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])

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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