Word: arias
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...splicing a variety of noises into the staccato piano theme: the sound of traffic on the street outside, a patrician English girl chattering nervously, a chanteuse, a coloratura, a boy soprano, Florence Foster Jenkins murdering high D at the end of the Queen of the Night's aria from The Magic Flute. Oddly but irresistibly, they add up to a cry from the heart...
Opera HANDEL: SERSE (Westminster; 3 LPs). One of the greatest boons of the expanding recorded repertoire was the debut last year on vinyl of Handel's Rodelinda; now comes his tragicomic opera Serse, or Xerxes, which begins with the famous aria Ombra mai fu, generally called Handel's Largo, a song of praise to a plane tree. The deep, dark, mellifluous voice of Alto Maureen Forrester as the Persian king is set off by the light, bright vocal acrobatics of Lucia Popp, a rising young Czech soprano. Brian Priestman is the conductor, using the Vienna Radio Orchestra...
GLUCK: ORFEO ED EURIDICE (RCA Victor; 3 LPs). An opera for people who do not like singing, Orfeo is long on dances, and its best-known aria (in the Dance of the Blessed Spirits) is reserved for a flute. Renato Fasano and the Virtuosi di Roma give a pastel but translucent orchestral performance, almost otherworldly, as befits the score. Unfortunately, the singers are a bit too bloodless, even the promising young mezzo, Shirley Verrett, who sings Orfeo...
...resided almost solely in the cast, despite the presence of only two genuinely operatic voices: the Don of Sean Barker and the Donna Anna of Donna Roll. Barker displayed all the necessary magnetism and menace, but without the grand air of defiance appropriate to his eventual damnation. His Champagne Aria was most exuberant, if a bit breathless; and the Serenade was one of the few instances all night of fine sotto voce singing. Roll's soprano, while raw and occasionally off-pitch, was clearly the biggest voice of all, and was used to best advantage in her massive revenge aria...
...Hades scene, "Quelle soudaine horreur," with its macabre, Gesualdo-like modulations (superbly sung in the production); Phedre's pathetic scena, "Cruella mere des amours": the Act IV Hippolyte-Aricie duet, "Ah! fautil e un jour," with its revealing major-minor key shifts, and Aricie's closing "Nightingale Aria," one of the first soprano vs. flute bel canto trials...