Word: lyric
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...Figaro" is not demanding in the same way as a Verdi or Wagner opera; sheer volume and range are less important here than lyric grace and vocal agility. But in some of Mozart's more convoluted ensembles--"Figaro" boasts several scenes in which more than six people are singing simultaneously--that agility can be just as difficult as a louder and showier Verdi aria. Just the elaborate recitatives, which are crucial to advance the plot, require a daunting combination of comic skill and vocal dexterity. What's more, "Figaro" has at least five major singing roles, and a weak voice...
...often in the same picture: the DeCarava who relishes the way light makes a sawtooth descent down a metal gate, and the DeCarava who mulls over the pleasures and predicaments of black life in America. To the question of what's personal and what's political, what's lyric and what's documentary, he offers back a teasing answer...
Actually, that murder, in the new film of Richard III, offers a cleverer twist on the orgasmic affinity of love and death than any devised by Eszterhas for Basic Instinct. It has the added jolt of literary blasphemy, like hearing a Tupac Shakur lyric sung in Westminster Abbey. Melodrama in Shakespeare? How awful, how scabrous, how very...appropriate, since Will was a man of the theater who gloried in the trappings of stage sensation. And because Richard III and Iago are the two scurviest, most seductive villains in the canon, it is right for directors to find a movie equivalent...
...making gestures of sexual insinuation. Vermeer's are seldom marked by experience, and except for maids and servants, they all belong to the same stratum--a class, needless to say, rather above his. Does this make them insipid? Sometimes, yes, but it can also turn them into vessels of lyric innocence, as in the Girl with a Pearl Earring, 1665-66, with her liquidly painted turban of virginal blue, who turns her shining gaze to meet yours as though she'd never seen another human being...
...After "Lyric," Redman invited special guest Christian McBride onto the stage and they played two jaw-dropping duets. McBride's talent is simply beyond description. Einstein was not better at physics and Pele was not better at soccer than McBride is at the bass. This 22-year old, has gone from being a prodigy to being a legend in the space of about two years, and he's still improving. What makes McBride so enjoyable to hear is his combination of ludicrous technical skills with a style that is thoroughly grounded in a traditional jazz feel. On "Ornithology," a challenging...