Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.
Barber at the Met
Synopsis
There’s a book entitled “Great Operatic Disasters” which chronicles the sometime humorous – and sometimes harrowing – mishaps that have befallen opera singers and productions over the last few centuries. According to that book, September 16th seems to have been a particularly unlucky day.
Consider that on today’s date in 1782, the Italian castrato Farinelli, one of the most celebrated opera stars of the 18th century, died in Bologna after his dismissal from the Spanish court; on September 16th in 1920, the great Italian tenor Enrico Caruso would make his last records in Camden, New Jersey; and in 1977, opera diva Maria Callas dropped dead of a heart attack in Paris.
And on today’s date in 1966 the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center opened with a gala production of a brand-new opera specially commissioned from the American composer Samuel Barber. Despite an all-star cast headed by Leontyne Price and a lavish stage production designed by Franco Zefferelli – you guessed it – the opera was a flop.
Maybe everyone expected too much, or perhaps the lavish sets were too distracting. Whatever the reason, despite its gorgeous music, even today Barber’s “Anthony and Cleopatra,” has never found a lasting place in the repertory.
Samuel Barber (1910 – 1981) — Anthony and Cleopatra (Spoleto Festival soloists and orchestra; Christian Badea, cond.) New World 322