It is the album where this group drops its masks and speaks directly to the audience about themselves and each other.
Le domino noir (The Black Domino) is an opéra comique by the French composer Daniel Auber, first performed on 2 December 1837 by the Opéra-Comique at the Salle de la Bourse in Paris.[1] The libretto to the three-act piece is by Auber's usual collaborator, Eugène Scribe. It was one of Auber's most successful works, clocking up 1,207 performances by 1909. It received its UK premiere in 1838 and appeared in the USA the following year. Some of Auber's music has a Spanish flavour to reflect its setting.
Issued in August 1970, the ten-track album includes the songs ‘The Shape I’m In’ and ‘Stage Fright’ and was engineered by Todd Rundgren and Glyn Johns. This 50th anniversary reissue presents a new running order (apparently, the originally planned order) and offers a new Bob Clearmountain stereo remix of the album. Alternate mixes of ‘Strawberry Wine’ and ‘Sleeping’ are issued for the first time and also included are seven unearthed ‘field recordings’. These Calgary Hotel Recordings from 1970 offer a fun and loose, impromptu late night hotel jam session between Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel of several Stage Fright songs recorded while the album was in the mixing stage.