Earlier this year Intrada the Oakland, California based specialist film music company, released an excellent recording of Herrmann's 1956 score for Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much.  The original soundtrack has never been officially released. It is a short score the most impressive moment of which is the 'Prelude'.  Although excellently recorded by William Stromberg, conducting the RSNO, the prelude is slightly disappointing as the strings are, in my opinion, overwhelmed by the brass and percussion.  The other available versions have their defects as well.  Other than that, the recording is excellent.  The CD does not include Arthur Benjamin's fine Storm Clouds Cantata, composed for the earlier 1934 Hitchcock directed version, and conducted, and slightly re-orchestrated, by Hermann in the 1956 version. The Benjamin piece has been recorded by Chandos and Elmer Bernstein.
 
The Man Who Knew Too Much only lasts about 30 minutes.  It is accompanied by an arguably finer score, the 1951 On Dangerous Ground.  This is a superb score which contains absolutely gorgeous music for the Viola d'amore.  The project was funded through Kickstarter.

https://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.12676/.f?sc=13&category=-113

Chandos have just released a suite arranged from Herrmann's 1951 completed opera Wuthering Heights.  I have only listened to it once and have not listened to his 1966 recording of the complete opera for some time.  He reuses music from his wonderful score for the 1947 film The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.  However, unlike the latter, which contains, at least, one attractive light moment, the suite is fairly relentless in its intense romanticism.  It is pure Herrmann and, nonetheless, attractive.

https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%205337

Ordered last year.  I greatly enjoyed 'The Travelling Companion'.

With reference to Albion's comments ...regarding Britten, Billy Budd, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Gloriana and Death in Venice are all fantastic... I wholeheartedly agree regarding the first three operas, I like moments of Death in Venice but I prefer the three other operas Albion mentions plus other Britten operas. 

Britten rarely, if ever, seems to have been mentioned on the two other forums several of us have been members of.

Apologies to Signore Casella regarding his music but thank you Signore Casella for the diversions your post has encouraged ( ).

My interest in opera was stimulated by the husband of one of my mother's friends (from the ATS [Auxiliary Territorial Service] in Droitwich during the Second World War).  They lived in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire.  We vistited them a few times.  In October 1975 I travelled from Glasgow and visited them on my own.  They arranged for me to visit, for one day, the Royal Academy of Music through a friend who was the former Vice Principal (he gave me a copy, signed by him, of The Magic Flute) . There I met and spoke to Eric Fenby, Delius' amanuensis (Delius was a great favourite of mine at the time - I was 15 years old).

Uncle Oliver, as I called him (was a Solicitor and had been a prisoner of war and had taught himself Italian), introduced me to Stilton Cheese (thank you) and opera via Puccini's Gianni Schicchi (a bigger thank you).  It was a great piece to introduce me to opera.  Up until then I was uninterested in opera.

However, my interest in opera really began in earnest through opera in English, primarily Britten.  Then through Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors and The Medium, the LPs of which I almost completely destroyed through overplaying.  Within a week on BBC 2, in the summer of 1978, there were two programmes about Menotti, one about the Spoleto Festival, South Carolina and the other A Man of Two Worlds. In the summer of 1978 I acquired LPs of Menotti's Amelia al Ballo and The Saint of Bleeker Street.  However, I made a cassette recording from the the BBC 2 programme about the Spoleto Festival, South Carolina.  It contained extracts of Menotti's opera The Consul.  From then on the piece of music I wanted to hear more than anything else was The Consul. I obtained a copy of the vocal score from Glasgow Public Libraries and even dreamed (in my sleep) about hearing the opera several times!  Eventually I heard it, in January 1979, in a poor performance from the English National Opera broadcast on BBC Radio 3.  When I eventually heard the original cast recording (from 1950) of The Consul in 2007 it was everything I hoped of it (albeit in a truncated version in comparison to the Chandos CD and other recordings).

So Britten and Menotti were my favourite opera composers in my teens.  I wrote to both of them and received replies.  Britten sent me his signature on the headed note-paper of The Red House, Aldeburgh in 1976 the year of his death.  I burst into tears when his death was announced on TV later that year, my mother giving me a telling off thinking I was ridiculous (I was 16 at the time).  Menotti (who I learned lived about 66 miles from me) took two years to reply to me.  In January 1980 a postcard from the Italian alps dropped through our letter box.  It was from Menotti and said "My belated thanks for your charming letter".  I treasured and framed both of these.

