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.
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.
Margaret Price
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!”
Aprile Millo Master Sessions or Donations
A place to pay for private Master Class sessions online or in person, Covid permitting. Donations for Mme. Millo's Summer Academy with Dr. Maria Vetere in Busseto, Italy. Operavision Academy. Proceeds donating would be used to help towards a grant or scholarship for study. The fee is for one hour and 15 minutes
$300.00
The High Priestess of that old fashioned operatic religion- Aprile Millo definitely not the girl next door! Opera is Divine and takes to a place you will not see before you die and you live to tell the story!
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