Les Pêcheurs à Chicago

Obviously, I should report more about the event of the year, as far as Les Pêcheurs de Perles are concerned: the upcoming Chicago performances (Oct.6 to Nov.4) at the Lyric Opera. The cast is indeed incredibly appealing. Nathan Gunn may be well-known because he's a very attractive man but, being lesbian and all, I must say what drives me to him is not his alleged sex-appeal but rather his beautiful voice. His Zurga should sound very memorable indeed (although obviously nobody will ever surpass Ernest Blanc*). Eric Cutler might not be Nicolai Gedda* but his Nadir - that I already heard - was more than honorable. So basically the two most important roles (at least as far as I'm concerned) are beautifully cast. On the other hand, I have strong reservations about Nicole Cabell as Leïla. But then again, if one compares her with History, you can't really be worse than Janine Micheau*, can you? I don't know conductor John Mauceri or Christian Van Horn as Nourabad, so I reserve my judgement until the day I can hear their performance, since I won't be in Chicago. Christian Van Horn by the way left a nice comment on this blog yesterday asking for a bit of publicity. I didn't manage to find anything on the subject (I wonder why the Lyric Opera has such a poor - and empty - website) so I'm just guessing here, but I would be very surprised if the LOC was performing the revised 1893 version (that is totally obsolete [1] and shouldn't be). You know, the version where Nourabad is not ripped off of half his score... So Christian Van Horn has all my sympathy and definitely deserves twice the publicity. * references to my ultimate recording of this piece [1] now that the original 1863 version has been rediscovered - full story (in French) here