Word: librettists
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...chorus: the Night Song, in which the audience is divided, for singing purposes, into owls, herons, turtledoves and chaffinches. After they had joined gleefully in the final Coaching Song, there was nothing left to do but applaud themselves and the opera's makers. Curly-haired Composer Britten and Librettist Eric Crozier (who also wrote the book for Britten's third successful opera, Albert Herring*) had to take a dozen curtain calls...
...Grimes" is not a very good argument for opera in English, and it cannot fall back on the translation excuse. The fault lies with librettist Montagu Slater. He doesn't seem to think in musical terms, so that there is a lot of pretty tedious recitative, much of which is superfluous. The verbosity has apparently proved too much for Britten, for his music, though following thought and mood, does not fit the words very skillfully. This failing was exaggerated Thursday night by poor diction on the part of both soloists and chorus...
Love Life (music by Kurt Weill; book & lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner; produced by Cheryl Crawford) can boast the Best of Everything-the producer and the librettist of Brigadoon, the composer of Lady in the Dark, the director of A Streetcar Named Desire, the choreographer of Finian's Rainbow, the leading lady of High Button Shoes, the leading man of Annie Get Your Gun. But whether so many top-notchers are like too many cooks, or whether some of them have slipped a notch or two, Love Life is not really a good show; it is only a show...
...more than a personal triumph: he had also satisfied a debt of honor that had nagged him for 30 years. As a young man he had conducted Boito's pompously romantic opera, Mefistofele. Their friendship had ripened while Boito was busy winning greater fame as the librettist of Verdi's Otello and Falstaff-and plugging away for years at another opera of his own, Nerone...
...while, he lived with his married sister Beth, but found it difficult to compose while Beth's children played trains under his feet, or left sticky traces of jam on the piano. Then he and Librettist Slater moved to Snape in Suffolk, to a windmill which Britten had remodeled as a house. There they plunged into Peter Grimes. Slater would work up in a bedroom, and shout down to Benjy, lolling on the grass, "How do you like this line?" They took long walks over the bleak Suffolk downs, saying nothing to each other, each busy with...