FOLLOW-UP UPDATE: The promised synopsis of the Walküre Act II Fricka-Wotan scene, time-cued to our audio clip, is in place, for better or worse (or both). -- K again
The fine London-born mezzo, retired since 1982, died Feb. 22 at 91.
Recit., Dido: Thy hand, Belinda. Darkness shades me;
on thy bosom let me rest.
More I would, but death invades me;
death is now a welcome guest.
Song: When I am laid in earth,
may my wrongs create
no trouble in thy breast.
When I am laid in earth, &c.
Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate. &c.
-- libretto by Nahum Tate, based on Book IV of Virgil's Aeneid
["When I am laid in earth" at 1:04]
Josephine Veasey (ms), Dido; John Constable, harpsichord; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Colin Davis, cond. Philips-Pentatone, recorded in Walthamstow Assembly Hall, Aug. 5-8, 1970
[TUESDAY UPDATE: The new clip sounds swell, I think. Phew! -- Ed.]
by Ken
If you've listened to the clip of the not-quite-conclusion (the chorus still has some obligatory moaning to do) of Purcell's amazingly concise opera Dido and Aeneas, I'm thinking there's not much chance you'll forget Josephine Veasey. With that generous midrange vocal weight (and the needed upward reach too), not something we necessarily expect in a Purcell Dido, she makes those "Remember me"s pretty unforgettable.
The thing is, for anyone who had significant experience of her singing, there wasn't much chance she was going to be forgotten, thanks to the generous aural documentation of her fine 30-year career -- her significant body of commercial recordings supplemented by an array of good-quality live-performance material. She's never been out of my "listening rotation." As it happens, I'd just recently been resampling with undiminished pleasure her Béatrice in the first-ever recording of Berlioz's opera Béatrice et Bénédict. (Don't worry. Though we've heard the clip of Béatrice's heart-rending -- but ultimately inspiring -- Act II monologue before, we're going to be hearing it again momentarily.)
SOME COMMEMORATIVE ROADS NOT TAKEN
I hope the Dido excerpt isn't too "on the nose" for a "remembrance" piece, though I like to think she wouldn't mind being remembered for such classy piece of singing. Initially, as I thought about this piece, I expected it to open with a taste of her Fricka, specifically the Walküre Fricka. As longtime readers may recall, I'm a big fan of her Fricka, and we've heard samples of the very different Rheingold and Walküre roles, one of the unalloyed casting successes of the Karajan-DG Ring cycle. Again, don't worry, we're still going to hear that -- and not from the Karajan recording. In fact, we're going to hear a complete performance of the great Fricka-Wotan scene of Act II of Die Walküre, with the conductor most responsible for grooming her as a legit Wagnerian.
Alternatively, we could have opened with a different Wagner excerpt, if only for the sheer beauty of the singing, though with Veasey, at least in my hearing experience, "characterfulness" was never a separate thing from vocal production.
Josephine Veasey (ms), Brangäne; BBC Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis, cond. Recorded for broadcast, 1969
That's "Brangäne's Watch," of course, from Act II of Tristan und Isolde, the vigil of Isolde's ever-loyal and -trusted companion over the lovers' life-threateningly dangerous night-time carrying-on. Note that I've made one alteration in Lionel Salter's translation, which sorts out the gnarly German syntax and gives us something close to what Brangäne is singing more or less as she sings it -- way better than I could have. But I've substituted "Beware!" for his "Take care!" Although "Take care!" is a reasonable rendering of "Habet acht!," I don't think it captures the threat level Brangäne is warning of, all too appropriately (though I don't think you would need magic powers of prognostication to predict that eventually the lovers will be found out, and the consequences won't be pleasant).
I do want to re-underscore the importance of the "characterfulness" of the performance. I like Brangäne a lot, and she matters a lot to me. Maybe you can have a successful Tristan und Isolde performance without a sympathetic Brangäne -- and Kurwenal too. But by creating the protagonists' "seconds" and characterizing them the way he did, Wagner seems to me to have provided an important way of making us care about the protagonists, enabling us to see them through the lens of the devotion, even love, of their closest confidants. (One, or rather two, of the things I love about DG's live-but-edited recording of the 1966 Bayreuth Tristan is, or are, the gorgeous Brangäne and Kurwenal of Christa Ludwig and Eberhard Wächter. Ludwig and Birgit Nilsson in particular are still my idea of a Brangäne-Isolde pairing.)
