The death earlier this month of the great Canadian-born opera tenor Jon Vickers prompts an appraisal of his most memorable recordings.
For myself, three stand out. First is his DVD of Bellini’s Norma performed in a high wind in the outdoors arena of the Theatre Antique d’Orange in 1974. Montserrat Caballe sang the title role of the Druid priestess, Vickers her lover Pollione and Josephine Veasey the younger priestess Adalgisa whom Pollione is secretly pursuing.
The Roman arena dates back to the 1st century AD, highly appropriate for this opera which is set among Druids in Roman-occupied France. The druids are restless and want to start an open revolt against the Romans. Norma, the head Druid, opts for caution, however. She has a secret reason for this — she’s long been having an affair with the Roman proconsul Pollione, and they have two children. When she discovers he now prefers Adalgisa, however, her attitude changes.
Vickers was characterized by a searing, tigerish voice. The combination of this with Caballe’s own distinctive and beautiful tone was bound to be especially electric, and when this was fortuitously combined with an impending storm the night the video was recorded the effect was unparalleled. The entire video has recently been uploaded onto YouTube, with good sound considering the circumstances, but unfortunately there are no subtitles. If you invest in the DVD you’ll find titles in French, English and Italian.
If you want to sample Vickers’s voice, listen to Meco all’altar di Venere [with me at the altar of Venus] at 19.19. As for Caballe, no one could reasonably miss her Casta Diva [chaste goddess] beginning at 33.18, plus the subsequent minutes where the wind performs marvels with her long veils.
There are two videos of Vickers in Verdi’s Otello and he’s sensational in both. The first comes from 1974 and is conducted by Herbert von Karajan, with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. It has Mirella Freni as a lyrical Desdemona and Peter Glossop as a highly malign Iago. Subtitles are in English, German, French and Chinese. The complete video is on YouTube, but with Spanish subtitles only.
The second dates from 1978 and is a live performance from the Met conducted by James Levine (a recommendation in itself). Renata Scotto is a fabulous Desdemona, and Cornell Macneil a very powerful Iago. Subtitles are only in English.
It’s impossible to choose between these two superb renditions. In both Vickers’ voice and his physical presence are outstanding. This was a Vickers role par excellence, and he performed it for several years at the Salzburg Festival in the early 1970s, as if warming up for these video recordings.
Karajan also selected Vickers for the part of Siegmund in his recording of Wagner’s Ring cycle. Siegmund only appears in Die Walkure but his is it’s a crucial role nonetheless. Nowhwere did Wagner write more lyrically than in Die Walkure Act One, and this act is dominated by Siegmund and his long-lost sister Sieglinde (Gundula Janowitz).
This version of Wagner’s masterpiece was dubbed by some critics as “the chamber music Ring,” a designation Karajan hated. But it’s these very laid-back qualities that have always endeared it to me. Vickers, of course, is anything but laid-back, but this only adds to the potency of the mix. The evil Hunding is sung with strength by Martti Talvela, but then this is a role in which it’s almost impossible to fail.
Vickers’s performance in the title role in Britten’s Peter Grimes has long been considered a masterpiece. A highly knowledgeable friend, after hearing of Vickers’ death, reported it was the performance that stayed most indelibly in his mind. It was filmed in 1981 and is from the Covent Garden Opera, conducted by Colin Davis. Subtitles are in English, German and Spanish. A seven-minute extract can be seen on YouTube, uploaded by Bob Kingston.
For genuine Vickers fans there are also performances as Parsifal and Tristan, and as Florestan in Beethoven’s Fidelio. Also very marked, and again from Von Karajan, is his performance as Canio in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. An extract of him singing Vesti la Giubba can be seen on YouTube in several versions.
Jon Vickers was a once-only artist. No one else has come near him for passionate commitment. A few have thought that his acting exceeded his singing, to the detriment of the latter, but as I write this his heroic tones echo in my mind like no one else’s.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your