Word: duet
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...part with a competence which was almost impressive--but not quite. Dean Gitter's Menelaus was amusingly smooth and sneaky, and because of superior singing talent came across to the audience somewhat better than Andre Gregory's Hector Charybdis. Nevertheless, the two hit it off well in the dance duet, "Scylla and Charibdis," and Gregory made his part well worth everyone's while in "Hector's Song," which he executued with great chic. Harold Scott made a remarkably good thing out of a small part with his pantomimes in the role of Paris...
Puccini's last opera, Turandot, is his grandest and in some ways his best. Dying before he could finish it, Puccini left undone what he wanted to be "the greatest duet ever written." Whether or not he could have fulfilled this aim or not, the rest of the music, some two hours worth, is full of a fine blend of Oriental color and Italian melody. The story concerns a Chinese princess who gives her suitors three riddles to answer. The penalty for wrong guesses is decapitation, but the beauty of Turandot entices many prospective bridegrooms. Such a plot satisfied Puccini...
...hurdy-gurdy score with its plinky-plink banjos, but it is played with excruciating slowness. The star is a charming Viennese nightclub chanteuse named Liane, who sounds less like Polly Peachum than an operetta shopgirl mooning over an archduke. The record does have its high spots, notably the duet between the prostitute Jenny and her pimp. To a wistful tango melody they...
...principals had not been so good, they would have been engulfed by the secondary players. The most outstanding in this group was Victor Altshul as Sergeant Meryll, whose hearty lustiness dominated almost every scene that he was in. His second act duet with Marietta Perl, who made the most of "shrew" part as Dame Carruthers despite a little difficulty with her voice range, was the high point of the show from the comic standpoint...
...word, bar by bar," and the structure came out sound as the Trojan Horse. The orchestra makes a luxurious sound, with plenty of pleasing details such as the soft zips on the xylophone that punctuate an Act II party scene. The vocal melody sometimes soars, e.g., the parting duet ("O gentle heart, would we again were drifting/ Far from this world of waking"), but is often pale and fragile as the illustrations in English children's books. Walton, after all, is neither Italian nor Russian, and no one need complain if he goes politely Anglo-Saxon in the clutches...