This year FLEW by.

An eye-opener for health, and for finally taking stock of it.  Boring these tedious disciplines outside of music.  But, so very necessary.  Two years ago for my recital with OONY I had lost in two months and a half over 50 pounds.  In a combination of bad planning a good deal came back on.  Since February I have done this a little differently.  No quick solution but a lasting one.  So since August, some really serious life changing choices were enacted. All natural, hard to do and ultimately successful for phase one.  55 pounds as of today…. hard won.  The back is much better, back to phase two.  By February another 25 pounds.  Why be so forthcoming?    Mail.  Facebook pleas.  Myspace notes.  Website contact.  Many people imploring me to do something to allow me to sing.  They will never know how much they helped effect that possibility.  Besides, the importance of doing it naturally and slowly is to be healthy, and once that is accomplished, LOTS of surprises in store.

Lost a lot of friends this year and I will miss them so much.  Elizabeth Taylor.  How do you say good-bye to that kind of super nova.  The world is a lot less fun and certainly missing a great source of love and light.  Still doing great things from Heaven even now.  The Christie’s auction of her “toys and baubles and beautiful things” fetched over 156.000.000 million dollars.  A record to be sure.  Some of it will go to her Foundation for AIDS for which she worked tirelessly and gloriously.

This is the world of opera I love.  Can you spot all the true legends of voice?  Obviously front and center,  Rosa Ponselle, Martinelli in the back left, and I believe Galli-Curci first right seated.  Love the flowers in the middle and the water stains. I will try to find out who else.  A tour photo of the Metropolitan in Atlanta.  They all look so interesting and vibrant, and grand.

Here we have Paolo Silveri, the great Renata Tebaldi, Lauri-Volpi, Pia Tassarini, Benvenuto Franci and Toti Del Monte.  What a gathering!!  I believe at Lauri Volpi’s house.  Suits and ties and beautiful respect for who and what they represent.

A very pleasant and loving Christmas in New York with my beloved family, missing my handsome brother in Hollywood, doing great things with his music and charisma….. in somma, a very nice if warm, Christmas.  Prepping for the New Year.

Ah yes, dear readers and friends and fans and foes alike, here come we all to a world-changing before our very eyes.  In need of those passionate and resolved in their love and support and unwavering dedication to the world of music and the Arts.  It is a magic worth saving, worth protecting.  The apologies and the funeral for opera MUST STOP.  They aren’t good enough to kill it, but they are rewriting the script. It is NOT passe’, it is revelent and so needed in today’s mechanical and increasingly detached world.

As the ball drifts downward, ten, nine….eight……seven…. at the countdown, I will be, God willing, with my loved ones, and with a prayer in my heart and soul for all those far away protecting us, for all those who have left this world for their journeys home, all those already deeply missed and all those so in my mind who are suffering now.  Peace to all, a lasting, just and honorable peace and a FAIRNESS to all.  Proud of New York for being a state of equality  and proud of so many who strive to make that a reality everywhere all over the world.

To my family, cherished extended family, colleagues, friends and dear little feline and puppy darlings….. Happy and Healthy New Year!!!  Health and happiness to you and all your families.  Find someone wonderful to hug and maybe even kiss this year and start with a heart of full of song and good cheer …..so much to be thankful for, and I am.

I am grateful to each and every person who came and helped this Historic little Church……

Viktor Antipenko, tenor  Nicole Piccolomini, mezzo  Christopher Collin Lee,violin  Merynda Adams, harp, Iveta and Gherman to choreography of Melanie LaPatin…. Charles Gaston Currin for playing so beautifully the “Oh Holy Night”  and the fabulous piano and accordion, of newly minted PhD scholar,  Mary-Lou Vetere.

Backstage, for Holy Cross Michael Blecha and the one and only, Father Pete Colapietro, Pastor and Holy Cross Director of Music, Charles Gaston Currin…. and to Tony Award Winner for Excellence in Theater,  truly legendary Paul Huntley for his gorgeous wig,  Eric Winterling Gown, Isabella who dressed me in an Eric Winterling Original creation, Darlene who wigged for Paul who graciously saw to everything IN PERSON, which meant a lot.  Angelina Avallone, expert make-up, and to all those in staff who helped coordinate everything, and to Mr. Gallo of Broadway’s newest Hit, Spiderman, who donated lights and his expertise….. Hope we did well for Holy Cross.

Someone taped with the daunting name operaassasin  filming from the balcony, caught  little tidbits….at the end of the show, with Nicole Piccolomini and an encore Fanciulla aria……  I was so thrilled. I am grateful to him or her for the chance to hear it myself.  I like this gentleman who did the video, he obviously LOVES opera;  he has on  tumbler a great site called Manifesto. Provocative and thoughtful, even just the early entry.  His youtube channel is really new but filled with some very interesting clips as he seems genuinely motivated to preserve for future generations some wonderful moments from opera.  I admire his effort and am grateful for his attention to my work.

Now on to getting in physical shape and to being of service to music and my beloved opera.

Happy Birthday,  to a Queen of the Art of Great Music, one for all time and for the ages…..  Maria Callas……

To have been at La Scala in this moment……LOOK at what is sitting there scoping each other out.  I believe that this was an arranged meeting, one of two,  this in public of Maria Callas with Toscanini in the hopes of having them collaborate on a Verdi’s Macbeth.  SHE should have done this with him.  So many stories came out of this meeting one will never really know what happened.  I would love to have heard what these two would have done with that opera.  Can you even imagine?

