Today’s post is, as promised, the completion of the non-thematic, no-concept article I began two weeks ago with commentary on the 1956 Met broadcast of Manon Lescaut. As I was preparing for that, my colleague Joseph Horowitz sent me a message or two enthusing about the conducting of Paul Paray with the Detroit Symphony in a concert performance of Carmen from 1959. Horowitz is much more up on conductors and orchestras than I am, and his posts on artsjournal.com fruitfully explore several under-critiqued areas of our musical heritage. So when he enthuses about something, I pay attention. As it turned out, the Carmen and José of Paray’s Carmen were Jean Madeira and Brian Sullivan. Hearing them again started me thinking about not only their own careers, but those of others, some of whom participated in the Manon Lescaut performances of those years, and others who struck little bells because they connected to topics that were already active in my mind—Benjamin Britten, because I was assigning myself some homework in anticipation of the Billy Budd the Met had announced for next season, and Lawrence Tibbett, because of my involvement in Marston’s upcoming restoration and release of that great baritone’s recordings. These pieces jigsaw together for me in ways that are no doubt idiosyncratic, but which may throw some light on aspects of the American opera scene, 1948-59.

Paray was a French conductor and composer who spent a eleven or so years (1952-1963) as conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He recorded extensively for Mercury, which label was turning out some of the best-sounding orchestral recordings of that time (or this), and while to my ears the Detroit remained a recognizably American orchestra (as did the BSO under Munch or the CSO under Martinon), Paray’s French ear clearly had an influence on its style and sound.^(I) In this Carmen, I certainly hear a lot of what Horowitz found stimulating, especially when the orchestra is properly to the fore. The overture has great fizz and discipline—Paray finds the virtues of clarity and crispness without their often concomitant loss of weight. And those qualities prevail through most of the performance, along with some fine execution of instrumental interjections (the trumpets at several junctures) or solos (the violin picking up on Carmen’s “Tra-la-la-las” as José leads her to prison). At points, as with José’s outburst at “Non, je ne peux plus d’écouter!” and succeeding bars, the orchestra’s interjections make an impact one doesn’t often hear. There is also a strong momentum to the reading, usually to its advantage but sometimes not, as with a recklessly fast tempo for the smugglers’ quintet, which turns to shambles, and more crucially the opera’s final scene, which is brutally pushed in best sauve qui peut fashion. Perhaps broadcast constraints were pressing.

It would be frivolous to call the performing arts “essential industries” in the shelter-health-and-sustenance sense that has to take priority now. And the prospects for resumption of anything resembling “normal” activity in pursuits that require the herding of one or two hundred to several thousand souls in auditoriums, on stages, and in orchestra pits are, to say the least, uncertain. So we—all of us to whom opera and the other arts of the act afford shelter, health, and sustenance for heart, soul, and mind, and for confirmation of an important piece of our identity—are bereft. Fortunately for us, we have the awareness that even under circumstances more trying and tragic than our present ones, the passion and dedication of artists and devotees have always found ways to bring the striving for beauty and meaning back to full life. That will happen again, I am sure.

Meanwhile, there are secondary resources in plenty to help carry us through. Given the necessary adaptations to my own current situation—a fairly strict observance of a self-semiquarantine regimen, without access to the bulk of my reference materials (and no, not everything is online), in addition to late-life retraining to keep my teaching practice active via Zoom—I’ve taken the liberty to follow casual leads and paw about among these secondary resources, without much regard to whether or not an over-arching theme unites the findings. I’ve always found, though, that it’s in the nature of pawing about to turn up items that connect, at a micro- if not macro-level. In fact, that’s the tautological essence of subjective exploration, and the discovery that many such micro-connections are held in common plays a big role in the life of the devotee community. My original intent with this post was to lead off with a consideration of a recently released starry performance of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, then follow with thoughts about two nearly (but not quite!) identical performances of Britten’s Peter Grimes, and finish with a glance at an old concert performance of Bizet’s Carmen from an unlikely source—all these from the 1948-59 time period, and full of these micro-connections. As sometimes happens, though, I have found myself with a lot to say about the Puccini performance, particularly in regard to its leading tenor, Jussi Björling. So the remainder of my proposed material will follow at more modest length in two weeks’ time, and a full post on a date TBA after that. The micro-connections will still be there.  

The Manon Lescaut is a recent release from the St. Laurent Studio of the Metropolitan Opera performance of March 31, 1956. The romantic protagonists are sung by Licia Albanese and Jussi Björling, and the conductor is Dmitri Mitropoulos. This was a broadcast that acquired a legendary status among devotees, partly on its merits as one of those electric afternoons, partly for its presumed superiority to the RCA Victor studio recording starring the same protagonist pair, and partly as one of the relatively few complete opera broadcasts by Björling, who had dismayed us with frequent cancelations. It happens that I was there. If you should acquire this two-CD set, take a look at the photo on the verso of the track listing card (a view I don’t recall seeing previously reproduced), and let your eye follow along the aisle by the wall on the right to where it curves in at the back, you will see the precise location along the rail of my Family Circle standing room spot on that day at the old house. It was a favored location, won by charging up five flights of stairs faster than the competition when the 40th Street door was thrown open, and knowing exactly where you wanted to be for the fullest view. Kept us regulars in shape.