by Peter Cates

In April, 1940, Italian composer Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945) conducted the La Scala Opera Orchestra and Chorus in a recording of his masterpiece, Cavalleria Rusticana, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its 1890 premiere, at the invitation of the record label, La Voce del Padrone, in a very hea­vy set of 11 breakable 78s; since then it has been reissued in LP and CD formats and can also be heard on YouTube.

The story takes place in an impoverished village and the two main characters are Santuzza and Turiddu; Santuzza is madly in love with Turiddu but he is paying more attention to an ex-girlfriend, Lola, who is welcoming his ad­vances while now married to the very jealous Alfio. Tragedy inevitably occurs in a knife fight.

Currently, it has been my favorite opera to listen to and the composer’s recording can be added to distinguished ones of De Los Angeles/Corelli and Tebaldi/Bjoreling, both of which are also on YouTube. After its premiere, it was presented 14,000 times just in Italy before World War I began, and is often, due to its one hour length, presented the same evening as Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, with its own immortal Vesti la Giubba.

Beniamino Gigli

The composer chose tenor Beniamino Gigli (1890-1957) as Turriddu and soprano Lina Bruna Rasa (1907-1984) to sing Santuzza. Rasa and the composer met in 1928 when he conducted her in a Cavalleria before a crowd of 35,000 people. She brought such beauty, dramatic intensity and sorrow to the role that Mascagni considered her his favorite Santuzza from then on and would not accept any other soprano in that role.

Lina Bruna Rasa

Very sadly, Lina was emotionally very fragile and suffered frequent breakdowns after the age of 25, which only worsened after her mother died in 1935. She would pull herself together for brief periods when singing but then would have strange hallucinations and periods of depression that manifested themselves in sadness and passivity. Her friends and colleagues adored her and were very protective of her. But the breakdowns increased and she made her last stage appearance in 1942. She would spend the rest of her life in and out of a mental hospital in Milan.

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Raymond Burr as Perry Mason

I have started bingeing on episodes of the CBS TV show, Perry Mason, which was produced from 1957 to 1966. My favorite characters are Ray Collins’s Lieutenant Tragg, William Hopper’s private investigator Paul Drake and the wonderful Barbara Hale’s Della Street who was Perry Mason’s private secretary. Also, the courtroom trials were edifying lessons in procedural strategies and the most entertaining portions of the program.

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Neil Sedaka

Pop singer Neil Sedaka recently posted a YouTube testifying to his recovery from Covid-19. He’s close to 82 and sang three songs, including his mega­hit Cal­endar Girl from more than 60 years ago, while accompanying himself on the piano.

by Peter Cates

Christmas classics

Allastair Sim

In 1942, Columbia Masterworks released a set of three 12-inch 78s, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, starring Basil Rathbone (1892-1967) as Ebenezer Scrooge and several other more minor actors and actresses from Hollywood’s truly Golden Age of the ‘30s and ‘40s, when work there was much more plentiful. Although the 1951 Allastair Sim black and white English film is my gold standard for this ever fascinating story, Rathbone brought a powerful, at times mean-spirited edginess to his speaking voice in this 25-minute presentation, one definitely more captivating than the recording of Lionel Barrymore (1878-1954), who drawled his way through a bit too much.

Basil Rathbone

The one good guy role I remember of Rathbone was the series of Sherlock Holmes films with the perfectly cast Nigel Bruce (1895-1953) as Watson. His villains in such classics as A Tale of Two Cities, Captain Blood, David Copperfield and The Mark of Zorro were singularly persuasive as was his appearance in Spencer Tracy’s late ‘50s The Last Hurrah.

The Barbirolli Society, a label devoted to the recorded legacy of the great conductor Sir John Barbirolli (1899-1970), released a two CD set, SJB 1084-5, of an October 20, 1960, concert Barbirolli led at the very spacious Free Trade Hall, in Manchester, England, one of the most important classical music events in Great Britain during the last 50 years of the 20th century, the significance of which I hope to convey presently. The concert featured Danish composer Carl Nielsen’s 5th and Gustav Mahler’s 7th Symphonies, both of them powerful large scale pieces now commonly performed but then rarely. The BBC took a risk sponsoring the concert and pushed the envelope by combining two different orchestras, Barbirolli’s Halle Orchestra and the BBC’S Northern Symphony, both of them groups which regularly concertized in the Manchester metropolitan area. They and Barbirolli felt that this was a one time opportunity to provide at least 200 players, instead of the usual 80 to 100, that both Mahler and Nielsen hoped for in their own performance instructions.

