Showing posts with label Montserrat Caballé. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Montserrat Caballé. Show all posts

Saturday, 16 February 2013

Le violette

The violet a little flower and listening today to WFMT Chicago, I heard two pieces, one by Scarlatti in Italian and the other in Spanish by Padilla. I long for Spring time which is not very far now and violets are nice reminder of days to come on this sunny but cold day in Ottawa. The violet is in the same family as the African violet and this is the flower I am more acquainted with being common in many households in past decades but not so much now.

Le Violette sung here by the late Luciano Pavarotti




The other song a famous tango, I always liked by José Padilla, La Violetera, sung here by opera, bel canto specialist Montserrat Caballé. She is, I am told, still singing and was in Vienna last year in Fille du Régiment.



We always had lots of African Violets, my Mom really liked them and they were on the window sill
in the kitchen or the living room.
Saint Paulia or African Violet named after Baron Walter Von Saint-Paul Illaire (1860-1910) discovered the plant in Tanganyka today Tanzania in 1892 and sent it back to Germany to his father an amateur botanist. They arrived in Canada as a house plant in 1926.

I don't think Violets are associated with Spring, though I remember seeing some in Rome in late March last year.
The balcony of Via Tronto, Rome.

Thursday, 6 December 2012

La Rondine

This air from La Rondine by Puccini was playing on CBC radio 2 as I drove back to our home on  another bright sunny but cold day in Ottawa. Renée Fleming was singing, the first word  CHI which in Italian is pronounced KI, the ch letters together make a hard K sound, it is difficult to start this way for any singer. Reviewing it, I noticed that many singers jump the chi and start at the IL instead, it can be difficult to get it right.
Here is a recording by Montserrat Caballé, one of the great divas of another age, they do not make them like this anymore singing Chi il bel sogno di Doretta from La Rondine by Puccini.



Of course you guess it, I am thinking of Rome and the Teatro del'Opera di Roma where we went at least once a month for years. The staff knew us and greeted us each time, what a wonderful place it was, then walking back home after the show through Piazza Repubblica and Porta Pia. Even after the show walking through Rome at night was so romantic and beautiful, everywhere greeted by magnificent monuments of ages past. It is so true when Puccini said:
Tu non vedrai nessuna cosa al mondo maggior di Roma. (You will never see in the world anything as great as Rome).