Word: arias
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Great Gift. Although Cesti is not the father of modern opera (the credit usually goes to Monteverdi), he did more than any other composer to develop the aria and make it as important as the recitative. Cesti's gift for melody was so great that his tunes were often pilfered, and he knew far better than his contemporaries how to weld the melody of an opera to its drama. Orontea, a typical Cesti product, is the story of a skittish Egyptian queen who spurns all suitors because in her "breast love dwells not." But when a handsome shipwrecked sailor...
...lifetime, and last week's La Piccola Scala performance suggested why. From start to finish, it was a singer's opera. The orchestration for the most part was slender, graceful, beautifully designed to give space to the principals (Mezzo-Soprano Teresa Berganza, Tenor Alvino Misciano), who sang aria after aria in serene, long-breathing lines. Bright with sentimentally colored melodies, Orontea scored a hit even with the critic of the Communist L'Unita, who conceded that "it really is beautiful music." The audience did not quite hail the composer as a "miracolo della musica...
Even opera was better than that, and Tozzi went to Italy to study. With the help of his teacher, he changed from baritone to bass, a decision he never regretted, although in basso roles he rarely gets the rafter-ringing aria or the girl. He admits to some annoyance when a tenor or soprano "who has been singing lousily all evening gets up there and hits a high note and brings the house down." But on balance, he will stick with the kings, priests, inquisitors and assassins who fall to the basso's lot. Being the villain, he finds...
...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...
...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...