Word: cherubini
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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MEDEA (London: 3 LPs). Despite its powerful theme-the myth of the murdering mother-this 'opera has been infrequently performed since its composition 171 years ago. One reason is Cherubini's static, pedantic score. Another is the sadistic vocal demands of Medea, the lead role. In this album Gwyneth Jones lamentably fails to match her magnificent voice to the emotional exigencies of Medea, and Lamberto Gardelli's conducting is scandalously lethargic. The Callas version of Medea, released by Mercury in 1958, is an infinitely better listener's choice...
Amsterdam's renowned, 78-year-old Concertgebouw Orchestra, on the eve of a 1956 performance of the Cherubini Requiem in C Minor, desperately needed a substitute for ailing Conductor Carlo Maria Giulini; it turned to 27year-old Bernard Haitink, an assistant conductor and former second violinist of the Dutch Radio Orchestra, who had led the work not long before. "No," replied Haitink. "I'm not ready, and anyway, I'd like to stay alive." Hotter heads prevailed. Haitink conducted, and the familiar scenario spun to its happy conclusion: he was invited back by the Concertgebouw, soon began...
...teacher in a closet to escape the wrath of his flute-hating father. Though Couperin, Telemann, Vivaldi, Bach and Handel wrote stacks of magnificent music for it, the flute in those days was easy to hate. ("You ask me what is worse than a flute?" Cherubini once snarled. "Two flutes!") Like most simple instruments it was difficult to play well, but so easy to play badly that almost everyone succeeded...
...German Jew who settled in Paris as a ten-year-old cello prodigy and later studied composition with Cherubini, Offenbach churned out musiquettes galore for his beloved Bouffes-Parisiens. The two works that Darmstadt saw, The Transformed Cat and Daphnis and Chloe, are quintessential Offenbach. One, resembling a Freudian treatment of La Fontaine, tells of a cat's metamorphosis into a woman of feline charm who turns at night into a rooftop mehitabel; the other shows Pan thwarted in a sneaky attempt to teach Chloe the art of love-and ends with a riproaring, garter-snapping cancan. The ideal...
Inflaming Ease. In ten years in San Francisco, Adler's furious pursuit of perfection has brought remarkable results. The company has given the first U.S. performances of such works as Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream and Cherubini's Medea, revivals of Nabucco and Ariadne auf Naxos, American opera debuts to such singers as Birgit Nilsson, Leontyne Price, Boris Christoff, Sandor Konya and Sutherland. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, who has yet to sing at New York's Metropolitan, has been appearing in San Francisco since 1955. On good nights, the opera's chorus and ballet...