Word: coventionalism
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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...
...found less in the singing than in the apposite theatricality of its productions, the innovative visions of its directors and the restless inquisitiveness of its approach to the whole range of the repertory, including infrequently heard works by Dvorak, Smetana and Janacek. Unlike the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, which is an international company featuring a rotation of globe-trotting star performers, the ENO is a frankly nationalistic company. It performs only in English, employs mostly British singers and conductors, and regularly champions British works. As such, it is probably a better barometer of the state of opera in Britain...