BARBER : VANESSA

Radio New Zealand Concert network 
Sunday 14th of February 2010 at 3 - 5.40 pm
INTRODUCTION
COMPOSER
CHARACTERS
SYNOPSIS
BARBER: Vanessa, an opera in 3 or 4 acts
Recorded on 1 February 1958
Vanessa........................ Eleanor Steber
Anatol........................... Nicolai Gedda
Erika............................. Rosalind Elias
Old Baroness................ Regina Resnik
Old Doctor................... Giorgio Tozzi
Nicholas........................ George Cehanovsky
Footman....................... Robert Nagy
Metropolitan Opera Chorus & Orch/Dimitri Mitropoulos (EBU)


Kiri Te Kanawa has tried this role; excerpts are available on YouTube (commenters say she should stick to the lyric soprano repertoire).

Vanessa is one of the operatic collaborations between Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti, as librettist (though he composed operas of his own, like Boito working with Verdi). Menotti defines the dilemma in the opera as “whether to fight for one’s ideals to the point of shutting oneself off from reality, or compromise with what life has to offer, even lying to oneself for the mere sake of living”. Vanessa won the 1958 Pulitzer Prize;  in the same year it was performed in Salzburg, the first American opera to appear at the festival, and the first in Salzburg's history to be sung in English.