Una maraviglia questo Barbiere alloa Tedesca!

To fill the void left by La Divina I listened, for the first time in  its entirety a marvelous live performance of the Barber of Seville's La Scala Dec. 31, 1976 conducted by 'Thomas Schippers (we called him 'Tommy' as my friend Hilla Fischer, who had been Mitropolous's amanuensis, took him over after the death of the 'Maestro'--he had been the Maestro's disciple and understudy).  Two further significant features of the recording are the superb basso buffo Enzo Dara (Baccaloni's worthy successor) and Frederica von Stade as Rosina. (I heard her ina rehearsal of Clemenza de Tito at the Colon in Buenos Aires which was great because the perfrormance was cancelled due to a strike by the orchestra musicians.  That's BA,.  Basilio is the reliable Paolo Montarsolo and Ruggiero Raimondi, not yet famous, steps in from the sidelines to sing the relatively secondary role of Fiorello.  The live audience which comes to life with una ovazione briosa jumps in after every aria, as if wanting to especially reward the Germanic singers (Prey, von Stade) for their chutzpah of appearing at La Scala's New Year's eve performance in that most Italian of all Italian operas.  Michael Tree allwed that "Tommy', like himself, came from New Jersey where he was known as Tomashevsky.