Risë Stevens, Indisposed Singers, and Blog Trends (a Stream-of-Consciousness Post)

My first Risë Stevens album

Unless you've been out cold or under a rock for the past few days, you probably already know that the great American diva Risë Stevens died earlier this week at the age of 99. She was one of the first opera figures on my personal opera horizon. I had many of her recordings—she was my first Carmen, and first Orfeo—and I eagerly followed her career when she retired from singing and took on the leadership of the Mannes College of Music.

Many bloggers have recently issued tributes to Ms. Stevens, and they've posted many of her wonderful recordings. Here are links to some of them: 

• Slipped Disc 
• Opera Chic
• Operavore
• Parterre Box
• Taminophile
• Kinderkuchen for the FBI
• The Daily Sizzle (Chicago Sun Times)

New Yorker cartoon by Stanley Harris.

Speaking of Slipped Disc, I don’t know where I’ve been! Norman Lebrecht writes this very cool, and extremely busy blog. This is where much of the interesting discussion about singer cancellations has been going on. He posts several times a day about all aspects of musical performance, so there's always something new to read. He also gets a lot of comments, so again, lots to read.

Finally, and totally unrelated to the foregoing: one of my older posts—Further Stupid Reviewer Comments—is suddenly getting a lot of traffic. ("A lot" is relative of course, but it's rare that my posts re-trend.) I can't really determine why, but as my Mom used to say, "It's not a complaint, it's just an observation." 

Come to think of it, when she said that, it often was a complaint, cleverly disguised as observation. But this really is just an observation.