For those who remember "The Ed Sullivan Show" for The Beatles, Senor Wences, and Topo Gigio, this collection of operatic highlights serves as a reminder that high culture was also a part of the mix each week on Sunday night's broadcast. Sullivan presented not only rock stars and grand opera but classical ballet, dramatic recitations, and dancing bears between 1948 and 1971 on CBS.
On this videotape you will find 26 performances featuring a dozen notable operatic voices and some names that should be instantly recognizable.The focus is indeed on the voices. When Richard Tucker appears in full costume to do "Vesti la giubba" from "I Pagliaacci," that is the exception and not the rule. Yes, it would have been great if there could be more segments like "Un bel di" from "Madame Butterfly," which Dorothy Kirsten and company perform with not only costumes but sets, but that worked against the format of a live variety television program like Sullivan's show. For the most part things are kept simple, although sitting Lily Pons next to a lily pond to sing "Gavotte" from "Mignon" shows there were sometimes attempts at creativity. Unfortunately, Sullivan's introductions have been omitted, which means the original mini-lessons in opera that he provided with these performances are lost, which is both ironic and a shame.
The featured artist is clearly soprano Joan Sutherland, the "Voice of the Century," who does "Sempre libera" from "La Traviata," "Quando rapita" from "Lucia di Lammermoor,""Saluta la France" from "La Fille du Regiment," and a duet of "Mira, O Norma" from "Norma." Robert Peters and Robert Merrill also show up repeatedly, the latter having the most fun in a performance where he does three duets with three different sopranos. If you have even a causal acquaintance with opera you should recognize the names of Birgit Nilsson, Anna Moffo, Robert Merrill, and Beverly Sills as well as arias such as "Largo al factotum" from "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" and "Suave fanciulla" from "La Boheme." For those who like to compare and contrast performances, Maria Callas, Leontyne Price and Birgit Nilsson all since "Vissi d'arte" from Puccini's "Tosca." If you have never seem the dramatic performance of Callas, then this alone would justify your checking out this video, especially if your only exposure to her singing has been the aria Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington listen to in "Philadelphia."
In the final analysis it seems clear that those who will be interested in this collection of video highlights will be those who are already well familiar with the artists and works. Eventually some of these artists, such as Sutherland and Sills, would have complete performances of operas preserved on film, but such works are from later in their career and for those who would like to see Sutherland doing "Lucia" from a time closer in time to her famous debut at the Metropolitan Opera, this is obviously going to be their best bet. Thus, we arrive at the final irony, that while Sullivan put these artists on his show to present opera to the masses, it is the hard core opera fan who will be the person interested in picking up this video.
