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Puccini: La Fanciulla del West (Soprano Carol Neblett, Tenor Placido Domingo, Baritone Sherrill Milnes; Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Zubin Mehta, conductor; Deutsche Grammophon; 3 LPs). Fanciulla (1910) is a second-rate Italian opera comically posing as a shoot-'em-up thriller. Neblett makes a dramatic frontier heroine. Domingo, as her lover, sings everyone else under the bar, and Milnes is dashingly villainous. With Mehta in the saddle, chorus and orchestra ride smartly home...
...albums have gone platinum, in trade parlance (i.e., sold 1 million copies): an anthology of progressive stars titled The Outlaws, the duo album Waylon & Willie and Willie's own Red Headed Stranger. Willie's latest, Stardust, is currently one of the nation's hottest-selling country LPs, even though it consists entirely of Tin Pan Alley standards...
Among other things, Willie saw a chance to "create my own market" by bringing together Austin's country audience with the rock devotees and college crowd on its fringes. While his post-Nashville LPs began building a national following, he consolidated his local reputation by promoting a series of July 4th outdoor concerts featuring friends like Leon Russell and Kris Kristofferson-and, not incidentally, himself. "When I was in the encyclopedia business," Willie explains, "I learned that whatever you want to sell, first you've got to sell yourself...
Mozart: Mitridate, Re di Ponto (Sopranos Arleen Augér, Ileana Cotrubas and Edith Gruberova, Mezzo Agnes Baltsa, Tenor Werner Hollweg, Mozarteum Orchestra, Salzburg, Leopold Hager, conductor; Deutsche Grammophon; 4 LPs); La Clemenza di Tito (Mezzos Janet Baker and Yvonne Minton, Tenor Stuart Burrows, Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Colin Davis, conductor; Philips; 3 LPs). Mozart composed Mitridate when he was only 14; La Clemenza came just before he died at 35. Both works are all but forgotten. They are opera seria, the early style of Italian opera that can present obstacles for the modern...
...Changes in Attitudes (ABC). Countrified Caribbean and laid-back Southern rock blended together like a well-mixed Margarita. Waylon Jennings: Ol' Waylon (RCA). Country music's amiably gruff outlaw puts heart into honky-tonk-and Luckenbach, Texas, squarely on the map. The Phil Woods Six (RCA, 2 LPs). A master saxman and his friends hotfinger their way through familiar jazz standards and lively originals. James Taylor: JT (Columbia). Sweet Baby James shows the old homespun ease and comes up with a Handy Man delight...