The results were two hours of very inspired music-making and a highly recommended cd set to adventurous listeners.

Ellen Hamilton Latzen as Ruby Sue

The late New Yorker jazz critic Whitney Balliet (1926-2007) left a description of singer Tony Bennett’s rented stretch limousine, picking him and his daughter up in front of the New York City Upper East Side apartment building where he resided with his family during the 1970s: “the length of the one Jelly Roll Morton said he had to take to Central Park to turn around pulled up at the curb.”

Chevy Chase’s 1989 National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is quite riotous as a comedy film, if a bit overblown at times. Ellen Hamilton Latzen almost stole the show as the eight-year-old Ruby Sue, daughter of an impoverished brother-in-law and family who drop in unexpectedly.

by Peter Cates

Ten Famous Sopranos

London, OS 26206, LP, 1973 release.

This anthology makes for a wonderful introduction to the appreciation of great opera (I know some consider great and opera an oxymoron) via 10 of the finest sopranos active during the last century, although I notice two of London records finest artists Inge Borkh and Mirella Freni are missing.

Renata Tebaldi

Renata Tebaldi, 1922-2004, delivers a heart-rending Vissi D’Arte from Giacomo Puccini’s opera of tragedy, Tosca, in which she is pleading with God to alleviate her sorrow. During Tebaldi’s first engagement in Italy in 1944, she travelled the many miles to and from it on a horse-driven cart under heavy machine gun fire during wartime. Two years later, the great conductor Arturo Toscanini told her that ‘she had the voice of an angel.’

Joan Sutherland

Joan Sutherland, 1926-2010, sings an aria from Gounod’s Faust. She made her very successful Covent Garden debut in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and was visited backstage by Maria Callas, who was a huge fan and one of her best friends. She and her husband, conductor Richard Bonynge, who’s still living, were both from Sydney, Australia.

Leontyne Price

Leontyne Price, still living at 93, had during her prime years a voice that combined sheer power and astounding beauty. She was from Mississippi and received a scholarship to study voice at Juilliard School of Music in NYC. Within a few short years, she had a recording contract with RCA Victor. Here she sings a magnificent aria from Verdi’s Aida.

Birgit Nilsson

Swedish soprano Birgit Nilsson, 1918-2005, had lungs of steel and recorded the dramatic roles in Wagner and Richard Strauss’s crazy operas — the Wagner 16 hour Ring cycle and Strauss’s violent masterworks, Salome and Elektra. She could also give sweet renditions of Swedish lullabies.

She sings a jubilant aria from Wagner’s Tannhauser.

Regine Crespin

French soprano Regine Crespin, 1927-2007, personified a delectable refinement in her low, middle and upper vocal register.

She was also notorious for her rough and tough high standards and bad temper; during the recording of Wagner’s Die Walkure with tenor James King, he missed a cue and she kicked him on the shin.

She sings Santuzza’s heart-breaking lament, Voi Lo Sapete, from Mascagni’s gorgeous Cavalleria Rusticana, an opera that received 14,000 performances in Italy alone during the composer’s lifetime.

The remaining five sopranos are Pilar Lorengar, Zinka Milanov, Elena Souliotis, Marilyn Horne, and Gwyneth Jones who each sing, in order of appearance, arias from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, Ponchielli’s La Gioconda, Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, Bizet’s Carmen and Wagner’s Flying Dutchman.

In short, a record to cherish.

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W. H. Auden

Some lines from the poem Little Things by the prize-winning 25-year-old Romanian poet Anastasia Gavrilovici in an English translation by Caterina Stanislav and Vlad Pojoga:

“Maybe people really do give their best shot when they’re crushed, just like olives/ Or maybe not, what do I know, my mind is a piece of Swiss cheese through which you can hear the music of lab rats.”

W.H. Auden wrote a poem, The Age of Anxiety, during World War II. Anas­tasia’s poem mirrors the current anxiety going on due to the pandemic and other on-going issues. She is definitely a poet of interest.

Cesar Cui

by Peter Cates

Cui

Orientale; Glazunov: Arabian Melody.
Hans Kindler, cello, with orchestra. Victrola 702, ten inch acoustically recorded shellac from May 27th, 1920, and December 12th, 1921.

