Corelli and Crespin On The Bell Telephone Hour
Recently, the NYC Opera Fanatic has been sampling the gems contained in VAI's series "Great Stars of Opera -Telecasts from the Bell Telephone Hour"
One would think that watching these one-of-a-kind video snippets with, yes, the greatest stars of opera would give me nothing but unadulterated joy. Joy they give me, but nothing in the life of a melancholic is unadulterated. I'm probably the only person on earth who can get depressed watching the Bell Telephone Hour!
Watching these amazing historical documents from the 1960's, I can't help thinking: "Gosh, can u imagine being able to watch opera like this on TV? No, I can't. I can't imagine anything like the Bell Telephone Hour being shown on network TV! My mind simply cannot envision it since it is so foreign to the world that I inhabit".
It would not be too difficult to construct a year-by-year timeline of the decline and fall of opera in American culture, popular or otherwise.
But, now, on to something more cheerful:
the open-throated lusciousness of Franco Corelli and Regine Crespin singing the duet-by-the-gallows "Teco io sto!" from un Ballo in Maschera.
Watching these two powerhouses collide in glorious Bell-o-color, one is struck by their vitality, sexual appeal, animal magnetism, and sheer natural Ooomph.
Corelli and Crespin together are the eternal masculine and the eternal feminine, two ends of the gender spectrum with no fuzzy ambiguities to confuse us.
Corelli and Crespin are all man and all woman, the active and the passive respectively.
Or, if you will, the Ballo and the Maschera.
When I watch these two, I feel like some prepubescent boy who has accidentally caught his parents having sex.
One would think that watching these one-of-a-kind video snippets with, yes, the greatest stars of opera would give me nothing but unadulterated joy. Joy they give me, but nothing in the life of a melancholic is unadulterated. I'm probably the only person on earth who can get depressed watching the Bell Telephone Hour!
Watching these amazing historical documents from the 1960's, I can't help thinking: "Gosh, can u imagine being able to watch opera like this on TV? No, I can't. I can't imagine anything like the Bell Telephone Hour being shown on network TV! My mind simply cannot envision it since it is so foreign to the world that I inhabit".
It would not be too difficult to construct a year-by-year timeline of the decline and fall of opera in American culture, popular or otherwise.
But, now, on to something more cheerful:
the open-throated lusciousness of Franco Corelli and Regine Crespin singing the duet-by-the-gallows "Teco io sto!" from un Ballo in Maschera.
Watching these two powerhouses collide in glorious Bell-o-color, one is struck by their vitality, sexual appeal, animal magnetism, and sheer natural Ooomph.
Corelli and Crespin together are the eternal masculine and the eternal feminine, two ends of the gender spectrum with no fuzzy ambiguities to confuse us.
Corelli and Crespin are all man and all woman, the active and the passive respectively.
Or, if you will, the Ballo and the Maschera.
When I watch these two, I feel like some prepubescent boy who has accidentally caught his parents having sex.
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