Mozart and Salieri Mark Reizen

Mark Reizen - Salieri
Rimsky-Korsakov Mozart and Salieri
Samuel Samosud - conductor
There is a very moving performance of this opera on YouTube, posted on Maestro Joseph Shore's channel, with his own highly inspired and emotional Salieri:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFIv5Mp3kLA&feature=channel_page
"By dint of stubborn steadfast
perseverance upon the endless
mountainside of art I reached at last a
lofty level. Fame
smiled on me; and I found in others
hearts responses to the sounds I had
assembled. Came happy days; in quiet
I enjoyed work and success and fame
-- enjoyed also the works and the
successes of my friends, my comrades
in the art divine we served. Oh, never
did I envy know. Nay never! Not even
when Piccini found a way to captivate
the ears of savage Paris -- not even
when I heard for the first time the
plangent opening strains of "Iphigenia"
Is there a man alive wholl say Salieri
has ever stooped to envy -- played the
snake that, trampled underfoot, still
writhes and bites the gravel and the
dust in helpless spite? No one!Yet
now -- I needs must say it- now I am
an envious man. I envy -- deeply, to
agony, I envy. -- Tell me, Heaven!
where now is justice when the holiest
gift, when genius and its immortality,
come not as a reward for fervent love,
for abnegation, prayer and dogged
labor -- but light its radiance in the
head of folly, of idle wantonness?
Oh Mozart, Mozart!"
(thanks to younglemeshevist for providing this translation)

Category:

Music

Tags:

• reizen
• mozart
• salieri
• samosud
• rimsky-korsakov
• kozlovsky

[gnativerson]

I "just" posted Boris Gmyria's version of this monologue

[vstasov]

Thanks so much!!

[MaestroJosephShore]

A remarkable artist. I studied his Salieri intensely when I was preparing my Salieri for the New York premiere of the opera in 1981 and the revival in 1982. The opera is darker in Russian than in English translation. I wished I could have done it in Russian.

[vstasov]

Thank you, Maestro, for your comment and for visiting my channel.

[gnativerson]

wonderful - I've had the Reizen lp with Kozlovsky for a long time - would you have Mozart & Salieri with Gmyria?

[vstasov]

Alas, I don't. But it would be great for his voice.

[ditogam]

Bass with amazing beauty of voice. Great!!!

[MaestroJosephShore]

There were several recordings of the opera available in 1980 when I was preparing the role. Alas, they all seemed to have disappeared now. I had a recording of the young Nevsterenko doing it.