Word: luciano
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Puccini: Turcindot, with Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti, Montserrat Caballe, Nicolai Ghiaurov (London Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta conducting; London; 3 LPs; $17.94). Puccini's last opera is filled with bold orchestral touches and ravishing arias made to order for an all-star cast like this. Though she does not erase memories of the Nilsson Turandot (especially in the RCA set with Tebaldi and Bjoerling), Sutherland is now the only coloratura around with the right tessitura and sufficient vocal weight-at least on records-to bring off the role of the riddle-happy princess. A delight...
Puccini: La Bohème (Mirella Freni, Luciano Pavarotti, Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, conductor; London; 2 LPs; $11.96). The LP era has had three recordings of Bohème good enough to be called great. The first two were the Toscanini (with Licia Albanese and Jan Peerce as Mimi and Rodolfo) and the Beecham (Victoria de los Angeles and Jussi Bjoerling), both still available in low-priced reissues. Here is the third, with the unpredictable Karajan sculpting the orchestral part with an irresistible flow befitting the Toscanini approach and a touching songfulness that Beecham might have applauded. The bella...
...current furor in Italy derives from a complaint by a Roman journalist last fall that his telephone was being tapped. A crusading investigator named Luciano Infelisi, 33, who works for the Rome Magistrature as a sort of district attorney, decided to check further. With two aides, he equipped an unmarked van with a pair of antennas and it toured the center of Rome, trying to pick up the signals of transmitters hidden in phones or cables. Eventually the investigators concluded that hundreds of lines were being tapped, including those of the Bank of Italy, the Communist Party, various newspapers...
...plot is just the kind of gangster genealogy that, as they say, names names (Genovese, Anastasia, Profaci, Luciano), although the movie actually has less relation to the underworld history of the past four decades than to old Edward G. Robinson bloodlettings on the Warner Brothers back lot. In the traditional Robinson role of the chairman of the thugs is Joseph Wiseman, a usually reliable actor who has mysteriously decided to portray the Sicilian overlord Salvatore Maranzano in an accent that is pure Transylvanian. Maranzano divides the gangs all over the country into families, then stands back and watches...
...without his stolid lifelong best friend (who flunked the entrance exams), and caught between two new disturbing classmates. One is his proud seatmate Carlo Cattolica, whose "clarity of mind and profile, etched with a medal's sharpness" arouses the narrator's fascination and envy. The other is Luciano Pulga, a scruffy, pushy newcomer to the school "with a physique like a little wading bird's." Pulga is slavishly and successfully cultivated by the young Jew until Cattolica moves against them like a starfish bisecting a clam...