THIS IS PRETTY SERIOUS STUFF WE'RE HEARING
(EVENTUALLY WE'LL GET TO BÉATRICE'S MONOLOGUE!)
And I'm afraid it's not going to get a lot less so as we proceed. Though mezzo-sopranos do have a body of repertory that's light, flirty, even devil-may-care, they're also prone, especially in the higher mezzo-vocal-weight categories, to one kind or another of darkness of perception or character. One thing we can say for sure is that Veasey was a singer who didn't shy away from dramatic seriousness. It's essential, for example, for Berlioz's Béatrice, who is nominally the heroine of a "comic opera," but isn't at all a comic figure.
At some point, as I suggested earlier, we're going to be spending some more time with the great Act II monologue, but for now let's pay particular attention to the particular moment Béatrice drags up from memory: waking up from the bloody nightmare in which she "saw" Bénédict, the verbal sparring partner and supposed nemesis she professes to "detest," being wounded in battle and "expiring." She laughed, she remembers, laughed at the foolishness of everything about the dream, not least her foolish fears, and then [at 4:55 of our performance] recalls, in a hushed lowest-range utterance that's one of the most beautiful moments in musical creation: "Hélas! hélas, ce rire était baigné de larmes" ("Alas! alas, that laughter was bathed in tears." This naturally enough, but also conveniently for us, leads to a repeat of her just-uttered "Il m'en souvient," a musical refrain we first heard as the contrasting slow section of the opera's Overture, about which more in a moment.
With only slight liberty I've translated "Il m'en souvient" as "It all comes back to me." At this repetition, though, we finally know what it is that came back to Béatrice. Give me the right kind of performance -- and Veasey's is probably the best I've heard (though we've got another really good one coming up soon, er, when I get to it) -- and I'm likely to be bathed in tears too. (Contrarily, a performance that time-beats through this section and misses this whole moment makes me not just sad but mad as all get-out.) Before we get to the air itself, I thought by way of prelude we would listen to the Overture, and why not in the version from the performance in which Veasey sang Béatrice?
BERLIOZ: Béatrice et Bénédict: Overture
London Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis, cond. L'Oiseau-Lyre/Decca, recorded in Wembley Town Hall, London, Apr. 22-24, 1962
A note on the "Il m'en souvient" section of the Overture: It is in fact introduced by an anticipation -- from the horns and 2nd bassoon -- of Béatrice's haunting "Hélas! hélas, ce rire était baigné de larmes, at let's-call-it 0:43 of the Davis performance. Here's a "breakout" clip of just this section. It's from a different performance, whose file happened to be handy for performing the extraction.
Orchestre de Paris, Daniel Barenboim, cond. DG, recorded in the Maison de la Mutualité, Paris, July 1979
Um, before we go on, I'm thinking maybe you'd like to hear how this section fits into the whole Barenboim performance, and you're thinking, it is with a French orchestra, if that makes a difference? Well, since we've got the file out anyway, we can do that.
Orchestre de Paris, Daniel Barenboim, cond. DG, recorded in the Maison de la Mutualité, Paris, July 1979
Finally I think we're ready to hear Veasey and Davis tackle Béatrice's air.
BERLIOZ: Béatrice et Bénédict: Act II: Air, Béatrice, "Dieu! Que viens-je d'entendre?" . . . "Il m'en souvient" . . . "En m"éveillant enfin je ris" . . . "Je l'aime donc?"
["Il m'en souvient" at 1:23; "En m'éveillant enfin je ris" at 4:32; "Je l'aime donc?" at 7:13] Josephine Veasey (ms), Béatrice; London Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis, cond. L'Oiseau-Lyre/Decca, recorded in Wembley Town Hall, London, Apr. 22-24, 1962
NOW FOR THAT PROMISED DIP INTO DIE WALKÜRE
It was Georg Solti, then music director of Covent Garden, who heard in company stalwart Josephine Veasey a Wagnerian mezzo in the making.
We've been hearing a lot of Veasey-plus-Colin Davis, and it's true worked with him a lot -- remember, from 1971 till well past her retirement he was music director of Covent Garden. But in her repertory-building years, it was Davis's Covent Garden predecessor, Georg Solti, who had an influence that doesn't show in their recorded collaboration: The only recording I'm recalling them making together was the 1961 Dec
ca Salome with Birgit Nilsson in the title role, in which Veasey sang the small but potentially really important role of the Page. I thought of including the opening of the opera to hear her along with tenor Waldemar Kmentt in resplendent vocal form as the Syrian captain Narraboth. Maybe if we do a "Part 2" of this remembrance? For now, we better get on.[TUESDAY UPDATE: The new clip sounds swell, I think. Phew! -- Ed.]
by Ken
If you've listened to the clip of the not-quite-conclusion (the chorus still has some obligatory moaning to do) of Purcell's amazingly concise opera Dido and Aeneas, I'm thinking there's not much chance you'll forget Josephine Veasey. With that generous midrange vocal weight (and the needed upward reach too), not something we necessarily expect in a Purcell Dido, she makes those "Remember me"s pretty unforgettable.
