# singers and their preferred conductors



## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

I am not quite sure where this belongs ... conductors, opera, vocal ... so by default, it goes here!

In the Hoffman thread, the comment was made about Georges Pretre probably not being self-effacing and that made me start thinking about what it would have taken to be one of Maria Callas' preferred conductors later in her career, i.e. Pretre & Nicola Rescigno. Taking this thought a bit further, there are a number of cases where well known singers have an obvious preference for their conductor and, surprising or not, often they aren't always the ones with much of an independent career. While not attempting to judge their talents, some cases that come to mind...

Singers whose husband does the conducting (and *when* will we get a male singer with his wife as conductor??)
Joan Sutherland / Richard Bonynge
Elina Garanca / Karel Mark Chichon
Magdalena Kozena / Sir Simon Rattle

Others...
Maria Callas - as noted above
Anna Netrebko / Marco Armiliato

I am sure that there are others (feel free to add as appropriate) but what are your thoughts on any aspect of this?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Gundula Janowitz / Herbert von Karajan

Renata Tebaldi / Tulio Serafin

Janet Baker/ John Barbirolli


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

- Callas and Karajan

- Callas and Carlos Kleiber (yes, I know: wrong time period, but one can only imagine)

- Callas and Rescigno

- Callas and Davis (if only he did _Troyens_ fifteen years earlier with her as Dido, Cassandra, or both!)


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

Birgit Nilsson / Bertil Bokstedt

/ptr


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Frank Sinatra / Nelson Riddle


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Actually Carlos Kleiber with Cortrubas in fact...

DG of La Traviata then this live one:


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

My friend Joel Singer takes the Long Island Railroad five days a week. His favorite conductor is José Gonzalez. He supposedly does a superb ticket punch.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

hpowders said:


> My friend Joel Singer takes the Long Island Railroad five days a week. His favorite conductor is Joe Gonzalez. He supposedly does a superb ticket punch.


... also weren't you the one to reveal the relationship between Lenny Bernstein and Aaron Copland? But this isn't a singer/conductor relationship here.

Another one is Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and her composer husband Peter Lieberson (but not a conductor here).


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

For the purposes of this thread I was thinking about singers who could pick and choose their conducting partners. In the cases of Kleiber & HvK, I rather suspect that it was the other way around. While I am sure that HvK felt that he was indeed 'the chosen one', that is a somewhat different definition


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