Last night, we ended up watching the 1980 Glyndebourne production of Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio, my least favorite of the Mozart Big Five operas. The music is glorious, but the story's a slog, and for a comic opera, I found it almost completely humorless. The designs and costumes were beautiful, and the five principal singers were excellent. The romantic leads were the really beautiful British soprano Valerie Masterson, who has great stage presence, good coloratura, and sings most of the role in the stratosphere, and a handsome Welsh lyric tenor, Ryland Davies. The comic (huh?) couple were British lyric soprano Lillian Watson, whom I met in 2001 recording McGlinn's Babes In Toyland and who appears in the Domingo film of Carmen as either Frasquita or Mercedes, and American tenor James Hoback, whom I praised for his appearance in the title role of Albert Herring. The fifth singer was the wonderful bass Willard White, whom I first heard on the Cleveland Orchestra recording of Porgy and Bess.
I phoned 911 at the end of Act One, but I had no urge to continue after the firemen left. I played on the computer until I went to bed.