The thing is, for anyone who had significant experience of her singing, there wasn't much chance she was going to be forgotten, thanks to the generous aural documentation of her fine 30-year career -- her significant body of commercial recordings supplemented by an array of good-quality live-performance material. She's never been out of my "listening rotation." As it happens, I'd just recently been resampling with undiminished pleasure her Béatrice in the first-ever recording of Berlioz's opera Béatrice et Bénédict. (Don't worry. Though we've heard the clip of Béatrice's heart-rending -- but ultimately inspiring -- Act II monologue before, we're going to be hearing it again momentarily.)
SOME COMMEMORATIVE ROADS NOT TAKEN
I hope the Dido excerpt isn't too "on the nose" for a "remembrance" piece, though I like to think she wouldn't mind being remembered for such classy piece of singing. Initially, as I thought about this piece, I expected it to open with a taste of her Fricka, specifically the Walküre Fricka. As longtime readers may recall, I'm a big fan of her Fricka, and we've heard samples of the very different Rheingold and Walküre roles, one of the unalloyed casting successes of the Karajan-DG Ring cycle. Again, don't worry, we're still going to hear that -- and not from the Karajan recording. In fact, we're going to hear a complete performance of the great Fricka-Wotan scene of Act II of Die Walküre, with the conductor most responsible for grooming her as a legit Wagnerian.
Alternatively, we could have opened with a different Wagner excerpt, if only for the sheer beauty of the singing, though with Veasey, at least in my hearing experience, "characterfulness" was never a separate thing from vocal production.
Josephine Veasey (ms), Brangäne; BBC Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis, cond. Recorded for broadcast, 1969
That's "Brangäne's Watch," of course, from Act II of Tristan und Isolde, the vigil of Isolde's ever-loyal and -trusted companion over the lovers' life-threateningly dangerous night-time carrying-on. Note that I've made one alteration in Lionel Salter's translation, which sorts out the gnarly German syntax and gives us something close to what Brangäne is singing more or less as she sings it -- way better than I could have. But I've substituted "Beware!" for his "Take care!" Although "Take care!" is a reasonable rendering of "Habet acht!," I don't think it captures the threat level Brangäne is warning of, all too appropriately (though I don't think you would need magic powers of prognostication to predict that eventually the lovers will be found out, and the consequences won't be pleasant).
I do want to re-underscore the importance of the "characterfulness" of the performance. I like Brangäne a lot, and she matters a lot to me. Maybe you can have a successful Tristan und Isolde performance without a sympathetic Brangäne -- and Kurwenal too. But by creating the protagonists' "seconds" and characterizing them the way he did, Wagner seems to me to have provided an important way of making us care about the protagonists, enabling us to see them through the lens of the devotion, even love, of their closest confidants. (One, or rather two, of the things I love about DG's live-but-edited recording of the 1966 Bayreuth Tristan is, or are, the gorgeous Brangäne and Kurwenal of Christa Ludwig and Eberhard Wächter. Ludwig and Birgit Nilsson in particular are still my idea of a Brangäne-Isolde pairing.)
THIS IS PRETTY SERIOUS STUFF WE'RE HEARING
(EVENTUALLY WE'LL GET TO BÉATRICE'S MONOLOGUE!)
And I'm afraid it's not going to get a lot less so as we proceed. Though mezzo-sopranos do have a body of repertory that's light, flirty, even devil-may-care, they're also prone, especially in the higher mezzo-vocal-weight categories, to one kind or another of darkness of perception or character. One thing we can say for sure is that Veasey was a singer who didn't shy away from dramatic seriousness. It's essential, for example, for Berlioz's Béatrice, who is nominally the heroine of a "comic opera," but isn't at all a comic figure.
