ha ha!

today's records....

The World's Great Arias - featuring Enzo Stuarti & other artistes: I hunted around for a while to try to find out who the other artistes were but I haven't come up with anything. Did find some interesting bits about "Enzo Stuarti" though. First a really old article from Time and then his obituary. Anyhoo, lots of familiar things on here, La Donna E Mobile, Habanera, Vesti La Guibba... only thing I didn't recognize was In Fernen Land. I don't know for certain, but to my ear it sounded like a couple of the arias were transposed down, Che Gelida Manina in particular. and then whoever sang Ah! Forse Lui opted not to take the high E-flat at the end, which is as it's written*, but I don't hear it done much nowadays.

*found this nice commentary at nfcs about it

If you sing the E-flat in performance, be prepared for one critic to say, "Instead of respecting Verdi's score, Miss C______ screeched out an unwritten high note in a blatant attempt to win cheap applause."

If you don't sing the E-flat, someone will write, "Miss C_____ avoided the climactic note of the aria, so the entire scene fell flat. A soprano who cannot sing all the notes has no business singing Violetta."