a murder story." (By the way, one thing I think I noticed in the course of the Morse years is that as those years roll by, Morse can be increasingly persnickety about being addressed as "Inspector" rather than "Chief Inspector.")

FIORDILIGI, DORABELLA,
and DON ALFONSO:
Gentle be the breeze,
calm be the waves,
and every element
smile in favor
on their wish.

Janis Kelly (s), Fiordiligi; Tamsin Dives (ms), Dorabella; Robert Hayward (b), Don Alfonso; orchestra of period instruments, Barrington Pheloung, cond. Virgin Records, recorded for the March 1992 Inspector Morse episode "Happy Families" [2:44]

I've included timings for this and all the other versions of "Soave sia il vento" we've heard or are going to hear this week because the "new" ones are on the quick and quicker side. Our other "new" version, notably, may be the quickest I've heard. It's from an extremely strange, yet interesting, 1971 Decca-London two-LP set called Mozart Opera Festival, in which the same soprano (Lucia Popp), mezzo (Brigitte Fassbaender), tenor (Werner Krenn), baritone (Tom Krause), and bass (Manfred Jungwirth) were plugged into excerpts from seven Mozart operas, often entailing the same singer incarnating multiple roles -- Tom Krause being heard as both Figaro and the Count from The Marriage of Figaro and both Don Alfonso and Guglielmo from Così fan tutte, Werner Krenn as both the romantic lead Belmonte and the comic sidekick Pedrillo from The Abduction from the Seraglio.

This is yet another story in its own right, though as with a lot of these stories not necessarily one that leads anywhere. For now, however, let me just note, as a measure of this Mozart Opera Festival's unusualness that I don't recall ever encountering another recording of the glorious Count-Susanna-Basilio trio from Act I of Figaro -- after the enraged Count has, to Susanna' incalculable embarrassment and the ever-malicious Don Basilio's boundless glee -- discovered the page Cherubino once again hiding under his very nose -- outside the complete opera. (We should probably hear that sometime.)

All of this said, here's our other "new" "Soave sia il vento":


Lucia Popp (s), Fiordiligi; Brigitte Fassbaender (ms), Dorabella; Tom Krause (b), Don Alfonso; Vienna Haydn Orchestra, István Kertész, cond. Decca, recorded October 1971 [2:38]

Now I'm not saying that faster is necessarily better or worse. But the gap between this performance's 2:38 and the 3:17 of the Leinsdorf-RCA or the 3:12 of the Klemperer-EMI, and I think we can agree that these more gradual versions, blessed with some singers who can make a real effect at the slower pace, make a markedly different kind of impact. In part, though, I've regathered all these performances because this tiny terzettino, brief as it is, is a piece that I can easily listen to eight or ten or a dozen times in succession. For the record, they're presented here in no particular order, except that we conclude with the one from the recording that I, apparently alone in the world, consider by a comfortable margin the best Così we've ever gotten.

MOZART: Così fan tutte, K. 588: Act I, Terzettino,
Fiordiligi, Dorabella, and Don Alfonso, "Soave sia il vento"


Pilar Lorengar (s), Fiordiligi; Teresa Berganza (ms), Dorabella; Gabriel Bacquier (b), Don Alfonso; London Philharmonic, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded 1973-74 [2:55]

Leontyne Price (s), Fiordiligi; Tatiana Troyanos (ms), Dorabella; Ezio Flagello (bs), Don Alfonso; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. RCA-BMG, recorded Aug.-Sept. 1967 [3:17]

Margaret Price (s), Fiordiligi; Yvonne Minton (ms), Dorabella; Hans Sotin (bs), Don Alfonso: New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded 1971 [3:12]

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (s), Fiordiligi; Christa Ludwig (ms), Dorabella; Walter Berry (bs-b), Don Alfonso; Philharmonia Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. EMI, recorded September 1962 [3:04]

[in English] Elizabeth Harwood (s), Fiordiligi; Janet Baker (ms), Dorabella; John Shirley-Quirk (bs-b), Don Alfonso; Scottish National Opera Orchestra, Sir Alexander Gibson, cond. Live performance, May 1969 [3:10, including applause]

Irmgard Seefried (s), Fiordiligi; Nan Merriman (ms), Dorabella; Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (b), Don Alfonso; Berlin Philharmonic, Eugen Jochum, cond. DG, recorded December 1962 [3:03]

So there we have it, today's instead-of-a-post post. Except for --


WELL, MAYBE ONE MORE THING ABOUT
THAT DECCA MOZART OPERA FESTIVAL

Well, maybe one more thing about this Mozart Opera Festival: For a number of the operas represented, the "festival" included the overture, a practice that longtime readers will recognize as dear to Sunday Classics's heart. And so, for example, if it's Così fan tutte we're concerned with at the moment,Sunday Classics traditionally likes to hear how it begins. Again, there's more to this story, but for now, since in past posts we've already heard a bunch of performances of the Così Overture, why don't we finish up for today by adding István Kertész's to them?

You'll note that I've again included timings, though the spread here is rather narrower. In this case it's Eugen Jochum who's out in front of the pack, even quicker than Kertész. What I hear isn't speed, though. It's a confident, purposeful, expressive flow that seems to me characteristic of this whole wonderful performance of the opera. (As I've suggested before, Jochum surely had something to do with the uniformly high quality as well as durability of the performances delivered by a cast that on paper looks suspicious, possibly even dubious.) With regard to the Overture, I would again call attention to the enormous pleasure the youngish Colin Davis's EMI disc of Mozart overtures, from which this performance is drawn, has given me over the years. My copy of that budget Seraphim LP got a lot of play.

MOZART: Così fan tutte, K. 588: Overture


Vienna Haydn Orchestra, István Kertész, cond. Decca, recorded October 1971 [4:23]

New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded Jan.-Feb. 1971 [4:38]

Philharmonia Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. EMI, recorded November 1962 [4:45]

Berlin Philharmonic, Eugen Jochum, cond. DG, recorded Dec. 1962 [4:16]

Vienna Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, cond. Recorded live at the Salzburg Festival, Aug. 8, 1962 [4:42]

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Colin Davis, cond. EMI, recorded c1961 [4:39]

Scottish National Opera Orchestra, Sir Alexander Gibson, cond. Live performance, May 1969 [4:32]


LOOKING AHEAD

I don't really know where we're going here, just that there's a lot of stuff percolating in my head, and that maybe there's even something liberating about the likelihood that there's nobody out there reading. It means I can say just about anything I can find a way to say. If by some unforeseeable and inexplicable chance there's anyone out there not just reading but still reading, you might check back next Sunday, or the Sunday after. It depends, more than anything, on how successfully I can either answer or circumvent the question "Why does it matter?"

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