What an elegant time for opera.  How gorgeous and beautiful.  I must confess I loved her heavy too.  Her face is impressive and her carriage is so striking…but she worked hard to transform and that she did.  Brava, Maria Callas who I admire so very much for her apt, incisive and compelling understanding of music and the arts. personality and message being important in music.  Her humility and dedication.  God bless and keep you in His most radiant of places, your art, your voice and your heart are not forgotten and give heat to everyone who sings and adores the art form.   Happy Birthday, amazing, wonderful  Maria.     What would you think about todays world of opera?

I love this little Church.  I had so many things happen here, had my Mother’s Funeral Mass there,  grew up there.  In the Sunday Times Magazine fluff that wrote about me they had the nerve to call it a “ratty little church on 42nd Street.”

It certainly has gone through major reconstruction,  and now quite literally shines.  It is overseen by a priceless treasure named Father Peter Colapietro.  I adore him.  He brings the FAITH truly alive and his sermons should be recorded for all time.  SO, in trying to help this fine fellow KEEP the school open, and to help with expenses at the Church, I decided to throw him a fundraising concert of lots of different and enchanting music.  Christmas music and carols, opera, lieder, and all kinds of surprises…..

While I continue to undergo my transformation,  I offer to God and all who read this, the best thing God gave me…. my voice.  I place in service and support for this marvelous little jewel of a church and it’s amazing Pastor.

Come see me if you can make and let’s celebrate a real time of renewal, and remembering a special baby born centuries ago that would change the world.

Prepping for a lovely fundraiser for my beloved 42nd Holy Cross Church, and the best gentleman I have known as Pastor, Father Pete Colapietro.  You have to see and HEAR him.  He makes the gospel come alive, and keeps it accessible and real.  God bless him.  So some terrific people are stepping up to perform, and help raise money and I just think that speaks to how great these people are and how much they love to make music.  I will post about that event on Dec.11th in a week or so.

I thought I would post,  as I occasionally do, photos of opera greats and share some intensity with new fans of opera and relive some of the glories and beautiful people that actually did exist.  We are told we ALL stood and barked… like Hell we did.  The actresses were alive, the being exulted, the music was respected and maestri weren’t just in a hurry to go home.  Things had respect.  I am sure it exists today, somewhere.  But just for fun, here are some of the singers and enjoy with me their great sense of personality, and commitment.

Great faces every one of them, and I loved the one with me and Luciano, so had to include it.  How great do they seem?  Pride, style,  presence….. and imagine how they sounded?

Studying scores of music, art songs, new melodies.  Still could not calm myself.

Finally a beautiful morning dawned,literally flooding my living room with direct, sunlight from over 9 windows.

Blinding.

Might as well try to lay down- silly, staying up all night.  Bleary eyed, exhausted off I go to sleep, at 8:15 in the morning, Sept. 11th, 2011.

For you reading this you have just seen the bulletins as they appeared to the nation that morning horrifying, in every second passing, with some new detail and act of hatred.

My phone rings, I am between two worlds, and I hear my dear friend Claudia’s voice urging me to pick up. Her voice sounds scared. Mumbling something to stall while I tried to get my eyes open, the sound of her voice stopped me dead.

” You have to go out on your terrace, you have to see what happened.  Two planes just hit the WTC and there are people trapped.  This is awful….!”

You wake up quick with that kind of news, stumbling out into what would be a crisp New York morning, a gorgeous day with sun shining and a cool breeze. Bringing into focus my Navy watch binoculars of my Lt. Commander Step-fathers just in time to acknowledge an almost movie like scene in front of me. The World Trade Center looked like two strangely off chimney stacks billowing smoke and with huge gaping wounds of fire and broken glass and exposed building… Why? Then incomes reports of rogue planes, planes crashing into the Pentagon and into a field in Pennsylvania, most likely heading for the Capitol. We aren’t in Kansas anymore. Terrorism has arrived on American soil.

Still….it didn’t seem real or possible.

I would be witness to a sobering fact that people, innocent people, were murdered in front of me…extinguished in the burning buildings in front of my very eyes, on the hijacked planes which must have tortured those inside. Some were calling their loved ones and they all KNEW they weren’t likely going to make it out alive, and ultimately they would perish used as part of a living missile directly aimed to fly into the buildings at an angle to inflict THE MOST casualties and more THE MOST damage. This would eventually include same scenario flights crashing into the military main command headquarters of the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, near where my Dad is resting in eternal sleep, people on cell phones were alerted to the hijackings and the kamakazi plunges and they stormed the cockpit refusing to go down without a fight .

Honestly I do not remember what I witnessed live as opposed to what I was watching on TV as I went back and forth outside to see what I could.

The air already smelled of burning electrical wires, steel melting like in a welding pit, and it made you choke on soot and very fine particles.

Calling my Mom, who had moved in March to be with us again from the West Coast, she was not in great health. I wanted to unfold this as gingerly as possible.

“MOM, have you had the television on at all?”  “NO, not yet…..should I?”

“Well, not sure what to say, really.  It looks like there was an incident over at the World Trade Center….. we may have something a little sinister going on.”

“You know, in the past someone flew, by mistake, a plane into the Empire State Building…..is this like that perhaps…?”

I said, ” Not to be alarmed, but ……”

“I have been through WW2 nothing surprises.  Stay down, do not worry on me, I am fine.  This is a great country and we will do what needs to be done. Can we help in some way?”

God bless her.

Obviously everyone wanted to help, and that would be evident later in heartwarming and heartbreaking detail.

Outside, in the sky, very shortly after the Pennsylvania crash, NOTHING was in the air.

Voids of blue and clouds and absolute silence…..over New York City.

