Word: boito
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...magnificent performance of Part One in 1949, the bicentenary of Goethe's birth. They made one bad mistake; used a phonograph recording of Holst's The Planets, when they had to hand the rich fare of Faust music, Wagner's Overture, Liszt's Symphony, Berlioz's dramatic oratorio, and Boito's opera Meflstofele...
...from a total lack of style, from seeming solidly, even a little clumpingly, echt Deutsch. It may not seem too German for those who know German; for those who do not, Faust is more rewarding in Marlowe's play, or Berlioz' or Gounod's or even Boito's music. But, if not exactly something to see, as a great classic it may yet, perhaps, be something to have seen...
Gioconda's absurd libretto (by "Tobio Gorria," anagram for Arrigo Boito, Verdi's great librettist) revolves about a love plot of pentagonal complexity; Barnaba is in love with Gioconda, who is in love with Enzo, who is in love with Laura, who is married to Alvise. By the time Gorria-Boito sets things right, four acts and nearly that number of hours have elapsed. But La Gioconda is a singers' opera, and it gives the principals some rousing tunes, including Enzo's great second-act aria, Cielo e mar, superbly rendered last week by Tenor Tucker...
...style: an ornate realistic idol in one scene, a starkly abstract grillwork in another. Although it took in a record $91,482 at the box office, the Met's new Nabucco was not likely to join vintage Verdi in the regular repertory. One reason was suggested by Arrigo Boito, the great librettist of Verdi's old age. The music would never be as powerfully appealing, Boito felt, to audiences not bred on Italian soil and breathing Italian...
...emotional insights of Otello, but it is also marred by trivia, such as a kind of witches' cancan in the first scene. The libretto (by Verdi, put into verse by Francesco Piave) dimly reflects some of the original's greatness, but it is far behind Librettist Arrigo Boito's Otello and Falstaff, and is essentially a choppy, ill-balanced synopsis. The Met's production, while brilliant in most respects, was faulted by some ludicrous details and a kind of Teutonic touch that is alien both to Verdi's Italian music and to Shakespeare...