Word: lps
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Glinka: A Life for the Tsar (the National Opera of Belgrade, Oscar Danon conducting; London, 4 LPs). In this Communist-approved version of Glinka's 19th-century flag-waver, as in other current versions, attention has been directed away from the young Tsar and focused on the heroic popular leaders of the national uprising against the invading Poles in 1611-13. With that party-line emendation, the opera's melodramatic plot has been preserved intact. Weak in leading roles (Bass Miro Changalovich and Soprano Maria Glavachevich), the present version is thunderously impressive in its choral and ensemble passages...
...public concerts in "Tents" (often palm-thatched bamboo shacks). In the U.S. there have been previous calypso flurries, including Rum and Coca-Cola in 1945, but the real boom was drummed in by Folk Singer Harry Belafonte, whose current album, Calypso, is one of the biggest selling LPs in RCA Victor history. In a velvety voice he sings Day 0 and Jamaica Farewell. (They are not really calypso, but no one seems to care...
...records from the broadcast tapes, Toscanini returned from retirement in 1954 to conduct at Carnegie Hall portions of the opera which did not satisfy him-namely, Soprano Herva Nelli's O Patria Mia and Ritorna Vincitor! (TIME, June 14, 1954). Last week Victor released (on three LPs) Toscanini's composite and deftly sound-doctored Aïda, the opera in which he made his conducting debut in Rio de Janeiro 71 years...
...nostalgic, there is Gustave Charpentier's Louise (Epic, 3 LPs), infrequently heard in the U.S. It is a sentimental apotheosis of the Gallic spirit, dating from a turn-of-the-century Paris that had never heard of existentialism. The work is not only good opera but good soap opera, telling the torturous romance of a working girl and her artist lover. The scene is the same turbulent Paris where Bohème's Rodolfo and Mimi loved, but while Puccini's Bohemians are really passionate Italians, Charpentier's characters are really Parisians-frothy, but a little...
Third item in this batch of operatic rarities: Arrigo Boïto's Mefistofele, newly recorded by RCA Victor on 2 LPs (with Boris Christoff, Giacinto Prandelli, Orietta Moscucci; Orchestra and Chorus of the Rome Opera conducted by Vittorio Gui). Known chiefly as a poet and mighty librettist (Verdi's Otello and Falstaff), Boïto always remained an interesting oddity as a composer; he premiered his version of Goethe's Faust at La Scala in 1868 only to see it booed off the stage after two performances because of its experimentation with Wagnerian techniques. Intellectually more...