No noise.  Just the plumes of smoke and stories of those inside and trying to get out.

Then the first tower goes down, and the comments stop on television and even newscasters used to violence and twists of fate, they fall quiet.

The Towers, one by one, melting like a failed souffle’, implode themselves and leave nothing but thick white and grey smoke.

As the first one fell, I shook.  They aren’t supposed to fall. They are built to withstand a plane strike. You feel like you are watching someone get bullied or beaten and you can do nothing.

My little Fire station here, Rescue One, sirens blazing…..all those good guys I knew. Mr. “Handsome Handlebars” I nicknamed one terrific gentleman always so quiet with blue,blue eyes and the perfect handlebar mustache. He is there in this?  All those great guys I knew were there, and many I would not know, were with them as they all headed out to help and evacuate, put out fires, and save the day.

Over 300 hundred men doing good and trying to help those in need lost their lives along with almost 3,000 people from the street, the planes and the two Towers themselves. Gone.

My eyes filled with tears…. There is nothing to say, no words come. I respond in my heart with music.  I thought, if I were in that building hoping to live, knowing I might not make make it, I would want music, someone witnessing me die, have a song for me.  Music is a bridge to another world for me. Always has been.

I hum first, and then I sang softly something to help guide these souls across.  “Nearer my God to Thee.”
They didn’t leave without a word said over them, a prayer, a hymn.

Everyone was a team in this city…. blankets and gloves and masks, water, food, everyone raced to help get people help.

New York was united and actually angry. Telethons and money poured in from all over he world….hearts were raised.  A Nation stood together.

Finding the dead and giving them honor and praise. This was a Father Mychal Judd, a constant guide and help with and for the Fire Department. This immortal shot looks like a painting.

It looked like a war zone, and felt like one too.

I was 38 floors up, and could see the tiny little police boats monitoring the harbors,piers for the cruise ships, all the waterways; they were speed-boats and would bob up and down in the water along each side patrolling, with their signature blue lights on the back….made me feel better someone was watching over us.

No planes in the sky looked strange during the day. It became ominous at night. Friends checking in from all over the world. “All right” was the word used, but it wasn’t really the picture. Defiant, proud of NY, angry at stupid fanatic people who look on life as nothing. True faith? You do not kill. In every faith we have these extremes. Senseless interpretations that justify this type of carnage.

Thoughts of brave people. Doing what made them special. Caring and protecting. and dying for it. Some would not make it out, would not be found.

My cyber buddy whose family lost their son in the collapse accepted that I sing for her and her distinguished family. Amazingly as the stories of his life were recounted people laughed and cheered and cried. What emerged was the “living” picture of a handsome, terrific young man who would live well and courageously and die  doing good for others. He rushed up those stairs with no thought of himself- except to help….God bless you Michael Mullan, and his family.

Here we are ten years later.

My beloved Momma is now with all those heroes and good people on the other side, watching over us. Life and this country picked up, slowly but deliberately. We beat them, sort of, by staying open and living our lives, traveling and being alert. We must now, like Europe for years before us, be ever vigilant to this unique act of cowardice. It is the new way to inflict pain, and bully and annoy.

I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, but Bin Laden’s blatant celebration at the loss of so many people made me aware he had already lost himself a long time ago.

This Sunday, be of solemn remembrance. I shall never forget the feeling of being here in my beloved city of New York. The pride. The fight and guts of so many. Bette Midler’s singing at the gathering for all those who had lost someone, and she sang from her wide open heart, ” THANK you, THANK you, THANK you….you are the wind beneath my wings” pointing to all the heroes and grieving and shocked families and fellow New Yorkers. Liza Minnelli too, singing New York, New York at Shea Stadium in the first game held back after ten days…. we needed her and she delivered knocking it out of the ball park…. and finally,

To all I saw leave, the sons and daughters and fathers and mothers, wives and husbands, that crossed as I watched. I REMEMBER.

To all who would go to War, to protect us, to exact some measure of Justice, and then stay committed during the long and difficult campaigns which have lost another 5,000 lives and more in civilian casualties, some coming home, some not. I SALUTE and THANK you.

And to all my fellow New Yorkers, There is NO ONE who can KEEP us down for long. We fight and we are loyal and we don’t quit.

For my country today…… I am proud, and hopeful and ever grateful for the freedoms and blessings we receive here in this country.

Mr. Obama, please keep extending a hand in Peace. You were right in telling those that fight us, ” you cannot grasp that hand if yours is clenched in a fist.”

May God guide all those with fury to calm, anger to enlightenment, discord with harmony. May He make us hungry for knowledge and less thirsty for power. Keep all out loved ones and the family of Man and Womankind safe here on Earth.

Watch over all your children from everywhere without exception. In my world you come to God as you know him, and call Him as you wish.  I have respect and admiration for all.  I choose to close this with a manifestation of Heaven as I see it, but I want everyone to feel included.

In God I trust…..

Let me get this right…. ALL the singers today are falling all over themselves to say they are just ordinary folk…. girl next door, your best friend who happens to sing,  just one of the guys…….

I post this glorious photo of an “ordinary” day with extraordinary people…. In Sant’ Agata, the home in Parma of Giuseppe Verdi with his wife, various Ricordi family, his attorney, singers, in fact one of Verdi’s favorites, Teresa Stolz;  and in these very same chairs that are there to this day nestled in a cresh of the house.  Green and lush, little time capsules, with the indents of the illustrious who have sat on them still in eerie evidence.   Ordinary people doing ordinary things.  A place for everything, everything in its place.

