Word: aria
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...Butterfly, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Liu in Turandot. Her Leonora proved to be a remarkable portrayal of a woman in whom dignity struggled with desperation and in whom grief somehow shone more movingly through a profound sense of repose. The amalgam of qualities made her fourth act aria D'amor sull'ali rosee a dramatic as well as a technical triumph. It was perhaps the most wildly applauded moment of the present Met season-a season made somewhat lackluster by several dull, slack productions but rendered memorable by what seemed like a new age of brilliant singers...
Beyond a doubt, it is Soprano Nilsson who dominates the production. The famed second act aria, In questa reggia, and the whole scene that follows - in which Turandot poses the riddles which Calaf must solve to save his life and win her hand -is one of the most difficult half-hours in all opera. Callas, who sang a fine Turandot, rarely managed it without alarming wobbles; Nilsson's voice was unshakable...
...aria, with its strangely warped lyricism and its fiendishly high range (almost consistently within the octave below high C), virtually challenges the singer to shrillness. Nilsson was never shrill. As one of the opera's riddles might put it, her crystal voice was hard without harshness and it cut without hurting, thus embodying the ultimate paradox of Turandot...
...podiums of major U.S. orchestras.* Last week, one did. Henry Lewis, 28, a bass player for ten years with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, was filling in for ailing Igor Markevitch, led a topnotch, widely acclaimed concert that included Dvorak's Fourth Symphony and Beethoven's concert aria Ah Perfido!, sung by Lewis' wife, Soprano Marilyn Home. Vigorous, sweeping Conductor Lewis had previously led the Seventh Army Orchestra and the Los Angeles String Society, a group he formed himself in 1958, will conduct several other Philharmonic concerts. Said he last week: "One of the most important things...
German Composer Friedrich von Flotow (1812-83) wrote about a score of operas for the theaters of Paris, but only Martha remained in the repertory. As late as the 1920s it was a smash at the Met, with Caruso periodically igniting the house with the tenor aria "M'appari." The only other scrap of the opera likely to be familiar to modern audiences is The Last Rose of Summer, which Flotow lifted from a book of Irish folk songs, where it was known as The Groves of Blarney. When Berlioz heard Soprano Adelina Patti sing the air, he remarked...