Word: gedda
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...company can long endure without a Carmen on its list, and last week, after six years' absence, Bizet's supple shocker returned to the Met in a new production. The Carmen was Grace Bumbry, a Negro mezzo-soprano from St. Louis; her Don Jose was Nicolai Gedda, a Swedish-Russian; the Escamillo was Justino Diaz, a Puerto Rican. The conductor was Zubin Mehta, an Indian from Bombay who now conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic-and who last week touched off a furor by denying that he was the least bit interested in conducting the New York Philharmonic...
DONIZETTI: L'ELISIR D'AMORE (2 LPs; Angel). The Elixir of Love is an 1832 comic opera that is a delightful collection of bouncy silliness couched in florid melody. Mirella Freni and Nicolai Gedda reproduce their entrancing Metropolitan Opera performances of two seasons ago, and they are complemented by the astonishing bass of Renato Capecchi, who combines unbelievable agility with mahogany-like richness in the role of a quack selling a love potion...
...performance of Orfeo. Not until 1951, in fact, did the opera receive its first staged performance, when it was presented at Florence's Maggio Musicale. Last week there was a second: at the Vienna Festival, with a star-studded cast headed by Soprano Joan Sutherland and Tenor Nicolai Gedda...
...composed Orfeo for a chorus and orchestra much larger than he had previously used. The heavy dose of choral music and the numerous arias in sona ta form make much of the opera sound like an oratorio. The chorus, for example, joins in a love duet with Sutherland and Gedda in the early scenes, sings a lament for the dead Euridice, and in the third act consoles Orfeo with four lengthy passages. But the opera also sparkles with tuneful solos, and concludes with a scene of effective operatic violence: the Bacchanalians who have poisoned Orfeo are swept away...
...unlikely that anyone could be more eloquent. He does not set the Dies Irae ablaze as Toscanini did, but his performance has a steady incandescence. Honors also go to London's Philharmonia Orchestra, its huge chorus, and the four soloists, Soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Tenor Nicolai Gedda, Bass Nicolai Ghiaurov, and the especially lustrous Mezzo-Soprano Christa Ludwig...