Word: aida
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...large, uninteresting reception room at the society, Aida stands and Hilda sits. Aida is 16 and a beauty, her brown-and-pink skin made to glow against a long-sleeved off-white blouse so elegant as to seem part of a royal costume. Hilda at six is no beauty yet, but she has possibilities, and ambition. Her loud red knee socks exactly match her huge square purse. She wears the purse on her chest, hanging from her neck. Her eyes sparkle at everything that is said, but she says nothing herself, content to listen to Um Khalil, Aida...
...opera probably should have been called Verdi's Radames instead of Aida. Never mind that more important roles are assigned to the eponymous soprano heroine and her mezzo nemesis, Amneris. In San Francisco last week, the attention and the money (up to $750 for scalpers' tickets) was on the tenor. Of course, the man who was singing Verdi's Egyptian captain for the first time in his career was no ordinary performer: it was the portly mink-coat model, frequent guest on the Tonight show, American Express-card pitchman, would-be movie star and, these days, part...
...Francisco Opera's glittering new production of Aida, a capacity audience-plus 3,000 more Pavarotti fans, watching a closed-circuit broadcast in a nearby auditorium, as well as live-television viewers in Germany, Austria and Spain-saw and heard him struggle unsuccessfully against the vocally ungrateful requirements of Radames. Not content with being the world's foremost lyric tenor, Pavarotti in recent years has been moving into the heavier spin to repertory, forsaking the Lord Arthur Talbots and Tonios of Bellini and Donizetti for roles that call for weightier, more declamatory singing-Enzo in Ponchielli...
Last week the only "money" note for the tenor in Aida-the high B-flat at the end of Celeste Aida-was rough and ragged, belted out with a desperate fortissimo instead of the more difficult pianissimo that Verdi called for in the score. Elsewhere, Pavarotti's eyes clung to the safety of the prompter's box and the conductor's baton, leaving most of the acting to Soprano Margaret Price (battling a bronchial infection but singing well nonetheless) and Stefania Toczyska, a sultry Polish mezzo and a star of the future, whose Amneris blazed with passionate...
...Trilby. It was with Karajan at La Scala that she came to international attention, singing Mimi in Franco Zeffirelli's 1963 production of La Bohème, and it has been with Karajan at his Salzburg Festival that she premiered some of her weightier roles, like Aida in 1979. "He said to me, 'Mirella, I want you to sing Aida. You can do the line I want. I don't like Aida screaming.' " After the first rehearsal, the orchestra broke into applause, and Karajan embraced her. He told her, "Mirella, if I could be a singer...