Leontyne Price

Leontyne Price, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Zubin Metha – Puccini: Tosca (1973/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · April 1, 2024 · Comments off

Leontyne Price, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Zubin Metha - Puccini: Tosca (1973/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

This set–one of at least a dozen full-length Toscas available, is a big, brash, unsubtle affair–not that there’s anything wrong with that. Long referred to as a “shabby little shocker,” Tosca is a brute of a work, with three huge central figures–the opera singer, Tosca, full of jealousy and passion; Cavaroadossi, the idealistic painter who loves her; and Scarpia, the creepy, amoral police chief who wants to get into Tosca’s–er–good graces. In the title role, Price is imperious and elegant, and if she’s not as nuanced as Callas, well, no one is. Domingo’s Cavaradossi ideally suits his voice, and he may not be very interesting, but he sounds great. Milnes is all snarling and lip curling as Scarpia–just right for my money–you really hate him by the time Tosca does him in. Mehta leads an exciting show, and while the orchestra occasionally threatens to drown out the singers, it never quite does. Go for it. –Robert Levine
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Leontyne Price, Robert Merrill, Rome Opera House Orchestra and Chorus & Georg Solti – Verdi: Aida (1962/2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · May 20, 2023 · Comments off

Leontyne Price, Robert Merrill, Rome Opera House Orchestra and Chorus & Georg Solti – Verdi: Aida (1962/2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:32:25 minutes | 2,70 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Decca Music Group Ltd.

Soprano Leontyne Price is joined by Jon Vickers, Rita Gorr, Robert Merrill, the Coro del Teatro dell’ Opera di Roma, and the Orchestra del Teatro dell’ Opera di Roma conducted by Georg Solti.
Decca marks the 90th birthday of Leontyne Price with the soprano leading casts conducted by Sir Georg Solti and Herbert von Karajan.

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Leontyne Price, Erich Leinsdorf – Giacomo Puccini – Madama Butterfly (2006) SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

SACD / DSD By admin · February 21, 2023 · Comments off

Leontyne Price, Erich Leinsdorf – Giacomo Puccini – Madama Butterfly (2006)
SACD ISO (2.0/MCH): 3,62 GB | 24B/88,2kHz Stereo FLAC: 863 MB | Full Artwork
Label/Cat#: RCA Red Seal “Living Stereo” # 82876 82622-2 | Country/Year: US 2006 | 3% Recovery Info
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic, Opera, Italian

This recording of Madama Butterfly is one of my all time favorites. It was one of the 1st records that I bought myself in the early 1970’s. Since then I have acquired original 1963 LP pressings, UK-made LP’s, the the original R2R tape, & the old CD issue, all in hopes of finding the best sounding edition. Up till now, the Reel-Reel tape was the best, apparently avoiding the some of the dull Dynagroove equalization that RCA imposed on this & most of its subsequent 1960’s releases.

Now here is where the DSD/SACD mastering has proved its worth! This disc reveals a master recording of breadth & subtlety, the equal of any of the “Living Stereo” era recordings. The 3D soundstage is spacious, the orchestra warm & detailed, & the voices exquisitely clear & vivid. All of this is in a sound environment that is never forced or harsh. I think one can safely say that we have never truly heard this beautiful performance in all of its glory until now.

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Leontyne Price – Puccini: Tosca by Leontyne Price (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · December 8, 2022 · Comments off

Leontyne Price – Puccini: Tosca by Leontyne Price (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:52:57 minutes | 2,33 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alexandre Bak – Classical Music Reference Recording

Mary Violet Leontyne Price (born February 10, 1927) is an American soprano who was the first African American soprano to receive international acclaim. From 1961 she began a long association with the Metropolitan Opera, where she was the first African American to be a leading performer. She regularly appeared at the world’s major opera houses, the Royal Opera House, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and La Scala, the last at which she was also the first African American to sing a leading role. She was particularly renowned for her performances of the title role in Verdi’s Aida.

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Leontyne Price, Wiener Philharmoniker, Herbert von Karajan – Puccini: Tosca (1963/2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · October 25, 2022 · Comments off

The dramas of Victorien Sardou, in the last decades of the nineteenth century, were as popular in Italy as they were in France. French companies, therefore, could tour the Italian theatres and attract large audiences willing to ignore any language barrier. Giacomo Puccini knew hardly any French when he went to see Sardou’s La Tosca in Milan in 1890, and yet he apparently enjoyed himself. Actually, he may have gone to the theatre — like a majority of the Milanese public — not so much to see the play as to admire its star, the forty-five-year-old Sarah Bernhardt, to whom La Tosca is dedicated and for whom it was written.

The divine Sarah was Sardou’s Tosca, the heroic cantatrice, the unashamed mistress of Mario Cavaradossi, and the unrepentant murderess of Scarpia. The rest of the play was hardly more than an elaborate, carefully constructed frame for her singular, spectacular talents. But Puccini must have seen past her dazzling interpretation, arriving at the heart of the drama itself. Anyway, he returned to see Sarah and La Tosca in Florence in 1895.

But by this time the composer had an even more impelling motive for revisiting the play: a libretto was in the process of being fashioned from it for him. The first talk of a Tosca libretto had begun some years earlier, in 1889, when Puccini had been at the very outset of his career. His first (and least successful) librettist, the journalist and playwright Ferdinando Fontana, had suggested the popular Sardou play to Puccini, who wrote to his publisher Giulio Ricordi about it. Then he turned to other subjects, writing Manon Lescaut and La Bohme in the years between 1889 and 1895. If the vain, successful and money-minded Sardou had been reluctant to grant operatic rights of his play to an unknown composer in the 1880s he was more than interested, a decade later, in having the internationally acclaimed Puccini make an opera from LaTosca.

There was an obstacle, however, which first had to be overcome. Sardou had already granted these same rights to Alberto Franchetti, a friend of Puccini’s, and the composer of two operas that enjoyed some popularity at that time, Asrael and Cristoforo Colombo. Ricordi, who was also Franchetti’s publisher, had commissioned the librettist Luigi Illica to prepare a Tosca text for him.

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