A Grand Performance--Redux

 I now have a car with Sirius XML radio so I can listen to its Met Opera channel. Eventually I will access a schedule but right now, the peripatetic listening has been enjoyable. Yesterday, I tuned in just as a memorable performance from 1973 was beginning: Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti in Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment. The performance was their only joint broadcast appearance.

We had attended a performance of this production the previous season when it premiered. It was one of the greatest. Although there have been subsequent productions of La Fille, and I have seen some of them, including a nice one at Santa Fe, it probably should be performed only when a truly star cast is available. It is a vehicle for singers like Sutherland and Pavarotti. Sutherland was the established star at that time but had never appeared in a comic opera. Pavarotti was beginning his stellar career.

It was always encouraging to me that Sutherland had apparently wanted someone to appear with her who could perform at her standard. Unlike some earlier famous sopranos, she wanted someone to make the performance truly grand rather than merely insist that she be the solo star. Pavarotti became known as the King of the High C's based on this production. In the first act he has an aria that has 10 of them. No one then singing was able to carry that off in the style he did.

For a soprano who was somewhat ungainly, Sutherland also was superb. She always made the most challenging coloratura and trilling sound easy, and that was also true in her opening aria. As always, her husband Richard Bonynge conducted; he rarely inspired either positive or negative criticism--no one mistook him for any of the great maestri of the day, including the young James Levine, but he did not attract attention.

The Met provided two superb supporting singers: Bass-baritone Fernando Corena was the master of buffo roles and he brightened the performance as Sergeant Sulpice; Regina Resnik was a wonderful actress as well as singer and added to the show as the Marquess who wants to take Marie (Sutherland) away from the military. Among the comprimari was one of the Met's marvels: Andrea Velis, who sang probably close to 100 parts.

Back when we were in New York and subscribed, this was what the Met was at its greatest. The most outstanding singers who shone even in operas that were essentially showpieces for the stars and little more. Yet that was definitely enough to make it a truly memorable evening, and the performance played yesterday sounded equally strong. Pavarotti became a cultural phenomenon and started to decline a bit toward the end of his career. Sutherland, if my memory holds, was always at the top of her form and as noted, never did there seem to be a soprano then who made this most demanding singing look routine.

So this brought back lots of wonderful memories. They sounded every bit as fine as I had remembered. The previous day, I had heard part of Brunnhilde's singing the finale of Goetterdaemerung sung by no less than Birgit Nilsson. Yet another glimpse of my golden age of singing heard at the Met.