Word: arias
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...acting was of a uniformly high order, with Ronald Gerbrands' protrayal of Basilio setting the pace. His big aria "Start a Rumor" (La Calumnia) stopped the show. William Nethercut sang and acted Figaro without straining, and the result was a characterization that helped hold the entire performance together. Robert Cortright looked noble as Count Almaviva, but found the role too high in pitch and too ornate for his basically sympathetic tenor voice. Arthur Anderson also has vocal difficulties as Doctor Bartolo, but he acts the old stodge convincingly. In smaller parts Laurence Chvany and Grace Lewis are excellent, and Noel...
Once, her enemies began to heckle as she got to the high notes of her second aria in Traviata. Callas tore off her shawl, stepped to the front of the stage, glared directly at her tormentors. With reckless ferocity, she lit into one of opera's most perilous arias. If she had made a mistake, it would have been fatal. Instead, she sang with immaculate and unearthly beauty. Five times she was called back by the deliriously happy audience, five times she stood, stony and arrogant, before turning away. On the sixth call, she relented, bowed to everybody except...
...always giving a hint of something a little more respectable than a mere pop tune, as the massed strings soared to the discrete pulsation of a harp or a guitar. And sometimes the music actually was more respectable, as when it was an orchestral arrangement of an operatic aria. This was the music of Annunzio Paolo Mantovani, a swarthy Italian-turned-Briton who five years ago zoomed to the top of the "mood music" heap and has stayed at or near it ever since...
...inventing a great deal of imaginative and humorous stage business, even though at the end of the piece things become a little chaotic. As star, in the role of a vainglorious playwright named Puff, he reveals a sure sense of comedy. He is particularly amusing in a long, aria-like speech that dissects the advertising techniques of the day with a surety that would make the denizens of Madison Avenue cringe...
...night (Danish national anthem, speeches, cheers) the featured work was La Sylphide, choreographed by famed August Bournonville in 1836 and passed down virtually unchanged from lip to toe. It begins with a round of mimed action during which some observers usually expect the dancers to burst into recitative and aria at any moment. The white-clad sylph (Margrethe Schanne), her supernatural character implicit in the tiny wings at her waist, falls in love with the Scotch farm boy (Henning Kronstam); but when the family arrives, she dashes over to the fireplace and literally whisks up the chimney...