This time round I’m skipping the Met’s revival of its Mark Morris manufacturing of Orfeo ed Euridice, however its composer isn’t off my thoughts, so Chris’s Cache presents three placing interpretations of one other Gluck masterpiece Alceste from Janet Baker, Anna Caterina Antonacci, and Véronique Gens.
Seven years in the past, I posted on Trove Thursday a recording of the final time I heard Alceste in individual: Jessye Norman’s majestic interpretation from Lyric Opera of Chicago. Sadly, within the intervening years I nonetheless haven’t attended one other Alceste.
The thrilling Baker efficiency has been issued on CD nevertheless it’s presently out of print. The model included right now is my very own digitized reel-to-reel copy I bought very quickly after the unique broadcast. One other of Antonacci’s most celebrated portrayals is Gluck’s Armide by which she starred on La Scala’s 1996 opening evening.
She additionally carried out (somewhat late) the Tauride Iphigénie, nevertheless it’s unhappy she by no means ventured Clitemnestre or Orphée.
Gens, who additionally sang the Tauride Iphigénie, just lately took on Armide and might be Clitemnestre this summer season in a most fascinating manufacturing: an formidable double invoice in July on the Aix-en-Provence Competition the place Iphigénie en Aulide and Iphigénie en Tauride might be carried out collectively on the identical night with Emmanuele Haïm conducting and Dmitri Tcherniakov directing Corinne Winters because the title heroine of each works.
Gluck: Alceste (French Model—1776)
Alceste: Janet Baker
Admète: Robert Tear
Grand-Prêtre: John Shirley-Quirk
Hercules: Jonathan Summers
Conductor: Charles Mackerras
Royal Opera, Covent Backyard
12 December 1981
Broadcast
Alceste – Anna Caterina Antonacci
Admète – Charles Workman
Grand-Prêtre: Johan Reuter
Hercule: Luca Pisaroni
Conductor: Ivor Bolton
Salzburg Competition
Salzburger Bachchor
Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg
10 August 2005
Broadcast
Alceste: Véronique Gens
Admète: Joseph Kaiser
Le Grand Prêtre: Andrew Schroeder
Hercule: Thomas Oliemans
Conductor: Ivor Bolton
Aix-en-Provence Competition
The English Voices
Freiburger Barockorchester
6 July 2010
Broadcast
Every Alceste may be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio participant above and the ensuing mp3 file will seem in your obtain listing.
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