REVIEW POTPOURRI – Soprano: Anna Maria Alberghetti; Poet: Sylvester Pollet

by Peter Cates

Anna Maria Alberghetti

Anna Maria Alberghetti

Still living at 87, Italian soprano Anna Maria Alberghetti gave her first concert as a child prodigy singer at the age of six years old with an orchestra of 100 musicians on the Greek island of Rhodes, achieved fame in the 1960 Broadway musical Carnival and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show more than 50 times.

Her 1960 album, Songs by Anna Maria Alberghetti (Mercury Wing MGW 12135), contains a mix of opera, operetta, Broadway musical and Great American Songbook selections. Her voice is quite lovely in its technique but her singing tends to be a bit syrupy. However, there are two songs that stand out – It’s a Most Unusual Day (its phrase “a feeling of spring in the air ” might have resonated with citizens of the Pine Tree State during the recent mid-winter thaw of five days) and the especially wistful Darling, Come Back to Me.

Miss Alberghetti came from a very musically talented family. Two brothers were conductors, one of them leading the orchestra on this record, one sister a pianist and the other also a soprano while their father was a tenor who switched to baritone.

Sylvester Pollet

Sylvester Pollet

Sylvester Pollet (1939-2007) wrote in the Maine Speaks anthology of growing up in Woodstock, New York, and keeping notes on every bird he encountered at the birdfeeder.

His Poem for Saint Francis celebrates one such winged creature:

“At 10 below
thinking to help the birds survive
we increase the dole of seeds-
look out to see a fat jay
pinned by a hawk.

“In this cold even death moves slowly
there is time for much crying
and flapping of wings
but the hawk holds
and things calm down again.

“The woods are silent:
two movements only-
the hawk’s beak to the jay’s breast,
and the bits of fluff
blown over snow crust.

“We have helped a hawk survive.”

Pollet wrote elsewhere that the hawk depicted here was female and sharp-shinned.

Melodiya

The Russian record label Melodiya released a pile of LPs some 40 years ago featuring historic recordings of pianists.

One title, Composers Play, has Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915), Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951), Bela Bartok (1881-1945), Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937), and Serge Prokofiev (1891-1953) spotlights each of the six gentlemen performing their own compositions, and with exceptional musicianship. Pieces include Bartok’s Evening in Transylvania, Prokofiev’s Tales of the Old Grandmother and a Rachmaninoff Polka.