Nano Notes: Turandot
A simple mnemonic (I just made it up): Turandot loves Camelot; she’d never show in Tuckahoe.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, I was listening today to one of the first opera recordings that I was given — and possibly one of the last, now that I think of it. What do you give a fourteen year-old who knows nothing about opera — when you don’t know anything about opera, either? Why not ask the nice salesman at Sam Goody.
That’s how I wound up with Tales of Hoffmann in English, Così fan tutte, and Turandot. So wrong in so many ways. No wonder I’m still peculiar.
The Turandot was Nilsson’s second recording of the opera, I believe — the one with Bjoerling, Tebaldi, Tozzi, and Leinsdorf. It is perhaps the most pathetic opera recording ever made by a major label. The stars are good enough, but the Rome Opera Orchestra and Chorus — there are no words for their unruly lack of interest. In my innocence, I thought the shoddiness was Puccini’s fault. It wasn’t until Zubin Mehta’s recording in the early Seventies (Sutherland, Caballé, Pavarotti, and Ghiaurov) that the opera got the backup it deserves.
I wasn’t thinking about my first opera records when I added the Drottningholm performance of Così onto this afternoon’s playlist. I was thinking how lovely Mozart sounded this morning at breakfast — a violin concerto and the Symphony No 39. It was just warm enough to have the windows open, and Mozart was somehow just right.
Preceding Turandot and Così was Handel’s Israel in Egypt. As a Lenten observance, I’m starting every Saturday-afternoon triple-decker with an oratorio. A bunch of Handel oratorios have accumulated — I didn’t even know that there was a Belshazzar until I saw it in the MHS catalogue a while back — and I’ve never listened to most of them. Israel in Egypt is full of dandy choruses, and sounds more like a Chandos anthem than an oratorio. Judas Maccabeus next week, I think — if I can find it. And the Beecham Bohème — the one used, anachronistically, not that I’m complaining, in Atonement.
While listening to the operas on the Nano/Klipsch RoomGroove, I was disconnecting the stereo components in my workroom. I don’t know what I’m going to do with them, but I haven’t used them in over a year. Walking past the wall of CDs in the hallway, I wonder how long they’ll be around. The wall behind them used to make an amazing gallery for our nice collection of prints.