Word: boito
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...still not solved: as one of four Boris bassos, he does not expect to get many chances to sing it. He now wants to try for a Don Giovanni at the Met, and then devote himself to his scheme of monopolizing a role that nobody else specializes in: Boito's version of the Faust legend, Mefistofele...
Among the musical versions of the Faust legend (including the operas of Gounod, Boito, and Busoni), Berlioz' Damnation of Faust is unique. Subtitled Dramatic Legend, it was not intended for actual stage presentation; while it has Dramatis Personae, it lacks the sequential development of plot and character that opera usually offers. Instead, it only pictures the main characters and delineates their relationships...
...most of the popular stops on the grand-opera highway, e.g., Carmen, Aïda, La Bohème. But San Francisco takes peculiar pride in traveling the byways as well. For its opener last week, San Francisco characteristically chose a seldom-heard version of the Faust legend, Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele, instead of Gounod's war horse, Faust...
Candles at the Altar. Arrigo Boito, excitable and fiercely mustachioed, was the son of an Italian painter of miniatures who abandoned his family soon after Ar-rigo's birth. His mother, a Polish countess, set him studying to become a musician. At 19, his cantata Le Sorelle d'Italia won him a traveling scholarship. On his way home from Paris he traveled through Poland and Germany and picked up some heretical ideas that soon got him in hot water at home. Sample: he wrote a poem calling for a composer who could restore the glory of Italian music...
...even Verdi finally fell before the power of Boito's poetry and his superb dramatic skill. Said Verdi, after completing Otello at 73: "If I were 30 years younger, I should like to begin a new opera tomorrow-on the condition that Boito provided the libretto." Boito did, and the result (with Shakespeare's help) was Falstaff, one of the greatest triumphs of both words & music of them...