Why must an opera singer beg to be accepted for doing something so fabulous?  Today in opera we must feel like everyone is one of us. Every other profession trips all over itself to inflate and boast about it’s greatness and importance.  Men who play with an orange leather ball think it special enough to have a press conference about taking their talents to South Beach !  But opera singers have to be “down to earth”,      or the “People’s Diva”?  Okay, I get the marketing angle, and the two people currently trying that are truly wonderful people and great talents,  but why?  What is so difficult about letting people hear you do something NO ONE else does,  with gorgeous voices….?

In a time of GLEE yet, and AMERICAN IDOL,  we have singers apologizing for their accomplished selves? What a brain surgeon does is very extraordinary.  You don’t want your brain near an ordinary doctor.   Your love of music used to be entrusted to those who gave their lives in service and study and sacrifice.  You had to study very hard and have the intangible on your side.  A voice with a special quality,  a magia,        a magic, making those who hear you want to hear you.  And then not insult anyone’s intelligence by slaughtering languages, and styles, and … well, you get what I mean.

Opera to be really opera cannot be small.  It must rule out needing a magnifying glass. What’s wrong with that?  There is enough in life saying, be quiet, full into line, be an adult child, seen but not heard. Opera is your chance to break free and feel something big, and passionate.  Nuance,  inflection, personal touch and feeling, big or small defines the chance for a truly intimate experience, but opera is about BIG feelings.

WE SING everything. That is not normal, it is divine. It is special.  When Luciano opened his mouth to sing lo those many innocent years ago on Johnny Carson’s Late Night Show, people saw someone nervous, and hopeful, and AUTHENTIC…. and special….. and then he sang.  Rare and one of a kind.  Everyone listening knew they were in the presence of something extraordinary.  It made them feel special, like they were of a part of something different and evolved and yet accessible, a culture, an expert sharing his life and passion. At the very least it was something that sounded pretty and they aren’t stupid, they know.  Why must opera dumb itself down, when left to itself, on it’s own merits, it continues to enchant?

Here is the very magnetic, amazingly beautiful in voice and person, Renata Tebaldi out for an ordinary stroll that became a throng of admiring fans and people struck by the specialness of the effect on the public she had…..who was this?  How does she drive them this crazy…?

I love to  post some of the fabulous singers that came before….. why?   Because they are closer to what I like…..   Look at this face….  Alive and handsome, the wonderful Italian baritone,  Gino Bechi.                        What an intense, beautiful expression.  Followed by another Italian great, Aldo Protti…..

Toti del Monte,   showing a personal charm and allure…..

The archives in Italy are filled with RAI Uno and Canale 5 interviews from the Arena and the various cities with  opera festivals and opera houses, with a “cooking” Barbieri, or a Corelli prepping for a show or shopping for Christmas gifts, or a Sutherland going for a stroll, simple day to day things,  yes.  But behind it was the total awe about what and how they did what they did…. They never apologized,  they never belittled their profession, they never made light of the difficulties….. it was a life of sacrifice and dedication…..

Verdi says it best:

“To me it seems that art practiced in this manner is no longer art, but a trade, a diversion, a sport, something to run after, to be made, if not successful, at least notorious at any cost. The feelings aroused in me are disgust and humiliation…..”

and then,

” Journalists, singers, players, choristers, and directors, etc etc.. all have to contribute their stone to the edifice of publicity, to make in this way a cornice of nonsensical trifles that add nothing to the merit of the opera and may quite possibly detract from it’s real value. It is deplorable, utterly deplorable… All I desire for this opera is a good and especially an intelligent production from the vocal, instrumental and scenic point of view. As for the rest- a’ la grace de dieu”

                                                                                                          Could he be any more handsome?  A perfect physique du role….  a GOD.

A love struck, thunder-struck Don Jose in Carmen.  There would be no Escamillo for me……

I hope to be back in form by end of this year to continue my service to music,  the body smaller and easier to move and breathe, and more in keeping with the current trend, but I hope I will not be the only one saying that opera is a divine world, where you gain entry on the sounds emitted by one of your own species, who in turn, takes you somewhere FAR from ordinary…. please, young artists, don’t let them tell you you aren’t a special being doing a very special service ….. bringing opera and all it’s magic into a new time and a new century, intact.  Not a hybrid that bares no resemblance to the real thing.  I have said it before and I will repeat here,  Opera has nothing to apologize for…..

To all my beloveds, family, friends and every good hearted person in the world, may your heart be glad and sing with joy. Rise with all that is great in your heart and soul. In my faith, He is Risen this day. Amen.

I give this thanks this day and always for the song you have placed in my heart and for all the love and music you have blessed me with. My heart sings your praises and exults in your goodness. Happy Easter to everyone.

I will miss you, Elizabeth. We all will. In a ” world of flickering images you were a constant star ” they wrote.  Sounds about right….

It occurred to me a few nights ago, looking at the the most beautiful moon.  We were told it would be the largest moon seen in hundreds of years,  directly in line with the Sun and the closest to the Earth. They told us it would be special and they didn’t exaggerate.  The Moon, looking mythically large,  came and shined it’s silvery beauty and took our breath away. How fitting that you would leave with it. The moon came and got one of it’s most magical moonbeams…….

In all the hours we chatted, here I am at your leaving, speechless.

Can’t really wrap myself around the idea you are “but a ways above us..” My heart and solidarity go out to your family, to Michael and Christopher, and Liza and Maria…. and all the babies of the babies, and to Tim and all the great people who worked with you and loved you. You were so gracious and fun with my family and friends. WE had a ball.