I worked as a trainee Solicitor in the Litigation Department of a major Scottish law firm in 1987-1988.  One of my colleagues, when he had worked in another Glasgow law firm, had represented Menotti in obtaining grants for Yester House, Gifford which Menotti purchased (I think in 1976).  He referred to Menotti as Gian Carlo and had been instructed by Menotti, on one of his visits to Yester House, to sack one of his butlers!  He had also played Croquet at Yester House!  I told him that I envied him as several of Menotti's operas have given me prodigous pleasure.  I saw Menotti at a performance of The Consul at the Edinburgh Festival in 1985 but, unhappily, missed a lecture by him at the Festival, learning about it after it had taken place 

What has anything of this to do with Casella?  I suppose Menotti was Italian and, it was made clear to him by a Fascist official, if he agreed to support Mussolini and Fascism, his first opera Amelia al Ballo, in its Italian premiere, would be performed at La Scala, Milan.  Menotti refused and, instead, it was performed at the Casino opera House in  San Remo.  Well done Gian Carlo! 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfredo_Casella#/media/File:Alfredo_Casella.jpg

https://patrimonio.archivioluce.com/luce-web/detail/IL0000038853/12/in-sala-pietro-mascagni-esegue-saluto-fascista-mentre-passa-davanti-alle-autorita-italiane-e-tedesche-che-lo-ricambiano.html?startPage=$%7BstartPage%7D

http://www.rgunotizie.it/articoli/cultura/spoleto-grande-successo-omaggio-gian-carlo-menotti

Quote from: patmos.beje on August 21, 2022, 07:33:55 pm

Again, poor Casella  we are wildly off topic (I accept my share of the blame  ).

I have never been to the ballet as it has no appeal to me.  My favourite ballet score is probably Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet.

When it comes to opera, in terms of composers who are regarded as opera composers in terms of quantity of operas, I am a musical heretic  My favourite opera composers are Mozart, Mascagni, Menotti, Puccini, Britten and Janáček (Mascagni and Menotti being the heretical elements).

Much as I love Italian opera I am not fond of Verdi  Although I have almost all of Wagner's operas, and liked many of them when I listened to them many years ago, I regard Wagner as an odious character (heretic that I am) so I rarely listen to his operas.

Carmen and, especially, Manon are my favourite French operas.

Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov are my favourite Russian opera composers. For years I have had recordings of The Snow Maiden and Mlada on my portable music players.  During lockdown I acquired all of Rimsky-Korsakov's operas.  Certain of them proved a great delight.  They may not have the musical characterisation that, some say, Tchaikovsky has in his operas, but, as I don't understand Russian, it makes little difference to me. I like the music   

Never apologise for going off-piste here. I always love your posts. Yes to Janacek in a big way, regarding Britten, Billy Budd, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Gloriana and Death in Venice are all fantastic.

Tippett's Midsummer Marriage is truly great stuff, but King Priam is just total crap, having endured an Opera North performance in the 1990s which nearly killed the audience: razor blades were handed out gratis at the interval and we stumbled out at the end only to fall into the gutter and be run over by passing taxis - a blessed release...

 

I withdraw my apology immediately    I liked The Midsummer Marriage when I first heard it in the 1970s (I later purchased a CD) but never really took to King Priam.  Obviously you didn't either albeit my reaction was somewhat more subdued 

Again, poor Casella  we are wildly off topic (I accept my share of the blame  ).

I have never been to the ballet as it has no appeal to me.  My favourite ballet score is probably Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet.

When it comes to opera, in terms of composers who are regarded as opera composers in terms of quantity of operas, I am a musical heretic  My favourite opera composers are Mozart, Mascagni, Menotti, Puccini, Britten and Janáček (Mascagni and Menotti being the heretical elements).

Much as I love Italian opera I am not fond of Verdi  Although I have almost all of Wagner's operas, and liked many of them when I listened to them many years ago, I regard Wagner as an odious character (heretic that I am) so I rarely listen to his operas.

Carmen and, especially, Manon are my favourite French operas.

Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov are my favourite Russian opera composers. For years I have had recordings of The Snow Maiden and Mlada on my portable music players.  During lockdown I acquired all of Rimsky-Korsakov's operas.  Certain of them proved a great delight.  They may not have the musical characterisation that, some say, Tchaikovsky has in his operas, but, as I don't understand Russian, it makes little difference to me. I like the music   

Thanks for the above information.  One of my favourite composers, Pietro Mascagni, was referred to in an early version of The Oxford Dictionary of Opera as '...the musical mouthpiece of Fascist Italy' which, I subsequently gathered, was somewhat ill-informed. 

I think for many Italian composers at that time pragmatism was necessary to ensure performances of their works.  What they believed or did not believe politically I don't know (although I have read that Casella was quite a zealous Fascist).

At the performance of Mascagni's last performed (and 15th opera) Nerone at La Scala, Milan in 1935, it seems Mussolini was kept informed, after the completion  of each act, of the audience's reaction.

Dyson was a great discovery for me after I purchased The Canterbury Pilgrims at the beginning of 1998 (Chandos had released it in 1997).  I played it often and parts of it obsessively often.  I had previously purchased the Violin Concerto (also on Chandos) which did not impress me although I subsequently warmed to it.

I love St. Paul's Voyage to Melita especially and, after I first acquired it, listened to it many times after it was first released on CD.  I agree that the later Naxos recording is excellent.  The final moments of Quo Vadis are sublime and the other choral pieces all have their moments.

There is also an attractive Symphony (Chandos and Naxos, I prefer the Chandos) whose final movement I particularly like, and Sweet Thames Run Softly and Agincourt  both of which are attractive choral pieces.

I purchased the above-mentioned book on Dyson as soon as I became aware of it.  There was an earlier and much shorter book by Christopher Palmer which was worth having prior to the Spicer book.