Vanessa received its premiere at the Met on January 15, 1958, and RCA promptly made a recording of Dimitri Mitropoulos conducting the original cast. The Salzburg Festival presented the European premiere in August of the same year, with Mitropoulos and all of the principals from the original production, except for Ira Malaniuk replacing Regina Resnik as the Old Baroness. The RCA recording is a classic, and such an authoritative account of the opera that another version with the same cast might seem unnecessary. This version, ...
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Vanessa received its premiere at the Met on January 15, 1958, and RCA promptly made a recording of Dimitri Mitropoulos conducting the original cast. The Salzburg Festival presented the European premiere in August of the same year, with Mitropoulos and all of the principals from the original production, except for Ira Malaniuk replacing Regina Resnik as the Old Baroness. The RCA recording is a classic, and such an authoritative account of the opera that another version with the same cast might seem unnecessary. This version, though, comes close to surpassing the original -- it offers significant, fresh insights into the score, and the live recording has more of a visceral charge than RCA's studio version. The Salzburg performance should be of strong interest to anyone who loves the opera. While Orfeo's set doesn't always have the polish of the studio recording, the principals have settled into their roles dramatically and the poignancy of the story is expressed even more deeply. Eleanor Steber seems...
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