Word: arias
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Cast in the old-fashioned molds of aria, duet, octet, chorus, etc., Les Troyens looks a bit archaic on paper. But in performance, the music churns with energy. Berlioz's restraint and sharp musical delineation of character are on a level with Mozart, Gluck and Wagner at their best...
...Clytemnestra (in the Hamburg Elektra) is in full cry, the camera suddenly becomes fashion conscious: it stoops and meticulously inspects her hemline (floor length). In an otherwise masterful Così fan Tutte, the camera focuses mostly on a collection of ambulatory bird cages, making nonsense of Ferrando's aria, Un' aura amoroso...
...gross and extravagant liberties with it, Handel is partly to blame. A shrewd businessman, he ensured The Messiah's success by hiring the best and most popular singers in 18th century London to sing it. If the bass singer was not very good, Handel would turn the bass aria into a recitative, rewrite it for an alto or even a soprano. For flexible soprano voices, he would doll up the music with ornaments and, if another soprano complained, he would steal a few arias from the first soprano and slip them to the second. To further befuddle historians, Handel...
...less courageous and persevering opera devotees headed for the exits, but most stayed on to hear the diva finish with the phrase addio senza rancore (goodbye without regret). "We never missed a note," said Dorothy proudly, "but I kept thinking about those last words in the aria...
...performance; it just leaves a great deal yet to be explored. The problem of Masha's and Vershinin's drum-roll exchanges ("Tram-tam-tam ... tra-ra-ra"), the shortest mutual love scene ever written for the stage, has been effectively solved by substituting complementary phrases from the aria "All men should once with love grow tender" in Act II of Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin...