Word: coventionalism
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...Manhattan bar job while she took singing lessons. In 1951 she won a Fulbright scholarship to study opera in Italy, became a member first of the Zurich Stadt-theater, later of the Stuttgart Staatsoper. In her seven years in Europe. Grace has appeared at La Scala, Covent Garden. Florence. Bayreuth. With her 2½-octave range she has sung 20-odd roles, including Carmen. Gluck's Orpheus, Dora-bella in Mozart's Cosí fan Tutte, Ulrica in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera, plus mezzo and contralto parts in the Ring cycle...
...Later, the major companies commissioned works by modern composers, including Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian, but all three tailored their music to the classic choreographic idiom. The Russians' failure in modern productions became most evident during the Bolshoi Ballet's otherwise hugely successful 1956 season at London's Covent Garden. The company expertly paraded such gorgeous old floats as Swan Lake and Giselle, but was peppered by the critics for the lack of imagination and heaviness of its scattered newer works. Back home, Russian choreographers petitioned the Ministry of Culture for a freer hand, and surprisingly, the Ministry agreed...
...turned into one of the most fashionable addresses in Paris. The square, with its colonnade, is actually a series of joined houses; by royal decree the façades were kept similar. Built of brick and stone, it became a model for Inigo Jones when he came to design Covent Garden, London's first square in the Italian manner...
...rivaling Wagner's marathons in sizecould not be performed in much less than seven hours. Berlioz himself heard it only in truncated form, and since his death it has never been given a full stage performance in a single evening. Last week Britain's Covent Garden bravely trundled Berlioz huge century-old Trojan horse onto the stage again. To everybody's pleased surprise, it proved to be a thoroughbred...
...Dido and Aeneas. The Berlioz libretto is warmed-over Virgal shot through with a Shakespearean flavor (Berlioz described parts of it as "stolen from Shakespeare and Virgilianized"). To give the sprawling work a proper production and still hold it to a manageable 4½ hours (with only minor cuts), Covent Garden prepared lavish sets and drew on all its artistic and mechanical resources. Sir John Gielgud got his first crack at opera direction. Mezzo-Soprano Blanche Thebom (with all six feet of her hair unwound) was cast in the ear-rending role of Dido, Queen of Carthage, and Conductor Rafael...