Word: almirena
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...Torquato Tasso, the opera tells the story of the Christian general Rinaldo and the Saracen queen Armida. It is a spectacular mixture of pagan magic, military pomp, vocal fireworks and other trappings of the Italian Baroque operatic style, then the rage in London. During the "Bird Song" of Almirena, Rinaldo's true beloved, a flock of sparrows was let loose. The waspish essayist Joseph Addison had fun with that in The Spectator. "There have been so many flights of them let loose that it is feared the house will never get rid of them; and that in other plays...
...effect that dazzled early 18th century audiences, and it still sounds good today. With a chamber orchestra drawn from the Houston Symphony, Conductor Lawrence Foster, the symphony's regular leader since 1972, makes his players key members of the drama. He cannot draw from Sopranos Evelyn Mandac (Almirena) and Noelle Rogers (Armida) the Baroque bravura he gets from Home, but Mandac is an especially lovely singer with a bright future. In Samuel Ramey (Argante), Foster has a bass baritone of extraordinary dramatic and lyric gifts, and it is easy to see why Ramey is fast filling the shoes...
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