Word: kanawa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...recording of Verdi's Otello on London Records uses this formula neatly. The music is one of the best-known operas by one of the best-known composers of opera, the names are big (Pavarotti, Kiri te Kanawa and Leo Nucci, with Sir Georg Solti at the helm), and the pretext is a double celebration: the 100th anniversary of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the 100th recording on CD of Solti with the CSO. But, unlike the "Three Tenors" concert or the Amadeus soundtrack, a new recording of Otello is the kind of project that must stand...
...Kanawa is an appropriately ingenuous Desdemona and sustains the first half of the last act beautifully with the "Willow Song" and the Ave Maria. Although her performance doesn't mesh entirely with Pavarotti's careful reading of his role (especially in the first-act love duet, which comes across more as two parallel soliloquies), her characterization is admirable, and she comes into her own in the second-act scene where she is admired by the chorus of men, women and children...
...oratorio, the someone else was Carl Davis, an American-born film composer and accomplished pastiche artist. After McCartney wrote the text and invented the tunes, Davis arranged them slickly for soprano (Kiri Te Kanawa at the Liverpool premiere and on the recording), mezzo (Sally Burgess), tenor (Jerry Hadley), bass (Willard White), boy soprano, chorus, cathedral choir and full orchestra...
...stand in line in sub-zero weather for opera tickets. We'd rather go out and buy that new Kiri Te Kanawa CD than open up this month's phone bill. We'll stay home to watch a Live from the Met broadcast instead of taking our chances on the new Arnold Schwarzenegger film. And even our beloved Mozart, Wagner and Puccini LP's are showing severe wear and tear...
...recordings have been as musically successful as Show Boat. In West Side Story, Carreras' Hispanic accent was as wrong for the role of the New Yorker Tony as Te Kanawa's British inflection was for the Latino Maria. In South Pacific, the casting of tenor Carreras, in the role created by bass Ezio Pinza, was a bit of commercialism that necessitated transposing the part and ended up distorting the balance. Further, imagining the New Zealand-born Te Kanawa as an all-American Nellie Forbush was a greater suspension of disbelief than many listeners were willing to make. Yet My Fair...