University of Hartford "H" Magazine - Winter 2019

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Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Verdi: Luisa Miller

09/24/2017 1:00 pm
09/24/2017 4:30 pm

 

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

With Luisa Miller (1849) Giuseppe Verdi turned the corner into the period of his most famous works, the ones that are considered pillars of the international operatic repertoire. Luisa itself, however, suffered the fate of its predecessors. Like those early "galley slave" works of his, they were all the rage for a few years upon their introduction on stage, lingered on to the end of the nineteenth century and then disappeared until their general revival in the second half of the twentieth century. In this his fourteenth opera Verdi was really hitting his stride as an opera composer. Verdi's librettist Salvatore Cammarano adapted a play by the eighteenth century German playwright Friedrich Schiller. The story goes to show that a love match between a young nobleman and a peasant girl is bound to end in tragedy.

RCA Italiana recorded Luisa Miller in Rome in with a cast of luminaries from the Met. The Italian-American soprano Anna Moffo was heard in the title role. I broadcast those vintage early stereo RCA LPs way back on Sunday, September 24, 1988. Then on Sunday, November 17, 1996 came a Decca/London CD release of a Luisa Miller taped in 1975 with the Spanish diva soprano Monserrat Caballe as the beautiful commoner's daughter. Opposite Caballe was the late great tenor Luciano Pavarotti as Rodolfo, Count Walter's son. Peter Maag conducted the National Philharmonic Orchestra and London Opera Chorus. That Luisa recording is now certainly of historic significance.

This Sunday you get to hear Caballe again as Luisa in a 1968 production of the opera at the Metropolitan Opera house, NYC. She was recorded live onstage on February 17, 1968. This time she faces the Met's own tenor Richard Tucker as Rodolfo. The Italian American basso Giorgio Tozzi portrays Count Walter. Thomas Schippers directs the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Although it was taped in the era of stereophonic sound, this Luisa is a monaural recording, an aircheck of what went out in radio broadcast live from the Met. A series of historic recordings from the Met's audio archives were issued through Sony Classical in digitally upgraded sound and in compact disc format. Luisa Miller was released in that series on two CDs in 2012.