FIBICH • Die Braut von Messina (on CPO)

[John Boyer]

Gee, thanks, Mark! So she dies at the end, does she? Shame on me for not figuring that one out. I mean, "The Death of Cleopatra" should have been a...um...dead giveaway. 

Now I am getting hopelessly off-topic, so feel free to move this somewhere else, including the trash bin, but listening to Alexander sing the two scenes from "Antony and Cleopatra" finally made made me track down that lonely New World recording of the opera. It could be safely argued that Barber is too celebrated and too modern for this board, but stylistically "Antony and Cleopatra" is no more modern than late Schreker or Zemlinsky, and the opera is Barber's red-headed step child: an unsung, best forgotten monstrosity whose reputation since its premiere as a flop persists to this day. I mean, it's only had one recording that I know of. But those lines you sent from the final scene make me think of how I felt when I listened to it the other day -- which is how marvelously operatic and romantic the opera really is.