Word: barenboim
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...sang Rosina at 20," she says, "I knew I felt like Rosina." In 1987 she appeared on French TV in a tribute to Maria Callas, reeling off the finale of La Cenerentola, roughly the vocal equivalent of a Grucci fireworks extravaganza. The major maestros had apparently tuned in. Daniel Barenboim began working with her at once. "She had wonderful expressive qualities, and her vocalizing was very advanced," he recalls...
What comes next for this young virtuoso? The opera schedule is daunting: The Barber in Houston next spring, her American debut; Don Giovanni in a heavyweight Salzburg production conducted by Barenboim in 1994; the Met's Cosi fan tutte the following season. Bartoli is happily caught up in her repertory, but her fans, as well as many opera managers, already ache to see her expand it. Why not the big-money operas -- Verdi and, above all, Carmen...
...latest confrontation with that challenge came late last month in Israel when conductor Daniel Barenboim proposed to defy an unwritten ban on Wagner's works by performing excerpts from two operas at a special, nonsubscription concert with the Israel Philharmonic. The idea met with such fervid opposition that it has had to be at least temporarily abandoned. The reason had little to do with the music and a lot to do with the composer and the anti-Semitic intellectual company he kept, both while he was alive and after his death: Father Jahn, Count Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Alfred Rosenberg...
...When Barenboim (an Israeli citizen born in Argentina) announced his plans, the most immediate outcry rose from a small but vocal minority of Jews for whom the names of Wagner and Hitler are inextricably linked. "Like it or not, Wagner is a symbol of Nazism, as sure as the swastika is," said Avram Melamed, a violinist with the Israel Philharmonic. Commented Barenboim at a post-cancellation press conference: "I can't help feeling that there are a lot of people in Israel who still think Wagner lived in Berlin in 1942 and was a personal friend of Hitler...
...Zubin Mehta, the Israel Philharmonic's music director, tried to perform a Wagner piece as an encore, but the music was shouted down by members of the audience. At that time, a poll of Philharmonic subscribers indicated that 86% wanted to hear Wagner. Just prior to the abortive Barenboim concert, the Philharmonic musicians voted 39 to 12, with nine abstentions, to break...