Word: ernani
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...stage of Milan's La Scala one evening last week, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, mused about the futility of wealth and power. The aria, Oh! de' verd'anni miei, got hearty applause. After the curtain fell on the third act of Verdi's Ernani, barrel-chested Baritone Cornell MacNeil scurried back to his dressing room, where he signed his name to a La Scala option for next season. Then he dispatched a cable to his wife in Cliffside Park, NJ.: "We tore up the pea patch, doll...
Metropolitan Opera (Sat. 2 p.m., ABC). Verdi's Ernani...
...Metropolitan Opera showed last week why it is sometimes called the Metropolitan Museum of Opera: it presented Verdi's nearly forgotten Ernani. Unofficial reason for the revival: to provide a spectacular assignment for the Met's own longtime exhibit, Soprano Zinka Milanov, who has been buffeted by the triumphs of Italy's Renata Tebaldi and Maria Meneghini Callas. But the combination of early Verdi and late Milanov was simply painful...
...plot of Ernani, based on a Victor Hugo play, resembles a travesty of all grand-opera plots. The main motivation seems to be the handsome Bandit Ernani's death wish. Before he finally kills himself in Act IV, he gets into all sorts of entanglements with the King of Spain, an old grandee, and the woman who is desired by all of them. Amidst a welter of prayers, supplications, pageants and credos, nothing occurs resembling a human relationship. Similarly, the score, composed when Verdi was 30, sounds like a not very funny satire of Verdian music that put listeners...
...lavished its most expensive talents on Ernani. It got Spanish-born Artist Esteban Frances to design sets and costumes, surrounded Diva Milanov with Tenor Mario Del Monaco, Baritone Leonard Warren and Basso Cesare Siepi. To little avail. Of the four stars, nobody sang well in Act I, and Milanov appeared to be suffering from dizziness, staggering and finally getting herself planted before starting to sing. Vocally, she was plagued by an excruciatingly bad sense of pitch, although she had sung her role commendably in the dress rehearsal. Her loyal supporters wore lapel buttons reading "Viva Zinka...