Saturday, September 28, 2013

In praise of second fiddle, part 2

I wrote before of two notable mezzo-sopranos who were featured quite often beside Dame Joan Sutherland, Montserrat Caballé,and other great sopranos of the 60s and 70s--Huguette Tourangeau and Josephine Veasey.  They are both fine singers and accomplished great things on their own, but frankly, I probably wouldn't have known of them myself had they not both sung Adalgisa.

In the previous post I featured Huguette Tourangeau.  This time it's Josephine Veasey's turn.


First, because there is no avoiding Norma, here she is with Jon Vickers in the famous 1974 production at Thèatre Antique d'Orange:




(By the by, I have that entire show on DVD, if anyone cares to come to Yonkers to watch it with me.  All I insist on is food.  And in some cases cuddles.)


O don fatale (Mr. Verdi's Don Carlo, of course), Wiener Stadtsoer, 1976, cond. Miguel-Ángel Gómez-Martínez



Lux aeterna from Mr. Verdi's amazing Requiem, 1970, cond. Bernstein, with Messrs. Domingo and Ghiaurov singing sharp:


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