With only slight liberty I've translated "Il m'en souvient" as "It all comes back to me." At this repetition, though, we finally know what it is that came back to Béatrice. Give me the right kind of performance -- and Veasey's is probably the best I've heard (though we've got another really good one coming up soon, er, when I get to it) -- and I'm likely to be bathed in tears too. (Contrarily, a performance that time-beats through this section and misses this whole moment makes me not just sad but mad as all get-out.) Before we get to the air itself, I thought by way of prelude we would listen to the Overture, and why not in the version from the performance in which Veasey sang Béatrice?
BERLIOZ: Béatrice et Bénédict: Overture
London Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis, cond. L'Oiseau-Lyre/Decca, recorded in Wembley Town Hall, London, Apr. 22-24, 1962
A note on the "Il m'en souvient" section of the Overture: It is in fact introduced by an anticipation -- from the horns and 2nd bassoon -- of Béatrice's haunting "Hélas! hélas, ce rire était baigné de larmes, at let's-call-it 0:43 of the Davis performance. Here's a "breakout" clip of just this section. It's from a different performance, whose file happened to be handy for performing the extraction.
Orchestre de Paris, Daniel Barenboim, cond. DG, recorded in the Maison de la Mutualité, Paris, July 1979
Um, before we go on, I'm thinking maybe you'd like to hear how this section fits into the whole Barenboim performance, and you're thinking, it is with a French orchestra, if that makes a difference? Well, since we've got the file out anyway, we can do that.
Orchestre de Paris, Daniel Barenboim, cond. DG, recorded in the Maison de la Mutualité, Paris, July 1979
Finally I think we're ready to hear Veasey and Davis tackle Béatrice's air.
BERLIOZ: Béatrice et Bénédict: Act II: Air, Béatrice, "Dieu! Que viens-je d'entendre?" . . . "Il m'en souvient" . . . "En m"éveillant enfin je ris" . . . "Je l'aime donc?"
Can it really be that Bénédict loves her?
["Dieu! Que viens-je d'entendre?"]
God! What have I just heard?
What have I just heard?
I feel a secret fire
spreading through my breast.
Bénédict! . . .
Can it be? . . .
Bénédict would love me?
Remembering the terrible nightmares . . .
["Il m'en souvient, il m'en souvient"]
It all comes back to me, it all comes back to me,
the day of the departure of the army,
I couldn't explain to myself
the strange feeling of alarmed sadness
that came to take hold of my heart.
He's leaving, I said. He's leaving, I'm staying.
Is it glory, is it death
that fate reserves
for this mocker whom I detest?
With the blackest terrors
the following night was filled . . .
The Moors triumphed, I heard their clamoring;
with the flowing of Christian blood the earth was reddened.
In dream I saw Bénédict gasping,
under a heap of bodies without help expiring.
I lay agitated on my burning bed;
Cries of terror escaped from my mouth.
. . . and then remembering waking up
["En m'éveillant enfin je ris de mon émoi"]
On awakening finally I laughed at my emotional state.
I laughed about Bénédict, about myself,
about my stupid terrors.
Alas! Alas! That laughing was bathed in tears.
It all comes back to me . . .
Finally the startled realization --
["Je l'aime donc? Je l'aime donc?"]
I love him then? I love him then?
Yes, Bénédict, yes, Bénédict, I love you.
I no longer belong to myself. I no longer am myself.
Be my conqueror!
Tame my heart!
Come, come, already this savage heart
flies toward enslavement.
Yes, Bénédict, I love you . . .
Farewell, my frivolous gaiety!
Farewell, my freedom!
Farewell, disdains; farewell, follies!
Farewell, mordant mockeries!
Béatrice in her turn
falls victim to love.
-- original French libretto by the composer
["Il m'en souvient" at 1:23; "En m'éveillant enfin je ris" at 4:32; "Je l'aime donc?" at 7:13] Josephine Veasey (ms), Béatrice; London Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis, cond. L'Oiseau-Lyre/Decca, recorded in Wembley Town Hall, London, Apr. 22-24, 1962
NOW FOR THAT PROMISED DIP INTO DIE WALKÜRE
We've been hearing a lot of Veasey-plus-Colin Davis, and it's true worked with him a lot -- remember, from 1971 till well past her retirement he was music director of Covent Garden. But in her repertory-building years, it was Davis's Covent Garden predecessor, Georg Solti, who had an influence that doesn't show in their recorded collaboration: The only recording I'm recalling them making together was the 1961 Dec
As I mentioned earlier, I originally thought we would open with this tease of Veasey's terrific Walküre Fricka, from the climax of the scene with Wotan.
