Word: joio
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Conductor James Walker assembled a concert program that was sophisticated by anyone's standards. Except for the Sousa-like Emblem of Unity at the beginning, the pieces performed were thoroughly twentieth-century, ranging in date from Kurt Weill's Kleine Dreigroschen-musik (1929) to Dello Joio's Variations on a Medieval Tune...
...Dello Joio: Fantasy and Variations (Lorin Hollander, pianist; Boston Symphony Orchestra; RCA Victor) is here given an appropriately spirited performance by the young pianist who played its world première last year. It is music for a virtuoso pianist and a game orchestra. So is the cheerful Ravel Concerto in G on the other side...
...Overture, which was at least close to the proper emotions for a Bogey festival, but this fall, the horns will sound the spaces between the theatre's showings of Hiroshima Mon Amour, Black Orpheus, and even Can-Can. Variety is required: for the first of these three, Norman Dello Joio's Air Power Suite would no doubt suffice; a few bar's of Gluck might enliven the second; and Offenbach is the only answer for the third. Certainly other suggestions are possible, but continuing the present entr' acte offerings is worse than playing Frescobaldi at a Yovicsin press conference...
...immigrant Italian organist, Dello Joio likes to think of himself as a spiritual descendant of Verdi. Blood Moon tells the story of Ninette Lafont, a beautiful octoroon actress who flees New Orleans on the eve of the Civil War to forget her doomed love for Raymond Barlac, a Southern aristocrat. The wide-ranging plot, based on Dello Joio's own scenario, gave Designer Rouben Ter-Arutunian ample scope for lush sets that imparted a sense of grandeur to the opera's five scenes. American Soprano Mary Costa, who played Ninette, sang beautifully but seemed lost in the schmalz...
...Dello Joio had his own opening-night forebodings about Blood Moon. "Conservative people will think it's too modern," said he, "and modern-minded people will think it's too conservative." He got no argument. "I don't like any opera in English," huffed one white-tie traditionalist, and most critics were upset that Dello Joio had used a 19th century idiom. Still, the opera had its redeeming features. If the music lacked the strength of a Verdi opera, it was consistently melodious, at times truly lyrical. If the plot was melodramatic, it gave hints of Dello...