Word: libretto
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...this inconsequential libretto, Menotti added a fluffy, flippant, craftsmanlike score, bristling with tart melodies and limpid orchestration. NBC's studio audience of critics and musical celebrities guffawed, applauded and went home certain: 1) that Composer Menotti had turned out another operatic bestseller, 2) that he was still the most promising young composer on today's operatic horizon...
John Dryden, political coupleteer extraordinary, wrote the libretto which Purcell set. It was originally intended as a glorification of James II, but since it appeared after the Glorious Revolution, it suddenly lost every bit of political significance. It also lost any legendary accuracy, and emerged as a merry little fantasy about fairies and such, rather in the spirit of Shakespere's "Tempest." The work was immediately taken to the English national heart, and it remained popular for several centuries, provoking a number of revivals. Few of this generation have heard it, since the last presentation...
...perplexed Parisian newshawks Gertrude Stein explained a libretto she has just completed for her second opera,* a Steinish version of Faust: Faust "sells his soul over and over again hoping to go to hell. He kills his boy and dog to really sin and go to hell and is turned into a young man. But Marguerite denies he is Faust and because he cannot prove it he finally just fades away. Yes, it is rather amusing." From one of the Stein songs: "The devil what the devil do I care if the devil is there. . . . And you wanted my soul...
...repertory that included such old-timers as Chimes of Normandy, Rosalie, Show Bout, and Roberta, such latter-day specimens as White Horse Inn. Opener for the twelve-week festival was a brand new work by owl-faced Old-timer Jerome Kern entitled Gentlemen Unafraid. With a Civil-Wartime libretto carpentered by the experienced hands of Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II, Gentlemen Unafraid maintained the best swashbuckling, love & war traditions of the Herbert...
...beauties of this work are not generally known. Despite a mediocre libretto by Nahum Tate (poet-laureate of England at the time) Purcell has a real sense of dramatic pace, and his themes admirably express the varying moods of his characters...