Terry McEwen interview with Richard Bonynge

Рет қаралды 2,509

6 жыл бұрын

They talks about Joan's career and Bel Canto meaning, explaining some roles on the piano.
Richard Bonynge talks a bit of the Joan and Birgit Nilsson meeting at Carnegie Hall. Nilsson visited her at the backstage and said "My dear, I've been long to meet you. You have the voice I've been dreaming about all my life. Do you remember me?" Joan answered "I remember you. I sang one of the Rhinemaidens when you were Brünnhilde".

Пікірлер: 32

@mcewen7472 2 жыл бұрын

I'm so glad to have found this! Terry McEwen was my uncle and hearing his voice again brings back so many memories. Thank you!

@miuzefreak 6 жыл бұрын

HOW INCREDIBLY GORGEOUS IS HE!?

@santi7616 6 жыл бұрын

Thank you so much for this intervew. I will always be grateful to Mr. bonynge for his XIX french operas and ballet music recordings. If it had not been for him, a lot of wonderful music of that time would be totally forgotten , and he discovered all those scores and recorded them ¡¡¡ Thank you very much, Mr. Bonynge!

@MrQwerty88 6 жыл бұрын

There are too many good moments in this that I can't name them all. Thank you for this upload. I've never heard it before

@allenjones3130 Жыл бұрын

Maestro Bonynge ranks alongside Bernstein, Ormandy, Stokowski and Toscanini as one of the greatest conductors of all time.

@1988dongiovanni 6 жыл бұрын

Lovely - thanks for sharing! :)

@ahogbin2644 6 жыл бұрын

What an interesting interview. Thanks so much for airing this one I'd never heard. McEwen was obviously some influence behind the scenes also. He was an executive at Decca for some years and promoted her recordings of rare repertoire.

@YortOK 5 жыл бұрын

A true musical connisseur. He is one of the last people left who heard Flagstad in her great Wagnerian roles and one of the last to have heard Callas before 1955. And not forgetting his role in the career of La Stupenda.

@danielintheantipodes6741 6 жыл бұрын

I love this interview. Richard is so young in the photo. Now he is nearly ninety! The interview sounds as if it is being read. I wonder if it was scripted? Nothing wrong with that, if so. Wonderful either way. Thank you so much for posting it. I hope you can find more of them, many more. Especially those lost Bohemes and Butterflies. This must be from just prior to 1962 when Richard first conducted.

@JoanSutherlandFan 6 жыл бұрын

*I have this impression too about if they are reading something planned before. What impressed me most was exactly the comments about these Puccini's roles. I wonder how much material Bonynge keeps hidden...*

@danielintheantipodes6741 6 жыл бұрын

Daryl Barclay Agreed. It is a rivetting interview.

@richardholmesmusic2128 3 жыл бұрын

@@darylbarclay8037 almost all Met broadcast intermissin features in the 50s and 60s were scripted.

@wotan10950 3 жыл бұрын

Fascinating to hear Bonynge’s plans from 1961. Over the years, he became a very fine conductor, especially in the ballets of Tchaikovsky and the French composers. And of course he is responsible for Sutherland’s career. I met him once or twice backstage, and he was very pleasant, quite conversational. When I last spoke to him, he had been very much looking forward to Werther at the Met. But he became ill, and the performances were conducted instead by Julius Rudel.

@rakellcolotta3675 3 жыл бұрын

I saw him conduct dress rehearsal of Werther at the Met.

@liedersanger1 5 жыл бұрын

This must have been in 1961. (I'm guessing in the intermission of her December 9, 1961Lucia, her third performance, just about a month after her debut. Am I right?) It's interesting how vocal Bonynge's sense of phrasing is. He also points to an interesting fact--that Joan was so lazy, she needed him to get her head into the score! She was lucky, because he really understood the human voice.

@miuzefreak 6 жыл бұрын

doesn t it feel like they re reading what they re saying?

@stephenkolarac5305 Жыл бұрын

Yes, it does.

@DiomedesDioscuro 6 жыл бұрын

Thanks for sharing! What's the year of the interview?

@danielintheantipodes6741 6 жыл бұрын

Hello. It says toward the end that Richard was soon to make his conducting debut. That was in 1962, so I suppose it was recorded in either 1961 or 1962. Opera performances were not booked so far in advance in those days. Great interview, isn't it!

@JoanSutherlandFan 6 жыл бұрын

*Diomedes this interiew was given in December 1961.*

@andrewdeakin7078 6 жыл бұрын

Another resurrected gem. Fascinating. I never knew Bonynge had a direct link to Melba. What a great partnership he had with Sutherland. Illuminating revelation (for me) about Sutherland's ornamentation in the mad scene in Lucia. The brief discussion about Bonynge starting to conduct Sutherland's performances reminds me of an infamous aside in Rudolph Bing's memoirs. He remarked that contracting Sutherland at the Met entailed having to engage Bonynge to conduct, which, he wrote, put him in mind of the Viennese butcher's rule: if you want the meat, you have to take the bones.

@ahogbin2644 4 жыл бұрын

Indeed. Another catty remark from Bing who was a failed singer himself. It is true that Bonynge learned "on the job" as it were but he had incredible natural gifts and without his vision Sutherland would probably have continued on her path to Wagnerian fame but she would have been competing against Nilsson and I doubt she would have had such a high profile career. Certainly the voice would not have lasted so long under that pressure.

@johnpickford4222 2 жыл бұрын

Was Richard Bonynge as fine a conductor as Tullio Serafin? No, perhaps not but he excelled in the repertoire he focused on in addition to ballet and the French repertoire. If he ‘learned’ on the job, he was a better conductor than those she found conducting her performances in a hap-hazard manner, rushing tempos, not allowing for breathing to produce the performance the audience expected and she was capable of. I’d want him too in those situations. Look at who Bing gave her as conductors when he made the choice; not exactly a stellar group. Even the opera casting was hap-hazard too. What Bing likely objected to was paying them both top dollar!!

@ahogbin2644 2 жыл бұрын

There was a couple of incidents with Santi in the early sixties where he marred a Covent Garden Traviata with leaden tempos and then a Venice Sonnambula where he would not accommodate Sutherland’s tempi and she did a rare walkout. It must have prompted thoughts about Bonynge becoming a conductor. He had wanted to study it at the Royal College of music but they blocked him.

@michaeldelos2863 2 жыл бұрын

Sutherland's singing encounter with Nilsson was at Covent Garden on 4 October 1957, when JS was singing Woglinde. She of course recorded the Woodbird in SIEGFRIED after this interview, though Nilsson doesn't appear in that scene and they wouldn't have encountered each other at the recording sessions. There was a later incident when JS had to decline attending a party Nilsson was giving, pleading exhaustion. Nilsson was NOT happy on that occasion . . . . Two of the 10 greatest singers of the 20th century. If you add Ponselle, Caruso and Flagstad, that leaves 5 for discussion!