Word: aida
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...Aida has had her face lifted. The stunning new decor and costumes by Rolf Gerard, and the dramatic staging of Margaret Webster demonstrate that Broadway techniques can effectively be applied to grand opera. The height of voluptuousness came in the first scene of Act Two. Blanche Thebom may not be the world's most beautiful Amneris, but when I saw her lounging on her divan being fanned and bathed by dozens of slaves, I couldn't help wondering why Radames chose the rotund Aida instead...
Music on the more serious side includes simultaneous rival presentations of Verdi's La Traviata, by the Metropolitan Opera and the New York City Opera Company (City Center, 131 West 55th) tomorrow night. The latter group puts on Aida at 8:15 tonight, Carmen Sunday afternoon, and La Boheme Sunday night...
...smart Director Laszlo Halasz was feeling pretty pleased with the repertory of his crack little company. Mozart was well taken care of, with bright, fast-paced productions of The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni. So were the French, with Carmen and Faust, and the Italians, with Aida, La Boheme, Tosca, La Traviata. There was only one cloud in an otherwise sunny sky, but that one was a thunderhead: Wagner. Last week, with the help of an old Wagnerian, Halasz dissipated...
...some different notions about staging this time. In his Otello and Aida broadcasts of 1948 and 1949, the singers had been grouped in front of the orchestra. Last week he mounted them on a platform stage behind the orchestra so they would have room to move around in their parts and thus, he hoped, gain greater expressiveness. The stage had to be just the right height, too. After one rehearsal, son Walter Toscanini told Producer Don Gillis: "Father wants the stage maybe six inches higher." Gillis began an impatient reply, finished it with a smile: "Tell father he can-have...
Metropolitan Opera (Sat. 2 p.m., ABC). Aida, with Ljuba Welitch, Ramon Vinay and Robert Merrill...