Word: aria
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Rossini's orchestration for the first Paris performance. The Rossini library in Pesaro, Italy, the composer's home town, produced a score of the initial La Scala production. Schippers took what seemed to him the best music from each of these versions, including a breathtakingly difficult aria for Neocle which Rossini had never used apparently for lack of competent singers...
Barbaric Chords. The result of Schippers' assemblage is a remarkable triumph of sight and sound. Though the opening scenes are somewhat workaday Rossini, the opera comes into its full glory in the third act, which begins with an unusually long (14 minutes) aria by Home. Rossini's lyrical melodies shimmer and flow as beautifully as a moonlit Aegean. Then, before the curtain falls on the burning, ravaged Corinth, the orchestra sweeps through a series of harsh, barbaric chords that sound almost Wagnerian...
...research chemist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Philadelphia. Until he started lessons at Philadelphia's Settlement Music School at the age of 26, he had done most of his singing in church choirs and shower -stalls. Instead of a Wagnerian selection, he sang an aria from Verdi's Otello, impressing the judges with his brooding intensity and naturally rich, dark-timbred voice. A good thing, too, because Otello "is the only role I really know...
...producers of Peyton Place saw more in Mia than she saw in herself. For two years as Allison MacKenzie, Mia made the soap opera one long disaster aria and attracted the attention of millions of viewers?including Frank Sinatra. It was 1964?a very good year for long-haired swingers and toupeed singers. The way the public pop-psyched it out, at 19, she was looking for a father; at 48, he was looking for his youth. Their life became about as secluded as an airport. The couple took the most curious romantic cruise since the owl and the pussycat...
Mozart's Vesperae was much more exciting and slightly less well-done. The major problem was the grim Carl Orff assault which soprano Donna Newman made on the sacred coloratura aria Laudate Dominum: all the notes were there, too many of them flat, all of them invested with a Donizettian apocalyptic bravura, Mozart may have been only one year away from great operatic achievement in Idomeneo, but at the moment he was still close by the altar. Miss Curtis seemed intimidated by this Salome-like display but still bettered her prosaic performance in the Schutz. The two male soloists sang...