Word: destino
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...plots are often preposterous. Coincidence stretches the bounds of credibility (though critics might note that there is a lot of coincidence in life, too, and that its absence in a story can be more unrealistic than its presence). Typical is the moment in Verdi's La Forza del Destino, when Don Alvaro throws his pistol to the floor to show that he is above dueling with his sweetheart's father, the gun goes off and fires a bullet right through Pop's heart. Mistaken identity is rife; a girl who has spent the night with...
VERDI: LA FORZA DEL DESTINO (RCA Victor; 4 LPs). Schippers again, but without the imagination he gives to Macbeth. He just keeps things going along and lets his experienced performers (Leontyne Price, Richard Tucker, Giorgio Tozzi) take over. Price is at her very best. Her voice magnifies Verdi's intent and makes every hoary old aria sound as if it were written yesterday. Tucker at 50 gives every indication that he can go on singing forever-a cheering prospect. Only Tozzi is disappointing. His voice sounds dry, and he does the role of the padre like a priest droning...
...have booed virtually all the big names in Italian opera. "Go back to Rome, fatty!" shouted the galleries after the late Tenor Beniamino Gigli hit a sour note. Toscanini swore never again to step into the Parma pit after a heckler upset a 1912 performance of the Forza del Destino overture by shouting "Maestro, the violins are out of tune!" But lately the gallery gadflies are getting even sharper -or performers are getting softer. Opera has almost been run out of town...
...choice: when the Met announced that labor troubles last summer forced them to drop Francesco Cilea's Adriana Lecouweur, scheduled as a vehicle for Tebaldi, Italy's diva serena canceled her contract for the season. In the repertory she calls her own (Otello, Boheme, Tosca, Forza del Destino, Butterfly, Andrea Chenier) she still cannot be challenged for sheer lovely sound-a sound that when she is in proper form seems to lie in the center of the voice, with virtually no displacement of notes. And although her acting remains as wooden as ever, she still knows...
...have been streaming across the border at the rate of over 800 a day since the revolt began. All have their stories of indiscriminate Portuguese brutality. Pedro Neves, 30, took a bullet in the leg when two Portuguese army planes strafed his village of Tumbi. Twelve-year-old Andre Destino's village of Boa Nuta was first strafed, then raided by troops in trucks. They shot and killed his father and brother, left him for dead with his left buttock shot away. "I estimate we've killed 30,000 of these animals already," bragged one Portuguese army officer...