Hey, in Don Pasquale, doesn't Malatesta introduce Norina as a possible bride to Pasquale as his sweet, innocent, convent bred sister?  (Why continental RCs believe that convent education produces sweet and innocent young girls I cannot for the life of me fathom.)

Another pair of siblings - in W&P, Helene Bezukhov(a) is Anatole's sister, and she assists him in the abduction of Natasha Rostova.  Natasha has a duet with her sister as the opening number of the opera (excluding the Prelude, if moved to the opening from its correct place at the start of Part II), so that's double siblings for you

Now, what about long-lost siblings?!  A pair who serenade each other with the guitar and (cadenza) co-o-oncertina, too?  Answers swiftly please, or I shall be forced to sing "Rataplan!", and you know how greatly you'd dislike that...

You see my ignorance of G&S....I assumed that was a reference to La Forza!!! 


I'd forgotten about Helene and Anatole - nasty pieces of work - but I always thought that Natasha and Sonya were cousins, not sisters?

Yes, I've just read the plot. Presumably this is where the expression 'box and cox' to take turns comes from?

COX & BOX is right indeed    Burnand's original play (from which the "triumviretta" libretto was mined) was titled "Box & Cox", and was very popular in its own right - the character of the cheating guesthouse proprietor was female in the play, she was "Mrs Bouncer".  I think she became male due to the triumviretta's conception as an entertainment for Gentleman's Clubs, where ladies were not, at the time, admitted.   It could be quite funny to make her formidable mezzo all the same.  The three trios in the piece would need reallocation of the vocal lines of course, but in the original vocal score Bouncer's assigned the top line, despite having a bottom E (!) in his own aria...  this is usually attributed to typographer's error  (presumably in revenge against a musical piece in which one of the characters is a typographer).

FORZA might well be the humorous target, but I see shades of the TRAVIATA gambling-scene in C&B, which has a Gambling Duet ("Sixes!" - often cut in recordings) in which the loser has to marry the girl   (Her stock rises later on news by telegram that she is an heiress).  The idea of keeping "Penelope Ann Wiggins" offstage entirely, but front-of-mind through telegrams received, is a very neat piece of dramaturgy.  I wish Sullivan had collaborated more often with Burnand! 

The Russian translation is going well, but it keeps me awake at nights - when I'm lying awake with a dreadful headache and repose is taboo'ed by anxiety - then I wake up with the perfect solution for a tricky phrase

Gosh!  These are difficult.

01 - Vickers
02 - possibly Bergonzi?
03 - possibly Martinelli?
I think 06 could be Melchior, but I'm not at all sure.

and

07 - I'm guessing at Tamagno, the first Otello, who recorded extracts in 1904 (he died in 1905), but I haven't heard these.  (The slow tempo is consistent with that used by Barbirolli in his recording, who claims to have based his approach on the accounts given by his father and grandfather, who played in the orchestra at the premiere.) 

And good on Decca commissioning and paying for a new translation.  If only recordings of the Bach passions could give us non-german speakers a translation, rather than the Authorized Version supplemented by rhyming Victorian paraphrases of the arias.

I do have this, but it's a while since I played it.  Actually, the young Gwyneth Jones is the best thing about it - much of her singing is very beautiful indeed and has a real radiance and virginal quality about it.  There are just hints of the unsteadiness to come.  But Fischer-Dieskau is miscast and McCracken gives a performance of industrial-grade ham, pulling the vocal line about in a way that makes Corelli look like a model of style and decorum.  Barbirolli is very interesting; IMO his conducting here has a lot in common with his Verdi Requiem, being quite slow and lyrical, going for grandeur rather than raw power.  More a "hmm, how interesting" than a "wow" performance on the whole.

I now feel the need to go and listen to a bit of this ....