Since Walküre recordings back then weren't exactly an every-year event, you'd have thought Veasey had missed her chance. However, even as the Solti-Decca Ring was being completed, Herbert von Karajan and DG were planning the second-ever Ring recording, to be made in conjunction with an opera-by-opera staging at his specially created new Salzburg Easter Festival (originally intended to be brought to the Met, which proved to be from the start a rocky enterprise and before Siegfried's time came a broken-off one).
Now to the scene. I hope I don't need to say the the Fricka-Wotan scene of Act II of Die Walküre, the third of what I often think of as Wagner's "Scenes from a Marriage" (following those in Scenes 2 and 4 of Das Rheingold) is one of the supreme examples of how a dramatic confrontation can be constructed out of the tools of opera: singers and orchestra, words and music, and stage action.
WAGNER: Die Walküre: Act II, Scene 1, Fricka-Wotan scene,
from Wotan: "Der alte Sturm" (Veasey, Ward, Solti 1965)
[For texts, you can find a usable German-English (actually English-German) Walküre libretto on Murashev.com. Scroll down to Act II, past the opening Wotan-Brünnhilde exchange to Fricka's entrance and Wotan's exasperated "Der alte Sturm, die alte Müh'!"]Note: I mentioned in the original version of this post: "I mean to do a synopsis of the scene time-keyed to our performance." I'm afraid the best I've managed to do is an adaptation of the relevant portion of the plot synopsis by Decca's wonderful longtime opera-booklet translation master, Peggie Cochrane, in the booklet for the U.S. edition of the Solti-Decca Walküre, where "line cues" to the libretto were rather sloppily inserted. In addition to substituting our time cues to our clip, I've done a fair amount of fixing and rejiggering, so the resulting synopsis is somewhere between Peggie's and mine. (The line translations I've inserted are from the Decca booklet translation credited to Peggie and her Decca predecessor, G. M. Holland.) I'm far from thrilled with this. Maybe it'll help a little --
In Act II of Die Walküre, following an act populated by a brand-new cast of characters -- humans, yet! -- unknown to us from Das Rheingold beyond what we may glean from musical leitmotifs first heard there, we have straightaway met Wotan, whom we certainly know from Das Rheingold. On a rocky pass, he's greeting a young woman in full combat regalia (and in full "Hojotoho" battle cry) who's unknown to us, but who addressed Wotan as "Father." Wotan instructed Brünnhilde to ensure victory for Siegmund in the coming clash with Hunding. As she went, she warned him that his wife, Fricka (emphatically not Brünnhilde's mother!), goddess of wedlock, was approaching in a rage.
As our clip starts, Wotan sees Fricka coming ["Der alte Sturm, die alte Müh'!" ("The same old storm! The same old trouble!")]. As his daughter disappears, his wife leaps from her chariot drawn by rams and confronts him. She reproaches him for hiding away in the mountains [0:19:"Wo in Bergen du dich birgst" ("Here in the mountains, where you hide")], then informs him [0:59: "Ich vernahm Hundings Not" ("I have learned of Hunding's distress")] that the wronged husband Hunding has turned to her as goddess of marriage to avenge the wrong done him by the incestuous brother and sister Siegmund and Sieglinde, and she expects Wotan to punish the Volsung twins.
Wotan replies [2:29: "Unheilig acht' ich den Eid" ("Unholy I hold the vow")] that a bond is unholy when it binds two people who do not love, so let her bless and welcome the union of Siegmund and Sieglinde, who do. Fricka returns that, by holding such unconventional views and acting himself so unconventionally, he is undermining the power and authority of the gods [4:46: "So ist es denn aus mit den ewigen Götten?" ("So is it then all over with the eternal gods?")]. She proceeds to reproach her husband [5:50: "Die treue Gattin trogest du stets" ("You have constantly deceived your faithful wife")] for fathering the Volsungs upon a mortal and for numerous other infidelities.
Wotan endeavors to calm her by explaining that "a hero is needed" [8:14] "Not tut ein Held"] who of his own free will will do a necessary deed which the god may not do. Fricka laughs at this, pointing out [9:26: "Wer hauchte Menschen ihn ein?" ("Who instilled it into men?")] that Siegmund is no free agent, noting that his magic-strong sword comes from Wotan, who also created the crisis that led him to Hunding's house to find it. She challenges him [10:26]: "So schützt' auch heut' ihn nicht" ("Then do not protect him today")] to withdraw his protection from the Volsung. As she continues unraveling all his arguments, he finally asks, beaten down, "What do you wish?" [12:59: "Was verlangst du?"], and she makes it clear: "Abandon the Volsung," together with the magic of his sword -- and withhold as well the protection of Brünnhilde, who at all times is actuated by Wotan's will.
