Word: arias
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...Rinaldo, Handel wrote some of his most striking orchestral music. The blazing forth of four trumpets and drums in Rinaldo's last-act aria "Or la tromba "was an effect that dazzled early 18th century audiences, and it still sounds good today. With a chamber orchestra drawn from the Houston Symphony, Conductor Lawrence Foster, the symphony's regular leader since 1972, makes his players key members of the drama. He cannot draw from Sopranos Evelyn Mandac (Almirena) and Noelle Rogers (Armida) the Baroque bravura he gets from Home, but Mandac is an especially lovely singer with a bright...
...never had a chance to sing her opening line, "Che mat sento?"(What do I hear?). She knew what she heard-a minute-long roar of welcome not experienced at the Met since the debut of Joan Sutherland in 1961. That was only the beginning. After Sills' showpiece aria "Si ferite, " the house went wild for 4½ minutes. At evening's end, the curtain calls went on for 18½ minutes. Out in the audience, opera-loving Comedian Danny Kaye let out several ear-piercing whistles and called for a speech. Confetti and roses floated down from...
...rest of the cast did her justice. Mezzo Shirley Verrett, in the travesti role of the warrior Neocle, revealed a stupefying coloratura technique and an enormous range of vocal textures. While Sills obviously paced herself carefully throughout the three acts. Verrett let loose in her first aria and blazed to the end at full capacity. She was gloriously confident, full of defiance and swagger, and poured out her ten-minute solo aria in the third act with the beauty that comes from inexhaustible strength. As it turned out, she had a mob of fans in the audience to rival Sills...
...Diaz, whose cape was falling off, was trying in vain not to trip on it; there were mistakes in blocking; an 'extra' kept dropping his spear with an audible clatter; and Sills handled it all by laughing. The more tired she got, the more often she sat down between arias to massage her back, the more she joked with Diaz and Verre,; a few times they missed their cues and had to whirl around and catch the line in mid phrase. At one point while Sills herself was running through an aria. Schippers barked out a directive--she thought...
...really all about can be gleaned from the original use of the French word baroque to describe irregular or misshapen pearls. Explains Kipnis: "In Baroque music of Bach, Handel and Rameau, the pearls are the musical forms-such as the sonata, the concerto grosso or the da capo aria. Trills, other ornaments, colorful dissonance, wildly uneven rhythms-all these are devices that create tremendous tension, yank the listener back and forth and leave him in anything but absolute comfort...