Word: coloraturas
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...Lowell production, directed by John Clarke, wisely pays as much attention to acting as to music. Kimberly Daniel, as Zerbinetta, the leader of the comedians, personifies this fusion of dramatic and musical excellence. She manages to be coquettish while singing some of the most difficult coloratura writing in the literature. Her duet with the Composer (Loretta Giles) is the high point of the prologue, doing full justice to what Strauss called one of the finest things he ever wrote...
...Puccini's last opera is filled with bold orchestral touches and ravishing arias made to order for an all-star cast like this. Though she does not erase memories of the Nilsson Turandot (especially in the RCA set with Tebaldi and Bjoerling), Sutherland is now the only coloratura around with the right tessitura and sufficient vocal weight-at least on records-to bring off the role of the riddle-happy princess. A delight...
...popularity of Il Barbiere di Siviglia, this is actually the composer's comic masterpiece, a work in which the stuff of childish fantasy is transformed breathtakingly into the best kind of adult fun and games. In the title role, Spain's Teresa Berganza sings with a bravura coloratura style that (among mezzos) only Marilyn Home might match. Conductor Claudio Abbado not only has opted for a newly cleaned-up version of the score (with spurious arias discarded, and some of Rossini's original instrumentation restored), but has produced a performance totally dedicated to the opera...
Acting with the voice is a theme that runs through her talk like a Wagnerian leitmotif'. After listening to a coloratura sing Caro Nome from Rigoletto, Callas remarked: "Give it more freedom. You have to be a girl who is passionately in love. True, Gilda is still a virgin, but one should not be too cutesy, because of what happens to her later. Don't forget, she sacrifices her life for love...
...coloratura high wire, both singers emerge as phenomenal. Each has staggering facility in florid runs, trills, leaps and arpeggios. Both have been accused of overdecorating their music, though each plans embellishments so tastefully and executes them so brilliantly that only stringent purists object...