Word: cossotto
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Consider the casting of Aida. Mitchell is a fine American singer still some years away from attaining the heft and bravura that her role requires. Italian mezzo Fiorenza Cossotto, as the vengeful princess Amneris, is past her prime at 53 (she made her Met debut in the same part 20 years ago). And the omnipresent Domingo serves up his familiar blend of pathos and bathos without seeming to care where one stops and the other starts. It is a fatal -- but typical -- blend of age and inexperience that even Levine's elegant conducting cannot ameliorate...
...Amneris' private chambers into a huge public square. Such technical sleight of hand was novel when first used back in 1966 in Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten, but by now it has become a cliche. But then, cliches are also the penchant of director Sonja Frisell, who allows Cossotto to vamp around the stage like a refugee from a Cecil B. DeMille epic...
...singers forgot about the drama and one another, turned toward the audience, and simply belted out their best. Frequently it was more than good enough. Drenched by the robust melodiousness of Soprano Elena Suliotis and Basso Nicolai Ghiaurov in Nabucco, and of Tenor Carlo Bergonzi and Mezzo Soprano Fiorenza Cossotto in Trovatore, the Montreal audiences hardly seemed to notice anything missing elsewhere...
Through all this interference, Mezzo Soprano Fiorenza Cossotto and Bass Lorenzo Alvary-the opera's entire singing cast-struggled to tell Scarlatti's simple allegory of an aging Roman centurion's efforts to win a Catalan coquette long after the decline of the Roman Empire had doomed to failure any such suit. The singers struggled against impossible odds. Three more curtain-size Dali tableaux fell, each full of the usual Dalian symbols: butterflies, breasts, limp watches and legions of crutches...
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