Cesar Cui (1835-1918), along with fellow composers Mily Balakirev (1837-1910), Alexander Borodin (1833-1887), Modeste Mous­sorgsky (1839-1881) and Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908), forged a bond known as the Russian five in writing music with nationalist feeling, rhythms and melodies of their country’s history, legends and folk music sources.

Moussorgsky was best known for the opera Boris Godunov, the Halloween showpiece Night on Bald Mountain and Pictures at an Exhibition. Unfortunately he drank himself into an early grave.

Borodin was a medical doctor and organic chemist and composed on a part time basis but left the justly popular opera Prince Igor with its exotic Polovetsian Dances and the delicate tone poem In the Steppes of Central Asia. He succumbed to a heart attack while attending a ball.

Rimsky-Korsakov was a naval officer but also taught composition to such pupils as Igor Stravinsky. His arguably most famous work is Scheherazade.

Mily Balakirev

Balakirev was a composer, pianist and conductor who left a solo piano showpiece Islamey and 1 Symphony of note and was the leader of the group as well.

Cesar Cui taught fortifications and wartime strategies at several military academies and may be the least known of the group. His Orientale for cello and orchestra was recorded two years after he died and has a plaintive melancholy and beauty rendering it worthy of popularity. Dutch-born cellist/conductor Hans Kindler (1892-1949) gave a deeply felt performance.

Alexander Glazunov was a famed teacher of composition whose most well-known student was Dimitri Shostakovich. He would unfailingly show up at concerts of his students music, no matter its quality and would sit in front row center with seemly very attentive listening. What was not noticed by many was that Glazunov stuffed his ears with paper tissue so he could be alone with his thoughts.

His very lyrical Arabian Melody also received a rapturous performance. And this old record has stood up with several hearings and can be heard via the internet.

Hans Kindler started the National Symphony Orchestra of D.C. from a small community group in 1931 and, despite the Depression, achieved extraordinary success. He recorded a batch of music on Victor 78 sets including a very exciting performance of Tchaaikovsky’s 3rd or Polish Symphony. His google images have a photo of him shaking hands with FDR.

Anton Chekhov

by Peter Cates

Anton Chekhov

The Cherry Orchard

Russian writer Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) conveyed an astute sense of reality in his short stories and plays , and did so with extraordinary literary artistry, powerful compassion for human beings and ruthless attention to detail. The Cherry Orchard was the last of four major plays to be completed, just six months before his death from tuberculosis.

The play deals with a family of aristocrats who have squandered their vast wealth and are forced to sell their lands, which include a huge and intermittently profitable cherry orchard, their main source of income. They are surrounded by servants and friends who mean well but the bottom line is they are all spending way too much time spinning their wheels.

What compelled me to read this play was Chekhov’s ability to see right through them in every comment and gesture as they interact with each other. He catches their blundering comments, sighs, scheming, despairs, and self-justifications but achieves this in a way through which we recognize ourselves and others and grow to care about them.

These nice folks include Lyubov, the matriarch landowner who gives into every freeloader approaching her for money; her 17 year old daughter Anya who’s under intense pressure to marry and lives in her own wishful dream world; the governess Charlotta seeking a man for decent conversation; Epikhodov, a bungling, disastor-prone clerk etcs.

Lopakhin is a wealthy merchant who wants to buy the estate and turn a profit in real estate development. Formerly a peasant whose father was a serf on the estate, he is now part of the new upper social class. But he wants to help Lyubov’s family too.

His monologue during the opening scene, as he awaits Lyubov’s arrival back from five years in Paris, reveals much about hi own character and gives a taste of why the play has appealed to millions of readers and theatergoers in its infinite number of productions in all languages since its first production in January, 1904:

“Lyubov Andreyevna has been living abroad now for five years and I don’t know how she may have changed. She’s a good soul, a simple, easy-going woman. I remember when I was a young sprout, fifteen years old, my father — he’s dead now, but he used to have a little shop in the village then — struck me in the face with his fist one day, and my nose began to bleed. We’d gone out of doors together for some reason or other and he was drunk. I remember just as though it were now, how Lyubov Andreyevna — she was still a slim young thing — here in this very room, the nursery. ‘Come, come, don’t cry your eyes away; you’ll live to dance on your wedding day, little peasant,’ says she. Little peasant! …True, my father was a peasant, and here I am wearing a white waistcoat and yellow shoes. From the sow’s ear to the silk purse… I’ve grown rich, made a lot of money, but when you come to think of it, to figure it out, I’m still a peasant.”