Word: librettist
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...18th century composers out of date. Mozart's ability to portray real emotions on the stage instead of stylized attitudes, and his inventive use of the orchestra as an active participant instead of merely an accompanist, powerfully influenced later generations of composers. In the works he created with Librettist Lorenzo da Ponte-The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così Fan Tutte-Mozart's genius transcended the conventional boundaries of master-servant comedies and lovers' farces to create a new kind of psychological music drama...
...year of 1786, he led a total of 125 performances. But he was never a man of the commercial theater as Mozart was. His operas, mostly light in character, did not have to please any taste but the Esterházys'. And rather than working closely with a librettist to create something new-as Mozart did with Da Ponte-Haydn was largely content to accept preexisting librettos...
Mozart and Librettist Lorenzo da Ponte created an enormously alluring, vital protagonist who pursues his appetites with cheerful disregard for law or morality. After forcing himself on a noblewoman, Donna Anna, he duels with her father, the Commendatore, and kills him. Then, while the Don busies himself mostly with trying to seduce the peasant girl Zerlina, Donna Anna joins forces with her fiancé Don Ottavio and another of the Don's conquests, Donna Elvira, to hound him through a series of comic entanglements, disguises and escapes. When a statue of the slain Commendatore comes to life and challenges...
...ciel is one of the biggest climaxes in a score that sometimes seems to be nothing but climaxes. But Verdi and Librettist Arrigo Boito knew that after the massive choral scene in Act III, enough was enough. Hence the rightness of the subdued, wistfully melancholy fourth act, a sort of spacious postlude. This act is Desdemona's great moment. Soprano Gilda Cruz-Romo made the most of it, although in the earlier acts her singing had somewhat lacked color and shading. Poignant and dignified, she spun out the Willow Song and Desdemona's final prayer in long, crystalline...
...Lulu is being given its first U.S. performances by the venturesome Santa Fe Opera. Some of the vocal panache and soaring emotion of the Paris production may be missing, but little else is. The Santa Feans have staged the work with unusual care and intelligence. This time Berg the librettist is as well served as Berg the composer...