Word: duet
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COMO PUCCINI: Turandot, Birgit Nilsson, Renata Tejussi Bjoeriling, Giorgio Tozzi Rome Opera House Or and Chorus conducted by Leinsdorf. RCA Victor LM ndot is Puccini's best and yet frustrating opera. "Best," be of the scope of its profound and dramatic characterize "Frustrating," because the touchstone, its final duet, not written by Puccini but one instead by a mediocre of his, Franco Alfano...
...Puccini had called Calaf and Turandot "almost super-human beings.") However, their inhuman conduct was to become humanized through Liu's example. Calaf's cruel desertion of Liu and Timur and Turandot's vicious behavior towards her subjects and suitors alike was not condoned by Puccini. During the final duet (the part he never completed), the composer intended Calaf and Turandot "to descend through love to the level of mankind." They would at times echo Liu's touchingly simple music. Her sacrifice would not have been in vain. But, at the same time, through the sheer excitement of this last...
This album features Jussi Bjoerling's penultimate recorded performance. From it, we are all the more aware that this great Swedish tenor died when he still was near the top of his form. His battle of high notes with Turandot at the end of their last duet (itself the one truly exciting moment in Alfano's scoring) is a most extraordinary display of vocal power. His lyric rendition of much of the first act music makes his Calaf more sympathetic and more credible than any other I have heard...
...dances and the short, very funny sight gags and musical parodies are the real highlights of the show. An unfortunate love duet between Adams and Lund is happily broken up by the entrance of John Valentine as an aerial Cupid. Later, Valentine and Pete White make something hilarious out of the hackeney comic concept of two drunken electrians fooling around with a ladder. Francis Mahard's sets are many and uniformly excellent, as are the costumes designed by Theoni Aldredge...
...Hate Duets. A tiny man (5 ft. 3 in.), grey-maned Composer Dallapiccola is affectionately known in Italian musical circles as "Il Bruttino"-The Ugly One. He now lives in Florence in a musty, 17th century palazzo. There he is hard at work on a gigantic, twelve-tone grand opera to be based on Joyce's Ulysses. The trouble with modern opera, says Dallapiccola, is that composers "seem to have come to a mutual agreement to eliminate the love element which has delighted audiences for a century. The love duet was axed, and it would now be appropriate...