Word: aida
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...production of Aida, the Rome Opera puts onstage 600 people, plus two chariots drawn by six horses each, plus two camels. For a production of Donizetti's Poliuto, it mustered 1,200 people and two lions. Such habits have saddled Italian opera companies with groaning annual deficits, which in recent history have been paid by the government. For weeks now, politicians, newspapers and plain opera lovers have been raising shrill voices in protest against a proposed cut in government opera subsidies...
...first Aida at La Scala in 1950, she startled the crowd by stalking about like a hungry leopard instead of taking the usual stately stance for her Act III duet. In the death scene of Fedora, in which sopranos tend to expire stiffly on a divan, Callas staggers from it, sags to her knees, drags herself up, crawls towards her lover's room, collapses again before she finally rolls down and dies. In Norma she has cried real tears. Operagoers. long reconciled to the classic, three-gesture range of other prima donnas, are astounded and delighted...
...Maria's private impresario and only agent. "Why should I give those damned agencies 10% or 20% of what I make?" she asked. Meneghini coaxed old Conductor Tullio Serafin, now 77, to coach her, and the two went to work. In Turin, before she was to appear as Aida, a curious critic wandered into the theater at 9 a.m. to find her onstage, going over every passage again and again. while Serafin interrupted, corrected, polished tirelessly. They worked until midnight, were at it again early next day. Callas' Aida became Turin's biggest postwar success...
...when Meneghini suggested that she give up singing, her demon drove her on. Success was in sight. La Scala asked her to do a guest performance of Aida. She accepted, but professed to scoff at the honor: "Sure, it's a magnificent theater. But me, I'm myopic. For me, theaters all look alike. La Scala is La Scala, but I'm Callas. and I'm myopic. Ecco...
...Verdi's Aida at 2 p.m. and Moussorgsky's Boris Goudonov at 7:45 p.m. will entertain at the Opera House today...