Word: conductor
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...role of Tom Rakewell, the protagonist of the piece, Frank Hoffmeister is competent but not brilliant. His voice is strong and far-reaching, but his diction is often poor, and especially in the first act, the conductor has had him sing much too slowly. Ernest Triplett as Nick Shadow, Rakewell's servant, dominates the production, with both a good voice and an understanding of his role that makes him also a strong actor. Eunice Alberts as Baha, the bearded lady, is a fine comic heroine, with a rich vibrato that nicely complements her outlandishly ornate costume. Irene Elvin as Anne...
...foot-long stuffed bird she carries in her hand. Perhaps the most annoying part of the production is its director, Michael Kaye, who spent the early part of Thursday's performance bustling about officiously, but relatively silently, and then ruined the last act by shouting directions to the conductor, singers, and stage crew during the course of the performance from his front row seat. A little more tact would have been in order...
...Figaro is good solid Mozart, respectable but not too difficult for a good orchestra. John Miner, the conductor, rehearsed his orchestra well, and put together a tight performance. Miner is an enthusiastic conductor whose beats are impossible to follow as his arms go flailing through the air (in one particularly violent tutti, his cufflink flew off and hit me on an upbeat). He has the orchestra and continuo well under control, and the singers cued in well...
Leverett's Figaro is a competent production of a venerable warhorse, not as good as the Met, certainly, but good for an amateur group. But the whole concept of a House hiring an outside conductor, director, orchestra and leads, at an enormous cost, in order to produce an opera which is by no means a novelty, is unsettling. This is the second time in three years that Leverett House has done Figaro, and it seems a waste of time and effort to recover old ground...
...indisputable factor in Stravinsky's conversion to serialism was the arrival within his household of Schoenberg's former research assistant, the young American conductor Rober Craft. In addition to becoming Stravinsky's rehearsal conductor, literary collaborator, companion and surrogate son, Craft was the unofficial custodian of the Stravinskian image. In this role especially through a series of remarkable "conversations with" books, he enabled a wide audience to savor the composer's pungent personality...