Word: coventionalism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Moreover, Jones was adaptable. When he was designing the piazza of Covent Garden with its integrated church of St. Paul, the Earl of Bedford (who was paying for it) told Jones he wanted the church to be "not much better than a barn." "Well, then! You shall have the handsomest barn in England," Jones answered, and produced it. He never delegated a design or failed to transform what he copied. He thought -- and drew -- in terms of large volumes, generous spaces, exalted plainness relieved by lucid, ingenious detailing. Later Georgian architects would owe him an immense debt...
Unlike Sills, he turned to Europe -- to Covent Garden, La Scala and the Vienna State Opera. But what a difference a decade makes: last September, his towering presence energized a Figaro in San Francisco; next season he is tapped for Faust and Figaro in Chicago. Even the Met has come around. This season audiences hailed his performances as Giorgio in Bellini's I Puritani and Escamillo in Carmen; he will sing both the Don and Leporello...
...Except for such movies as Franco Zeffirelli's La Traviata or Francesco Rosi's Bizet's Carmen, most videos are theatrical presentations rather than cinematic creations in their own right. Still, there is much to be said for having the best seat at the Vienna State Opera or Covent Garden right in your living room. A sampling of the current releases...
...fashionable, are infrequently performed. This is due to changing tastes and the disappearance of the singers for whom many of his major roles were written: the castrati, the surgically altered male sopranos whose vocal power, awesome breath control and dazzling technique stunned audiences from the Sistine Chapel to Covent Garden. Of his 24 oratorios in English, only the redoubtable Messiah is a concerthall staple, and his best-loved instrumental works are such occasional pieces as the Water Music. Oddly, for one who used to loom so large, Handel awaits popular rediscovery...
...theater today. At the Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles this month, two repertory staples got the full treatment: the Piccolo Teatro di Milano presented a visionary version of Shakespeare's The Tempest in Italian, directed by Giorgio Strehler, while London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in its U.S. debut offered the premiere of Andrei Serban's wrongheaded setting of Puccini's Turandot...