At thie point, Brünnhilde's battle cry is heard [15:01: "Hojotoho"]. Fricka puts it bluntly to Wotan that his "eternal spouse's sacred honor" [15:26: "Deiner ew'gen Gattin heilige Ehre"] requires an oath from him that Siegmund will fall in today's combat. He gives the oath. As Fricka makes her departure, she directs the entering Valkyrie to her father [17:01: "Heervater harret dein" ("The father of legions awaits you")] to know his will.
["Deiner ew'gen Gattin heilige Ehre" at 15:26; "Heervater harret dein" at 17:01] David Ward (bs-b), Wotan; Josephine Veasey (ms), Fricka; with Amy Shuard (s), Brünnhilde; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Georg Solti, cond. Live performance, Sept. 23, 1965
[Note: The whole of this interesting performance -- with Ernst Kozub (how intriguing is it to hear Solti working again with the tenor who in 1962 as a promising Heldentenor had jeopardized the Solti-Decca recording of Siegfried when he had to be severed from the project, with sessions well in progress, even after much frantic rescheduling, because he hadn't adequately learned the title role?) as a reasonably credible Siegmund, the still-vocally-glowing Gwyneth Jones as a lovely Sieglinde, and Michael Langdon as a suitably nastily sonorous Hunding -- can be heard in somewhat crackly form on YouTube.]
FINALLY . . . WELL, FINALLY COMES THE DAY OF JUDGMENT
As longtime readers know, there are two sections of the heaven-storming, wrathful-indeed Dies irae (Day of Wrath) of Verdi's Messa da Requiem which have special importance to me: the "Liber scriptus proferetur" ("A written book shall be brought forth"), in which the mezzo-soprano soloist provides a stark outline of the judgment procedure in store, and the "Ingemisco," the tenor soloist's plea for lenient consideration. (Looking back quickly, I find posts from April 2011 and April 2015 in which we listened to them.)
This Veasey "Liber scriptus" is from the Verdi Requiem that Leonard Bernstein conducted in St. Paul's Cathedral in February 1970 with Martina Arroyo, Plácido Domingo, Ruggero Raimondi, and the London Symphony, which was recorded and made available in both audio and video forms.
VERDI: Requiem: ii. Dies irae: mezzo-soprano solo, "Liber scriptus proferetur" ("A written book shall be brought forth")
A written book shall be brought forth
in which all is recorded,
whence the world shall be judged.
Therefore, when the Judge shall be seated
nothing shall be held hidden any longer,
no wrong shall remain unpunished.
Josephine Veasey, mezzo-soprano; London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded in St. Paul's Cathedral, February 1970
I'M NOT SURE WE'RE DONE YET WITH J.V. --
Maybe we should hear that opening scene of Salome with Veasey as the Page. Speaking of Richard Strauss, I've got a terrific Covent Garden Rosenkavalier -- conducted by Solti -- in which she sings, not surprisingly, a kick-ass Octavian. And if we wanted to hear her thrust into some mainstream Italian repertory, how about Princess Eboli in Verdi's Don Carlos?
And there's a lot more Berlioz, who of course loved the mezzo-soprano voice. When Colin Davis and Philips undertook the mammoth job of the first for-real recording of Les Troyens, an opera that's not only huge but fanatically intimately detailed (there really aren't any "throwaway" moments in the damn score!), J.V. was tapped for the plum role of Didon. (For a while there I was thinking we would hear her singing the Didos of Purcell and Berlioz.) But she also sang the opera's "other" female lead, Cassandre, whom I love even more than Didon. And there's The Damnation of Faust, for which she was tapped when Davis and Philips got to, which turned out to be one of Davis's less successful undertakings. However, I've got a swell 1963 Damnation featuring Covent Garden forces on tour in Edinburgh conducted by Solti, who perhaps ironically later recorded a Damnation that I recall as one of his unhappiest commercial recordings.
Or maybe some more recent fare, like Britten or Tippett? Hmm, I could be talking myself into it. By the way, it may be too late for a free download of a Veasey "Retrospective" assembled from live performances by Opera Depot -- it was still on offer when I checked this evening (Sunday) [UPDATE: Oops, sorry, I think this ended Sunday night! LATER UPDATE: But wait, on Monday the Veasey free download is still up -- check for it! -- Ed.]-- but even if not, it's worth considering at the modest regular price for either an mp3 download or a CD.
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