When was the Metropolitan Opera’s Golden Age? It depends on whom you are asking. Fans of the “”old” house on Broadway would say the golden age was anytime between its opening in 1883 and its final curtain in 1966. This was the opera house of Enrico Caruso and Rosa Ponselle, as well as Kirsten Flagstad, Lauritz Melchior, Lily Pons, Jussi Björling, Bidú Sayão and a legion of other legendary singers. Fans of the current Metropolitan Opera house would argue that we are still living in a golden age. One thing is certain, there’s nothing as electrifying as a live opera performance at the Met.
The voltage runs high in this new series of Saturday afternoon broadcast recordings taken directly from the Metropolitan Opera’s archives. Freshly re-mastered from their original sources and available on CD for the first time, the series features some of the greatest singers ever to grace the Met stage.
Fans of French opera will be thrilled with the legendary 1947 performance of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette featuring Sayão and Björling at the height of their powers. For lovers of verismo there’s a scalding 1962 Tosca starring Leontyne Price, Franco Corelli and one of the Met’s mainstays, Cornell MacNeil. Erich Leinsdorf was in the pit for a 1961 performance of Le Nozze di Figaro with Cesare Siepi in the title role, Roberta Peters as Susanna and as the Countess, one of the Met’s most beloved but under-recorded sopranos, Lucine Amara. If you consider yourself a perfect Wagnerite, you’ll certainly want to hear Die Walküre, a 1968 performance from the “new” house at Lincoln Center, with a superstar cast that includes Birgit Nilsson, Jon Vickers and Leonie Rysanek.
If that isn’t enough, there’s also recordings of Il Barbiere di Siviglia with Pons and a young Giuseppe di Stefano, Fidelio with Nilsson and Vickers conducted by Karl Böhm, and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg with Theo Adam, Jess Thomas and the great Thomas Schippers on the podium.
When was the Metropolitan Opera’s golden age? Listen and decide for yourself.
What is your favorite Metropolitan Opera memory? Please share with us.
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by Craig Zeichner
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