Word: arias
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...Every movement of the body, even the turning of the pages, becomes important," explains Laughton. "You mustn't move, except for a startling effect." As the tempo increases, an actor will slip from his stool and move to center stage in time for his big prose "aria." As theater-wise Director Jed Harris pointed out: "By appearing to read, but actually knowing their parts by heart, they make the whole thing come alive. In a theatrical production, the power of illusion would be much more difficult." Playwright J. B. Priestley, who saw the show in Brooklyn, was inspired...
Anne English, from the New England Conservatory, brought stature to the title role. Her big, well-disciplined voice and perfect diction made her the outstanding soloist of the evening. She sang the "Endless Pleasure," aria about the joys she expects to find in heaven as Jupiter's mistress, with Iyric fluency. The poorly danced, unimaginative ballet sequence that accompanied her, however, was distracting...
...Bing had momentarily run out of new productions, but he put on a high-spirited Marriage of Figaro, and introduced a promising American newcomer while he was about it. Cleveland-born Mezzo-Soprano Mildred Miller sang a charming, properly boyish Cherubino, stopped the show with her second-act aria, Voi Che Sapete. It was, everybody agreed, the final bright spot in the Met's sparkling week...
...second act was musically, dramatically, and visually the best. Virginia MacWatters, singing the role made famous by Patrice Munsel, stopped the show with her provocative rendition of Adele's "Look Me Over Once" aria. The action in the second act picks up considerably as the comedy of cross-purposes begins to resolve itself. (Example: Eisenstein's attempt to seduce a masked lady at the ball, not knowing she is his wife." The dance sequence, although it added nothing to the story, was indeed spectacular, and the audience loved it --which is all that matters in a production of this kind...
Said one veteran operagoer: "I've heard Otello several dozen times, but Nelli is the first Desdemona I can recall who sang the Ave Maria as if it were a prayer and not an aria...