Word: arias
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Even the great Caruso sometimes sang Rodolfo's Che gelida manina aria from La Bohème a halftone down from the high C that Puccini's score calls for-and Puccini wrote a letter saying he liked it better that way. But when Italy's beloved tenor Giuseppi Di Stefano showed up at La Scala to rehearse Rodolfo in a new production of La Boheme under Austria's Herbert von Kara Jan. he was stopped by La Scala's tearful manager. "Oh, dear Di Stefano," said the manager, "Von Karajan doesn't want...
Angel now also offers one of the best recordings of J.S. Bach's Magnificat in D (Angel 45027). Here, again is tenor Richard Lewis, and his Deposuit potentes de sede is one of the clearest and most satisfying interpretations of that aria: Geraint Jones conducts his own capable orchestra. On the same record is a performance of Henry Purcell's magnificent and rarely heard Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary (quite unseasonal, to be sure, but it is probably this fact of its co-billing that leads us to prefer Jones's recording). Her Malesty died from the smallpox...
...soprano is absolutely enormous, solid and brilliant throughout its considerable range, but especially stunning at the top. Mme. Crespin launched into the treacherous Gluck aria with no more visible effort than if she had been singing a Faure chanson. She did, in fact, sing some Faure later in the program, and very nicely, too, but my grosser sensibilities craved another of those absurd and wonderful scenas for dramatic soprano something like "Ozean, du Ungeheuer" from Weber's Oberon...
Excitement was missing, too, from the 18th century arias with which Miss Berganza opened her recital: she sang them very nicely indeed (except for a disastrous trill in Handel's Lascia ch'io pianga), but instead of the grand manner and absolute command of style so necessary for Alessandro Scarlatti or Cherubini, she provided a good deal of hand-clasping and those imploring looks to the heavens which ought to be banned forever from the concert stage. In Rossini's Non Piu mesta (from La Cenerentola)--and Miss Berganza has something of a reputation as a Rossini specialist--one again...
...toward success, but Director Ducreux had apparently forgotten that Marseille audiences are a strange breed. Fiercely proud of their opera house, they resent outside interference; they doubt any operatic judgment but their own. A Marseille fisherman or barber may buy a third-balcony seat, show up for his favorite aria and leave immediately, either exalted or enraged. Director Ducreux might have anticipated trouble because of his new, untraditional production, his largely imported cast, or the presence of a socialite audience flown in for the occasion by chartered plane from Paris...