Word: canto
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sills gave a dazzling performance of technical brilliance and dramatic depth. Sills the singer tossed off the intricately ornamented bel canto lines with fire and easy grace; her voice is a light silvery instrument that takes cadenzas at breakneck speed and makes them sparkle. Sills the actress managed to breathe life into the flat character of Pamira--the daughter of the governor of Corinth who is torn between love for her country and love for the Turk King Maometto, her father's enemy. Sills's Pamira was emotionally focused--a earess of Maometto's arm conveyed sexual delight...
Siege will provide Sills with a generous supply of ornate bel canto pyrotechnics, notably Pamira's Act II "Si, ferite"(Yes, strike me). Says Sills: "This role is longer than Norma, I hope to tell you. I wish I were getting paid by the note." She gets paid by the performance, of course: $1,000 at the New York City...
...Bolena; and more recently, Bellini's / Puritani. Vocal fireworks are Sills' glory. She has a light, lyric coloratura so clear and swift that it seems phosphorescent. Though she is the best Manon around, her trademark has become the revival of obscure operas of the 19th century bel canto...
...Sills herself. Last week she did, in a way that should silence doubters and suggest to everyone else that she will go on singing for at least another ten years. At the New York City Opera, Sills took aim at one of the toughest operas in all bel canto, Vincenzo Bellini's I Puritani. When she was done, Bellini was on his knees, the capacity audience at the New York State Theater on its feet for a long ovation. In post-World War II productions of Puritani, only Maria Callas has achieved anything to equal Sills' limpid coloration...
...great gold curtain finally rose for the first act of Bolena, Sills' nightie (successfully rosied) hung in her dressing room, and all, incredibly, was in place on time, ready to be admired. Not given a major New York stage production since 1850, Anna Bolena is a bel canto curio revived to enable Sills to complete her long-planned and justly famed Donizetti trilogy. As with the other queens of the Tudor era, Elizabeth I in Roberto Devereux and the Queen of Scots in Maria Stuarda, Sills proves again that she is a singing actress without peer. Stage Director Tito...