Word: aria
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...palace in a village above Palermo. Descending from dusty carriages, Don Fabrizio is greeted by a host of punctuous officials and the jaunty blaring of a brass band. With deliberate steps, he walks the gauntlet of gaping, impoverished eyes to enter the cathedral where the organ is playing an aria from "La Traviata." As the last notes hang amid marble frescoes high above, the band is still heard outside in the blazing courtyard. And while the villagers push and shove for a view, the Prince and his family sit in special pews near the altar, their faces ashen...
Plain Fury. Her career in contemporary sounds began in 1958 with a Rome performance of John Cage's Aria with Fontana Mix, in which phrases in English, French, Italian, Armenian and Russian were scattered all over the scale, with marginal indications that they be sung in a "baby or Marilyn Monroe voice," a "Marlene Dietrich foggy voice," or a jazz singer's voice. There were also-as there are in much of the music she sings-passages calling for whatever noises she cared to make -a dog's bark, a grunt, a sigh. The audience responded with...
...Except for his disastrously bad Alzira, it represents Verdi's single lapse from musicianship and inspiration, and the preposterous libretto, inspired by Byron's The Corsair-the story of an Aegean pirate whose ill-starred romance leads to murder and suicide-scarcely helps matters. The one pleasing aria and the single engaging duet could hardly be expected to mollify a fastidious audience. Even the most pious Verdi worshipers could not help applying to their hero the only couplet in Byron's windy poem that is worth remembering...
...purely practical concern--by starting the performance with Caesar's apostrophe to the Sphinx, Rabb has guaranteed that this great poetic aria will be ruined by the scramble of late comers to their seats...
...best in the night scene where he wanders among his soldiers in disguise before the Battle of Agincourt. The solo aria on "ceremony" he delivers with perfect understanding and golden musicality...