Un Ballo in Maschera

Live from the Metropolitan Opera, 14 February 1980. This version takes place in Boston rather than Sweden.

Don Carlo

Ghiaurov, Freni, and Bumbry were great voices in their time, and they are still effective here -- good enough musicians to put over the quite heavy vocal and expressive demands of their roles. Louis Quilico was never quite in that league, and he sounds a bit spread and woofy in places here, but he works hard and effectively to bring Rodrigo to life. Placido Domingo recorded his first Don Carlo, for EMI with Giulini, about 15 years before this production, but he looks and sounds fine here -- in the early 1980's he was doing very good Otellos ...

Rigoletto

The opera's dramatic structure frames and enhances the characters. Scenes of magnificence regularly alternate with scenes of darkness and squalor. From sumptuous interiors, we move to a dark street, a lonely inn. The secondary figures are astutely counterpoised: the plotting courtiers against the plotting Sparafucile and Maddalena (also ambiguously tender-hearted). When Rigoletto says "Pari siamo", he could be expressing the motto of the whole work: the beautiful and the ugly can be equally good, equally evil.