Word: figaro
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Raimondi and Losey paint over and obliterate the other half of Don Giovanni's character, the youthful embodiment of unbounded energy who mesmerized the romantics. They do Mozart and Da Ponte an injustice by simplifying the libretto's psychological tangle to a black-and-white social dialetic. Figaro would have better served such an intent...
...show up on any check list, but it was essential: the ghostly presence of great composers. The repertory for the visit consisted mostly of works passed down through the company's musical heritage directly from those composers' hands. There was Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, premiered in Vienna in 1786 with Mozart himself conducting from the keyboard. There was Beethoven's Fidelio, also first produced in Vienna with the composer presiding, in 1805. From the 20th century there were Salome and Ariadne auf Naxos, the latter premiered in Vienna in 1916 and both composed...
...crown of the first week's operatic offerings was the Figaro-tender, witty, effortlessly buoyant. The spectacle of servants outwitting their masters, so inflammatory in Mozart's day, was given charm and point by Baritone Walter Berry, as a rather phlegmatic Figaro, and Soprano Lucia Popp, as his pert fiancee. Baritone Hans Helm and especially Soprano Gundula Janowitz, as the count and countess, played along with aristocratic good grace...
...there an opera house in the world that boasts a better orchestra than Vienna's? Whether in the iridescent pulsations of Salome or the silky, intimate lyricism of Figaro, or the architectural sweep of Fidelio, the orchestra played like a first-rate symphonic ensemble - which, of course, is what it is. When not in the opera pit, it is the renowned Vienna Philharmonic. With Bernstein again on the podium, it excelled last week in a highly dramatic, virtuoso performance of Beethoven's Ninth. Bernstein tended to heighten what needed no heightening, but by the time the final movement...
...Robert Leuze never thought of singing, on the street or anywhere else, until he was past the make-or-break age for most vocalists. Now, two or three evenings a week, he stands in front of Broadway theaters, performing baritone arias from The Marriage of Figaro or La Traviata to the accompaniment of a tape recorder. A Yale liberal arts graduate and a former high school science teacher, Leuze has been trying to launch a career with small opera companies in the New York area. "It usually blows someone's mind to hear me in full voice...