The world is a less beautiful place, less exciting, less warm without you in it. A perpetual youthful spirit, full of heart and loyalty. You went, surrounded by your babies, and faced it unafraid. You had been there before.  I am sure even Death dressed up to come get you, and I know your Mom and Dad, and Roddy, Mike and Michael and Richard  with Rock, James, and Monty,Chen and all your friends came to welcome you.

I will miss your laugh. Your humor. That I won’t see those eyes full of thought, and mischief, and emotion, makes me so sad. They were really something, you know? Wide open windows into one of the most unique souls I have ever known…… Violet, like suede….. luminous.

Shy as you were, your eyes invited everyone in. Looking on you was like witnessing something mythical. The real thing. How often do you get to see that? And you smiling and giggling, it made that kind of almost impossible beauty accessible…..almost.

Now, dear friend, you are part of all that is beauty still… and I will think of you always that way.

Follow your lead…… live well, fully and honestly….. leave nothing undone, heart open ready for the day, and stay after those who need help. Fight the unjust, and don’t forget, wink then they get mad. That will make them think you know something they don’t.

Well done, Elizabeth….. you did it your way and we are so much better for it !!!

You ended every phone chat with me “I Love you, Aprile…..” and I would answer, “I love ya back…..”

Beautiful girl, I always will.

One of the best and totally faithful to Verdi’s express marking…. singing of this difficult and soulful Verdian melody….. one of my absolute favorite voices and a great gentleman…… gorgeous singing.

Fabiano_Verdi Requiem_Ingemisco 2011

Please give help where you can.

In today’s insanity of searching for young, younger, youngest audiences, the dilution of an art form is in full swing. The behind the scenes might be ruining a bit of the mystique and glamor. Here in Verdi’s own words about the art of opera as opposed to the promotion of it….

From Francis Toye’s account of “Giuseppe Verdi: His Life and Works.”
To a well known critic, Filippi about his possible support of the opening of AIDA in Cairo….

“What I am going to say to you will seem strange, very strange; but you must forgive me if I feel I must unburden myself of what is on my mind.

You at Cairo? Why, nothing would be more important for AIDA in the way of publicity.

To me it seems that art practiced in this manner is no longer art, but a trade, a diversion, a sport, something to run after, to be made, if not successful, at least notorious at any cost. The feelings aroused in me are disgust and humiliation…..”

and then,

” Journalists, singers, players, choristers, and directors, etc etc.. all have to contribute their stone to the edifice of publicity, to make in this way a cornice of nonsensical trifles that add nothing to the merit of the opera and may quite possibly detract from it’s real value. It is deplorable, utterly deplorable… All I desire for this opera is a good and especially an intelligent production from the vocal, instrumental and scenic point of view. As for the rest- a’ la grace de dieu”

So strange the veil that descends when death takes a loved from your view and access. I used to call her a lot, and especially loved being one of the hundreds, I kid you not, HUNDREDS who would call her to be remembered on her birthday, Feb. 1. I so miss hearing her very melodious voice and cadence….. ” Aprile “, or ” Che bello, Millo” with the double L so gorgeously rolled. She was so incredibly hypnotic as a person and a performer. She and Muzio and Ponselle are the voices that enchanted me as a child and informed my ear. I so miss this great artist and great friend…… trust me, one smile and you are dazzled.

Happy Birthday, dear Renata. I miss you so much.

I came to know this deeply intelligent, very lovely lady years ago when I first came to the Met, and then a little more after I debuted. She was a hoot and an honest holler. A beautiful, refined soul that stayed blistering honest with self, friend, and foe if she had one, and her truthful wholeness was reflected in the silver creamy texture of her radiant instrument when she sang. Nothing was false and all deeply rooted in beauty and the eternal search for making it accessible if even for a moment. She lived in that, and I am sure a shining, sunny part of Paradise will be where she feels the most at peace and happy. God bless you and keep you dear Margaret, no one who ever heard your gorgeous voice will ever forget you…. and those lucky enough to have that beer and chat and puppies frolicking, and deep belly laughs with you are hopelessly sad to see you leave.

Such a beautiful legacy you leave. Weaved into every heart that loves beautiful expression and a soul heard when you hear them sing, you are the song long remembered nay’ forgot.

Here is a great interview with Mr. Eric Myers from Opera News with Dame Margaret Price….

REUNION
by ERIC MYERS

Some divas are loath to use the “r” word. Margaret Price, now sixty-six, has no such illusions. “I retired nine years ago,” she says proudly by telephone from her 150-year-old Welsh farmhouse on Ceibwr Bay. “I’m so desperately happy that I’m living here. It’s a glorious place. I was looking for a house here because my mother comes from this area and I spent all my holidays here from the time I was very young. So I found this old farmhouse from 1860 and renovated it, and it’s just wonderful. It’s right on top of the ocean, with Ireland across the water, and it’s on three and three-quarter acres of land.” All that land comes in handy, as her passion is breeding and showing golden retrievers. Right now she owns five, and all of them lead glamorous lives on the show circuit.

“When I retired, I thought I was through with traveling,” Price laughs. “But I’m more of a Gypsy now than I ever was when I was singing. I bought myself a big old Chrysler – a lovely American car – and I took all the seats out of it, and now it’s a Dogmobile! I drive it all over. I just came back from London, and I’m going up there again on Friday, as we’ve got a big show there on Saturday. And then I’m going down to Devon the following Friday.” Retriever love is nothing new for her. “I came to the Met with two golden retrievers, and they had a ball. Jimmy Levine was always giving them toys, and the dressers were always giving them cakes. I would come and stay for six to eight weeks each time, and everyone adoring the dogs was such a big plus for me. I always felt welcomed there – very welcomed indeed.”

