A taste of today's post -- coming soon, I swear! (Yes! See the link below!)

(1) A QUICK REFRESHER:

"In des Lebens Frühlingstagen" ("In the spring days of life")

Jon Vickers (t), Florestan; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. Live performance, Feb. 13, 1960

James McCracken (t), Florestan; Vienna Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel, cond. Decca, recorded March 1964

James King (t), Florestan; Staatskapelle Dresden, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded c1968

Plácido Domingo (t), Florestan; Staatskapelle Berlin, Daniel Barenboim, cond. Teldec, recorded 1999

Julius Patzak (t), Florestan; Vienna Philharmonic, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. Live performance from the Salzburg Festival, Aug. 3, 1948
[Yes, I've reordered the clips. Why not have McCracken second? For a while I even had him first. Then for kicks I relistened to Vickers on that ever-so-happy Saturday afternoon in February 1960, and my goodness! Then I relistened to King, and he's pretty fine too, but I didn't change the order again. -- Ed.]

(2) AND NOW:

Example 1

Example 2

Which we can hear at, respectively, 00:45-3:24 and 6:32-7:04 --

Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded Nov. 5-6, 1963

by Ken

A thousand pardons, but this has proved incredibly, multifariously laborious. To give you a taste of what's to come, this is one part of what we're going to be up to in today's post, picking up more or less where we left off in last week's post, "What's that, a trumpet? We hear two Great Moments in Act II to prepare to root around further in Beethoven's overtures for Fidelio."

And no, we haven't heard the eponymous trumpet yet. Well, we have and we haven't. Tune in later and all will be clear. Okay, clearish. (Word of caution: I'm finding audio clips loading not-so-great just now. Busy Sunday at Internet Archive? If necessary, try reloading, and if necessary retry -- they're all there. This doesn't exactly bode well for the main post.)


WAIT, WHILE WE'RE AT IT, WE SHOULD PROBABLY
CHECK OUT THE TRUMPET CALL IN LEONORE NO. 2

Because that, of course, is what we're listening to: Leonore No. 2, the overture Beethoven wrote for the rousingly unssuccessful original (1805) version of Fidelio.

So here's the plan. We're not going to get as far as I would have liked with the four Fidelio overtures, but in the main post we will check out Leonore No. 2 a bit more. And we're going to tend to the other major piece of business left over from last week: regarding Leonore herself: her Act II dungeon scene with Rocco, immediately after Florestan's monologue.

CLICK HERE FOR THE MAIN POST --
"We hear Beethoven reference Florestan and Leonore in his first overture for Fidelio, and we hear Leonore make a crucial decision"

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