Word: aria
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...opinion the loveliest sounds in all opera occur in the final act of Verdi's Tommaso Jefferson, when the desolate exile sings an aria to a lost ladylove in America: "O, Susannah, non piangere per me!"(O, Susannah, don't you cry for me!). But I am an old man and I digress. If you want to know more about these colorful characters, you can purchase my book Romantic Rebels, which is a mere ?4.9 at the Coop...
...time of the opera's premiere, set his text with stunning effectiveness, the music by turns tragic and sardonic. Often, as in the seduction scene, the score simply overwhelms the listener with its irresistible force. At other tunes it beguiles, charms and saddens, as in Katerina's aria lamenting the lack of love in her life just before Sergei steals into her bedroom. The police station scene in Act III is a crazily comic interlude evoking some of the more manic moments in The Nose, providing a needed respite and placing the final tragedy in high relief...
...then hops down, nods furtively and scurries by the legs of the audience with some submissive mutters of "excuse me." The moment when the jealous Count gives Cherubino an army officer's commission to remove him from the scene--immortalized by Mozart in his mock-heroic, trumpet-and-drum aria "Non piu andrai..."--Epstein appropriates for a bit of grisly realism: Figaro grabs Cherubino by the shoulders and shakes him into an awareness of the horrors...
...score has two powerful moments that foreshadow the composer's mature style. The first comes in the opening, when the heroine Odabella (Soprano Marilyn Zschau) confronts Attila (Bass Samuel Ramey), who has just killed her father and razed her city, Aquileia. In a fiery aria laced with coloratura, she swears vengeance. Around her a chorus of barbarians praises Attila's conquests. The scene is an early example of the art of dramatic juxtaposition perfected at the end of the third act of Otello, with lago gloating over his fallen master as the Venetians outside sing the Moor...
...stage, all the characters rise to moments of lyrical grandeur. Peter Cody, a visitor to the Harvard stage, begins his Nemorino with a strong tenor voice and a characterization even more bumbling than the plot requires, but the magical elixir appears to ease his stiffness. His second-act aria to Adina surmounts the frilly animation of the production, creating, somehow, a wrenching summer-night sweetness between the cardboard storefronts...