Once Price made her belated Met debut in 1985, it wasn’t long before she was able to emerge from the shadow of “the other Price.” Like that Price, she had one of the most purely beautiful voices of her time. She also possessed a vocal production that was just about flawless, paired with razor-keen interpretive abilities. But opera was never the be-all and end-all for her; she was equally well known as a lieder singer, and that training always colored her deep sensitivity to texts. Although she was physically large, even by opera-singer standards, she made you forget that immediately, so remarkable were her artistry, her gorgeous, expressive face and the sheer loveliness of her tone.

When Price first stepped onto the stage of the Met, in 1976, it was as a guest performer in Otello and Le Nozze di Figaro during a brief touring visit by the Paris Opera. Scheduling conflicts prevented her from making her actual Met company debut until an Otello opposite Plácido Domingo in 1985. Thereafter, she appeared with the company for the next ten years, though the total number of her performances at the house was small – six Elisabettas, five Desdemonas and two Nozze Countesses, along with one concert appearance with James Levine.

Price was a singer with plenty of temperament, but she knew how to keep it in proper balance with music and words. “Discipline” is a word that aptly describes her technique, and it’s a word that happens to be one of her favorites. “I’m very disciplined,” she states. “Even today, I’m a very disciplined person. I think that it paid off. You know, I never gave up my lieder recitals. The lieder helped the opera, and the opera helped the lieder. The discipline of singing lieder is that you have to do it without using a great operatic voice. It’s a controlled way of singing, which actually does help opera, because then you take that discipline you’ve learned into the opera, and you don’t tend to overblow, or oversing. If you don’t utilize control during a performance – if you give 150 percent of yourself, emotionally, physically and vocally – you’re a nervous wreck at the end. And you’re not going to last long. I tried, obviously, to be emotional, but never at the risk of losing my voice.”

Discipline – or, more specifically, self-discipline – was something she was forced to learn at an early age. She spent most of her youth in Wales helping raise her mentally handicapped brother and assuming many of her working mother’s household chores after school. She also had a drastic operation at four, the result of having been born with malformed legs. (Today, she continues to have trouble with her legs.) An engagement at a young age was broken off by her father, who decreed that she choose between a career as a singer or one as a wife and mother; ultimately, she never married.

Music helped get her through. “My father was a very good pianist,” she says, “who played for several of the very good Welsh singers of the time. He played for me as well, and he had a great collection of recordings of all the great, great singers. I used to put on his records at a small age and dance and sing to them.”

When she went from Wales to London to begin vocal studies at Trinity College at the age of fifteen, she was a mezzo. Her stage debut at Welsh National Opera was as Cherubino, and one year later she made her Covent Garden debut in the same role, replacing an indisposed Teresa Berganza. “I got to know Teresa Berganza very, very well,” she says, “and I adored her way of singing. She and her husband at the time, Félix Lavilla, gave me an enormous amount of help, taking me to United Music Publishers in London and choosing Spanish repertoire for me to sing. I’ve got a lot to thank her for, and I still love listening to her singing.”

Price made the transition to soprano almost immediately and spent the next twelve years specializing in Mozart roles. The world took notice, and within a short time her international career was in full bloom. Mozart eventually gave way to Verdi, as she put her stamp on roles such as Desdemona, Elisabetta, both Amelias and even Giovanna d’Arco (in concert). The one Verdi role she tried on and soon abandoned was Aida. “I was always petrified of the Nile scene,” she explains, “as most sopranos are. That high C is so exposed and so dangerous. By the time you get to the second, you’re so exhausted – well, I was so exhausted! Once that was over, then I could relax and enjoy myself right through to the end. But everyone knows that aria is coming, and they want it perfect. I didn’t really sing a lot of Aidas. I just felt that it was such a tough nut to crack.”

Desdemona became a calling-card role for her, but it was not without its own perils, particularly the time she sang it with Jon Vickers. When this incident is brought up to her, she exclaims, “Oh, that’s so many years ago, I’d rather forget the horrors! He was a great singer, and I had a great admiration for him. It was just rather an unfortunate thing. We were doing Otello in the Paris Opera. And Plácido had been doing the Otello, and Jon said that whatever Plácido did, he would also do and wouldn’t alter the production at all. But when it came to it, he wanted to do it his way and nobody else’s. And, well, we had problems during rehearsal, at which he became very abusive [during the murder scene]. I was very scared, of course, because I was very vulnerable to him, and he could have really smothered me. He was told that he had to behave himself in performance. So he came to me and said, ‘Listen, this is how I’m going to do it, and I will stick to it.’”

Was there a price to be paid in moving from Mozart to Verdi? “That transition is not so unusual,” she stresses. “It’s the natural progression, if your voice develops and changes. But I didn’t give up Mozart entirely. I still sang Donna Anna, and I always came back to work at my Mozart, because it’s the best vocal exercise and healer you could ever have. When I sang Norma, for example, everyone was very astonished that I was going to be singing it and said, ‘Oh, you’ll never sing Mozart again.’ I sang some performances in a new production with Agnes Baltsa for Zurich Opera, and then when I came home, I started singing Così Fan Tutte in my music room – evening my voice out again, and getting the legato and the size back. Then I asked Wolfgang Sawallisch at the Munich Opera House if I could do some performances of Così Fan Tutte the next time they staged it. He said yes, and my voice was back to a Mozart voice again. I wanted everyone to know that I had not lost my voice singing Norma!” Even when she recorded Isolde under Carlos Kleiber (she never sang it live), she did it her own way. “I’ve always sung everything with my own voice – with a Mozart voice, if you will. I sang Tristan with the voice that God’s given me – I didn’t try to force it.”

