Word: donizetti
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...rigidly remained until the 950s, when Maria Callas set the opera world on its ear by reviving the bel canto operas of Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini, and demonstrated that bel canto embellishments could be used to impart new and exciting interpretations to a role. She has since been followed by Sutherland, and in the past few years virtually every major young singer to appear, including Teresa Berganza Marilyn Home and Montserrat Caballe' has performed in bel canto operas...
Last week Caballé was cast in a role more befitting her regally commanding figure: Queen Elizabeth in the American Opera Society's concert version of Roberto Devereux, a recently resurrected Donizetti opera that is absurdly complex in its amorous entanglements but brimming with singable music. Her extended, melting pianissimos lingered in the air like wisps of smoke. At the end of the second act, she showed the stuff great prima donnas are made of, held the final high note beyond everyone else on the stage and, with an arrogant toss of her head, strode off still singing full...
...chanted poetry. From the first, the creators of opera felt the urge to avoid artifice. Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-87) said that it was silly not to have "realistic" characters in opera-so he created Orfeo and Euridice, with their set, face-front arias. Bellini (1801-35) and Donizetti (1797-1848) thought Gluck's characters were insufficiently real-so they created the stylized Norma and Lucia. Wagner (1813-83) avowed the same sentiment-and created Lohengrin and his swan. Puccini (1858-1924) proclaimed a brand of truthfulness he called verismo -and created Turandot, the princess of a China that...
...forsaken Scots girl in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, Sutherland was in superb voice. Authoritative conducting was provided by her husband Richard Bonynge, and there was an authentic touch of the Scottish highlands in the sets and luxurious costumes. Result was 33 curtain calls. As La Stupenda plucked sprays from Cooktown orchids for the supporting cast and kissed her husband, enthusiastic galleryites stamped so loudly that a nervous opera buff sitting below wondered: "How long can the theater stand the strain of a Sutherland tour...
...opera's first production was almost as heavy with intrigue as Wagner's plot. Though the composer grandly pronounced Tristan "the greatest musical drama of all time," opera houses in Dresden, Berlin, Vienna and Munich rejected it as "unperformable." Moreover, to a public reared on Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Meyerbeer, most of Wagner's works seemed to be joyless monstrosities...