Word: coventionalism
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Puccini: La Fanciulla del West (Soprano Carol Neblett, Tenor Placido Domingo, Baritone Sherrill Milnes; Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Zubin Mehta, conductor; Deutsche Grammophon; 3 LPs). Fanciulla (1910) is a second-rate Italian opera comically posing as a shoot-'em-up thriller. Neblett makes a dramatic frontier heroine. Domingo, as her lover, sings everyone else under the bar, and Milnes is dashingly villainous. With Mehta in the saddle, chorus and orchestra ride smartly home...
...Ponto (Sopranos Arleen Augér, Ileana Cotrubas and Edith Gruberova, Mezzo Agnes Baltsa, Tenor Werner Hollweg, Mozarteum Orchestra, Salzburg, Leopold Hager, conductor; Deutsche Grammophon; 4 LPs); La Clemenza di Tito (Mezzos Janet Baker and Yvonne Minton, Tenor Stuart Burrows, Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Colin Davis, conductor; Philips; 3 LPs). Mozart composed Mitridate when he was only 14; La Clemenza came just before he died at 35. Both works are all but forgotten. They are opera seria, the early style of Italian opera that can present obstacles for the modern listener: dry recitatives, stiff...
When his schedule permits, the Prince likes to spend his evenings with a small circle of discreet friends, who call him simply "Wales." He telephones them to join him for the theater, a shooting weekend or dinner at a favorite London restaurant, like Boulestin in Covent Garden. Among his cronies: Merchant Banker Lord Tryon and his Australian wife; Lord Tollemache, heir to a brewing fortune; Insurance Broker Nicholas Soames, a grandson of Winston Churchill; Barrister Richard Beckett. When dining alone, Charles favors light meals (one favorite: scrambled eggs and smoked salmon). He does not smoke, keeps fit by jogging...
...driven by the demonic notion that they could, some day, be swans. Most are mistaken. Once in a great while though, the real thing comes along, and word rapidly spreads through one of the world's oldest permanent floating meritocracies. Leningrad hears it, and so do Stuttgart, Covent Garden and New York: a star is born who might, just might, be capable of being made. So recognized, this singular creature is then cosseted and punished, cradled from outside interruptions and given every imaginable opportunity to fall smack on her overextended haunches. Meanwhile, the cognoscenti settle back for a long wait...
...sorely lacked. By accenting those moments in the play, both humorous and poignant, when two people cannot quite connect, director Samual Bloomfield has skillfully done justice to the underlying point of Shaw. Even the beautifully painted flats of Jeff Goodman's and Cindy Ruskins's set unfold mysteriously from Covent Garden to Higgins' library to his mother's house and back and forth again without apparent connection...