Word: fanciulla
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...blooded thriller Francesca da Rimini. First performed in 1914, Francesca was one of a number of works that attempted to transcend romantically the naturalistic action of verismo, using the more advanced harmonic language and orchestral technique of Wagner to create a new direction for opera. In La Fanciulla del West (1910), Puccini had pointed the way, and several younger men were eager to inherit his mantle: Italo Montemezzi, with L'Amore del Tre Re (1913); Ildebrando Pizzetti, with Fedra (1915); and Zandonai. But the attempt failed; although all three continued to compose into the midcentury, it was left...
Other composers have turned turgid melodrama into art--Puccini exhumed Belasco creakers to create Madama Butterfly and La Fanciulla Del West--but Sondheim's score achieves little distinction. It flounders in a pool of notes instead of gushing with passion. Only the lushness of "Pretty Woman," the dissonance of "Epiphany," and the insouciance of "A Little Priest" salvage the first act from musical banality. Even here, the Metropolitan Center's gully of an orchestra pit prevents Sweeney's blazing razor attack from terrorizing even the first...
Puccini: La Fanciulla del West (Soprano Carol Neblett, Tenor Placido Domingo, Baritone Sherrill Milnes; Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Zubin Mehta, conductor; Deutsche Grammophon; 3 LPs). Fanciulla (1910) is a second-rate Italian opera comically posing as a shoot-'em-up thriller. Neblett makes a dramatic frontier heroine. Domingo, as her lover, sings everyone else under the bar, and Milnes is dashingly villainous. With Mehta in the saddle, chorus and orchestra ride smartly home...
...stampede from the Northeast begins, but in its emphasis on big names and traditional works, it sometimes outdoes Dallas. Miami will open with Cesare Siepi in Boris Godunov (Jan. 17). Later on it will feature Sherrill Milnes in Macbeth (March 7), Carole Neblett, along with Domingo, in La Fanciulla del West. In Jackson, Miss., the all-black company Opera/South gives young singers the chance to be heard in standard works (The Flying Dutchman, Elixir of Love). Black composers get their day too. On Nov. 20 Ulysses Kay's new opera Jubilee will be introduced...
...broader targets. The technology of today's recording engineers, he complained, removed natural sound and human errors, producing "a super-glossy, chem-fab music substitute that was never heard on sea or land, including Philadelphia." And to him, the one conspicuous success of Puccini's La Fanciulla del West was "the attempt to make it American-simple-minded...