Don Carlos

Castone won the Pavarotti competition in Philadelphia and became a member of the Stuttgart Opera in 1991.

His career was largely focused in the US and Germany, singing the title role of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, Rossini's Figaro, Wagner's Wolfram, Rodrigo and Verdi's Don Carlo, and Sharpless.

French arts administrator and director Louis Erlot has died at 97.

Erlot directed a number of productions at Opera de Lyon before being tapped to lead the company in 1969.

The first is Fred Thomas of Good Hope, Georgia, who won the Metropolitan Auditions of the Air in 1951.

Fred Thomas sings the recitative and aria Dormirò sol nel monto mio regal from the opera Don Carlos by Verdi.

[singing] Ella giammai m'amò.

No! Quel cor chiuso a me.

Amor per me non ha.

Amor per me non ha.

That was Fred Thomas singing "Dormiro Sol Nel Manto Mio Regal" from Don Carlos.

And here again is Marian Anderson.

She recorded a number of Grosse Querschnitt albums of Verdi operas including Forza del Destino or Die Macht des Schicksals and two different versions of Don Carlo.

Though I really should say Don Carlos, especially because it is based on the play by Friedrich Schiller, Germany's Shakespeare.

From the 1965 Großer Querschnitt recording of Don Carlos, in which the Stadtkapelle Berlin is led by Heinz Fricke, let us listen to a portion of her recording of Du, du kelle Vanita, or Du im irdischen Wahn.

You hear both her exquisite pianissimo and her rather weak lower register, which mitigates against fully effective Verdi performance, in my opinion.

And you also hear the relatively straitjacketed way in which she's not allowed to expand at certain climaxes.

Oh, yes.

But that is Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlo, which hasn't been heard in Pittsburgh in 30 years, sung in the lead role sung by this gentleman here to my left, Mr.

Rob Greenberry.

Yay! One of

Right before 7.30, Charlie Brotman, the Senators' longtime public address announcer, asked the gathered crowd, such as it was, to please rise and join Robert Merrill of the Metropolitan Opera in New York in the singing of the National Anthem.

He did not note that Merrill was, that very night, performing the title role in Verdi's Don Carlo in New York, and was only appearing in Washington on record.

The columnist for the Washington Post would write that this was just the kind of cheapskate move that made the senator's fans loathe the senator's owner.

Bob Short had made his money in trucking in the 1950s, taking advantage of America's new highway system, and then took advantage of his role as a democratic fundraiser, which paved the road to his purchase of the ball club.

And she has to come to some kind of reconciliation or some kind of truth in the end.

That's essentially triggered by your visit to see, if I have it right, Verdi's Don Carlo at the Berlin State Opera? Yes.

Yeah, it so happened that we got tickets for Don Caldwell.

It's Verdi's famous opera.

Today, in the episode of music that I would take to a desert island, I would say that I, we, all have the privilege of, uh, sharing one of the most impressive works of Maestro Giuseppe Verdi.

Uh, eh, we, of course, as you may recall, in Don Carlo, we are approaching, uh, the final works of our very much dear Maestro Giuseppe Verdi.

He has refined most of his way of understanding how to compose dramas and how to convey those dramas in the voice of the singers.

And it is in Tu che le vanita, one of the most difficult arias ever for a soprano, for two main reasons.

And now, even over 15 years later, I still feel that there is way much to learn from this immense creation by Maestro Verdi.

I mentioned it just now.

This is, uh, probably by exception, a, a second aria from the same opera, Don Carlo, that we are sharing in this same cycle of the music that I would take to a desert island.

And of course, it is, uh, so much justified.