Price’s respect for conductors such as Kleiber and Sawallisch was boundless, but today’s crop does not inspire such feelings in her. “I was privileged and lucky enough to work with some great conductors, like Solti and Klemperer and Jimmy Levine and Abbado and Sawallisch and Kleiber – and they were all so helpful. One of the reasons I gave up was because music was no longer the same as it used to be. The singers are not the same – the conductors are not the same. When I was doing performances with Claudio Abbado, he treated me as an equal and helped me through performances, and we were great friends. You can’t be a great friend with a conductor anymore, because they’re so concerned about their own career. They don’t work with the singers anymore – they don’t help singers. They don’t sit down with you and talk with you and say, ‘Listen, don’t do it that way – try it this way.’ You know, Abbado and people like him would say, ‘Why don’t you try and do that in one breath? You’ll sing it differently.’ So you’d try it – and it worked! I don’t think you get that from conductors anymore. They’re so egotistical. I feel sorry for the young singers that are coming up today. They’ve got to know everything, because they’re not going to get it from the conductors.”

When she was last interviewed by OPERA NEWS, in 1985, Price said, “If I look back at my own life, it’s been a pretty sad one, compared to some who’ve had more luck.” Twenty-two years later, she feels differently. “I was probably on a downer,” she chuckles. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve really changed my mind. I think the hardships I had when I was young stood me in good stead for the future. I don’t regret anything. Now I’m very, very happy, and I can look back and say what a great career I had. I’m very proud of the things that I’ve done, and I’m very, very happy with the people that have helped me to get where I got. And all the great colleagues I had – the fun, the laughs. I wouldn’t have done anything else. My life has been a good life.”

ERIC MYERS is the author of three books. He has contributed articles to Playbill, Time Out New York and The New York Times Magazine and Arts and Leisure section.

The new decade begins.

2010 in a way was full of potential and maddening delay. SO MANY fabulous things, and correctly it was a time of planting the seed for a successful harvest.

Cannot wait to be in the shape I need to be. It is better but still a work in progress. Hard to be patient, but that is the only way to get to health and ultimately my future safely.

Of one thing I am certain my love for the opera and all it really means has not wavered. My energy to serve it is tripled and quadrupled. It is a different world of presentation, but the music remains the magic.

Operavision is going along swimmingly and is destined to become more than I ever thought if everything goes as I hope….. and it does look good.

Time.

Such a strange forward thinking projectile…..

January One, Twenty Eleven…… 1-1-11
I am told it is a powerful number of manifest….. 11 11

So I am closing my eyes and clicking my heels and with the power of this world and next, I am offering this prayer that God’s plan for me is a successful year full of service to music, transformation, a way to be of help to those who need it and a chance to make a difference…… AMEN.

A thought for all my friends and colleagues who crossed over….. into a world of oceans of light, the great Joan Sutherland and Shirley Verrett, Cesare Siepi, just to name a few giants…….

They shall be missed greatly.

I must admit, I am now officially tired of watching other people do what I should be doing…. if indeed it is MGM they want, MGM they will get. I shall become the change I wish for in my own journey.

Watching Italy turn it’s back on the Arts….that has been an electrifying horror to watch unfold….. the Arts are always the ones to suffer.

So I choose this lovely face of Yvonne De Carlo to signify my own distaste for this lack of vision on the part of so many who should be defending and protecting the Arts….

One needs a catalyst…. this will serve as one of mine and will push me towards the goals I have set.

Getting on the Merry Go Round that I love, feeling the air of the summit, the edge of the precipice which I find so tantalizing and seizing every opportunity….. going forward with all my beloved family, my friends and a sense of love and solidarity….

Happy New Year to all who visit to read and share the chronicle of my life. To all who love opera as I do, WELCOME and keep up the fight…. and remember the joy you feel when you are in it’s embrace…..
Divine before you are……

God bless…… and stay tuned…..

Christmas time.

My absolute favorite time of year. A feeling of kindness and mercy, of a certain kind of good will…. a magic.

I am grateful for so much in my life and hopeful of God’s continuing guidance and mercy.

To all who visit here, and to my beloved family and friends,

Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones and to all in this world and on the other side, I love and cherish you.

This evening a lot of wonderful people will come together to bring this most special world of melody and intense melodrama to life in a performance of Puccini’s “La Fanciulla del West” in celebration of the 100th Anniversary of it’s World Premiere at the historic Metropolitan Opera House. 100 years ago, Arturo Toscanini conducted. Emmy Destinn and Caruso were “Minnie” and her heart’s desire, “Dick Johnson” and Gatti-Cazzaza was at the helm of the “yellow brick house on 39th street”, the OLD Met. Everyone was there! Puccini himself was in the audience!

In this historic photo above, there they are; the four incredible geniuses. It sort of looks like they were posed yes, but for me it seems in that exact moment of capture, they were caught slightly off guard. The giveaway is what looks like a furtive glance from Gatti-Cazzaza to Puccini. He was balancing some pretty powerful types there, can you imagine? We have Gatti-Cazzaza and then David Balasco, the playwright from whose story Puccini culled his libretto. Breathtaking to see, next to him, is the conductor Arturo Toscanini showing his primary interest being absolutely his good friend, the composer as he fixes his gaze on a languid, slightly mischievous Puccini. What a “Full House” that beats any other hand Minnie might hold hidden!!!

I want to hug them all.

