Word: cleva
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Died. Fausto Cleva, 69, Trieste-born conductor associated with New York's Metropolitan Opera for the past half-century; of a heart attack suffered while conducting Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice; in Athens. Cleva's career got off to an auspicious start when the maestro who was scheduled to lead a 1920 performance in Ravenna, Italy, of Puccini's The Girl of the Golden West suddenly quit; the opera manager asked where he could find a substitute at the last minute. "Here's your man," said Puccini, pointing to 18-year-old Cleva...
...great occasion at the Met since it opened its season after a disastrous delay-a brand-new production of Cav and Pag (Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci), opera's beloved twin chestnuts, flossily refurbished. Though Bernstein's demanding schedule only permitted him to conduct Cav (Met Conductor Fausto Cleva did Pag), the night promised to be one to remember. Bernstein and Zeffirelli, after all, in 1964 had helped turn the Met's Falstaff into the recent decade's most breathtaking operatic experience. Alas, this time out the results were more thought provoking than cheer inspiring...
...orchestra, under Fausto Cleva, played well; everything, from harp glissandos to threatening bass growls, was audible. Even the claque sounded good from the back of the house. (The choreography for the "Dance of the Hours" was not quite up to Folies-Bergere standards, but who had come to see pirouettes...
...Fausto Cleva, not the Met's liveliest conductor, this time set his singers a brisk pace, never permitted any sagging in the supple vocal line that Verdi skillfully stitched through Arrigo Boito's libretto. As Othello, Tenor Mario del Monaco sailed onstage in full joyous shout in his "Esultate," and from there on through his Act III explosion of jealous rage, never pausing to be subtle, kept the house ringing and the stage dark with passion. Baritone Leonard Warren as lago proved again his ability to soar dramatically or modulate to a mahogany pianissimo, invested his role with...
...horses, Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci. Performed more than 200 times at the Metropolitan Opera, they were now rounding out a season that had only two more weeks to run. The casts were studded with familiar names, and in the pit was Fausto Cleva, veteran of the Met's Italian wing. But on this routine occasion the audience was treated to a beautifully sung, splendidly paced evening for which much of the credit went to two middle-aged American singers named Warren and Tucker...