As the world of opera tries to turn it’s back on so much that is wonderful and traditional about itself, this revival is a refreshing action of continuity.

Fast forward 100 years.

A new house on 65th street. People Pavilions and curved sloping Public Parks dot the landscape and steps themselves (!) welcome you in at least twenty different languages. Plasma screens selling tickets, records and memories are everywhere with color manifesti in the front of the house forecasting the next “good-looking singer” coming to sing for you. The E ride at Disney for classical lovers. Opera at a theater near you, in glowing HD quality. Progress. For some. We are told, “Time marches on!”

The seasons unfold year after year and it seems they like to cast German voices in service of most of the heroines of it’s Italian masterpieces, and true to form, they have given this tremendous honor to my good friend and fabulous Wagnerian and Strauss specialist Debbie Voigt and to my illustrious colleague and great buddy, the Italian powerhouse tenor, Marcello Giordani to be the Puccini Golden Couple. Lucio Gallo, a former bass turned baritone from Italy is the menacing Jack Rance and long time Met Stalwart Dwayne Croft is the Sonora…..

Maestro Nicola Luisotti is the guiding Italian leader of this mighty orchestra and the production is a beautiful, AUTHENTIC, exactly what the composer might have wanted, a postcard of the Wild, Wild West.

It is a creation of the director Giancarlo Del Monaco, the son of a great “Dick Johnson”, one of the very best ever to sing the role, Mario Del Monaco.

Tonight I send them all my heartfelt best wishes for a warm reception and a rewarding visit with this most magnificent canvas that Puccini drew for us capturing a time of anxious exploration and sacrifice and pioneers living on the edge as best they could far from their families. A wild, unstructured free-for-all free falling time, where survival was often illusive and lonely.

In Minnie’s beautiful heart and vision of her “guys” she grew up with, the men see in her their hopes and dreams personified- as they chip away at the mountains searching for their gold, she chips away at the walls they created for themselves with her little acts of home and faith; educating as best she could and inspiring with passages from a Bible read every day. She is their constant, their unwavering loyal center.

Mr. Tomassini wrote a review for the performance of Emily Pulley’s Minnie in 2004 and was touched as she sang the lines that spoke about the lack of education and that Minnie felt “less than” because of it. He is touched again by the same motif this time round with his favorite Miss Voigt as the Minnie. Puccini built this into the music, the words, and the “feeling”. It is a lasting tribute to Puccini that he can transform two very different Minnie’s at just the same point. In this point I can agree with him, it is a very illuminating part of the score and who she is. Made me think of other such “rilievi”…..

It isn’t only there that I am touched and want to cry as for me there are two other moments even more magical.

Johnson has to leave but is struck by her total lack of guile, he too feels she doesn’t know how special she is.

“Don’t you know, that you are a very good and pure person and that you have the face of an angel!”

Immediately Minnie is shown her path….. one she never even saw coming.

Like water to a parched ground, the sound of that special someone’s voice saying you are indeed pretty and saying you “have the face of an angel!”….

How her heart must have skipped a beat when he said that, with all the gorgeous “atmosphere” created by Puccini….. she can’t even believe it….. it is like something out of her romance novels that she is always reading.

“What did he say?” she says incredulous and sighing.

The men must have all told her she was lovely. Of course, they gave her bows and lovely things of tribute.

But she had never felt what she felt for anyone until she met “Mister Johnson” with all his “book learning” and travel…. she would never get the chance to impress him really as she was a just “una povera fanciulla” with barely “30 dollars of education”.

Instead he lifts her from this dreaded “death” of an existence without love and with those few simple, powerful words her “life” begins. I love that.

The second place is at the end, where the real gold she protected for her “miners” was the everyday life she made golden by her faith and her trust and her loyalty.

“No one has sinned so much that their isn’t some road open to them for redemption.”

That makes me sob.

Viva Puccini!!!!! Viva Minnie and her gorgeous message of love and redemption. Here is a clip of the great man himself speaking the day after the Premiere. The last word is yours, “Tocca te, Maestro!”

“Signor Presidente della Repubblica, Autorità, Signore e Signori: sono molto felice di dirigere anche questo anno il sette dicembre alla Scala, sono molto onorato di essere stato dichiarato Maestro Scaligero. Per tale titolo, ma anche in nome di tutti i miei colleghi che suonano, cantano, ballano, e lavorano non soltanto in questo magnifico teatro, ma in tutti i teatri di Italia per dirvi a qual punto siamo profondamente preoccupati per il futuro della cultura in nostro paese e in Europa, e si me permitete, vorrei che ricordiamo insieme il articolo 9 della Costituzione Italiana: La Repubblica promuove lo sviluppo della cultura e la ricerca scientifica e tecnica. Tutela il paesaggio e il patrimonio storico e Artistico della Nazione!”

“I am very happy to direct even this year on December 7th at La Scala, I am very honored to have been declared Master Scaliger. To that end, but also on behalf of all my colleagues who play, sing, dance, and work not only in this magnificent theater, but in all theaters of Italy to tell to what extent we are deeply concerned about the future of culture in our country and in Europe, and permit me, I would like to remind all that the Article 9 of the Italian Constitution: The Republic promotes the development of culture and scientific and technical research. Protecting the landscape and the historical and artistic heritage of the Nation!”

I have always loved Wagnerian looks. The shield, the helmet, the capes. Fell madly for them when young, but Rysanek at the Met as Elizabeth in Tannhauser did me in. The grandezza, the bigness of thought and character, the sense of something mythical being displayed and played out in all it’s glory. The Pilgrims Chorus at the end had me almost levitating out of the box……