Word: mozartian
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...whether Strauss ever expected Ariadne to be a box-office hit. A small-scaled "chamber opera" without a chorus, it uses an orchestra of only 37 instruments, one of them an organ. A confused story-within-a-story and a stage-within-a-stage set mix Grecian mythology with Mozartian opera bouffe. The three leading roles, all sopranos, are among the most difficult to sing in all opera...
...townspeople-fishermen, harlots and scowling drunks-still suspect him and set out to persecute him. Peter takes another apprentice to work for him, and the second boy dies in an accident. The villagers hold Peter responsible and drive him out to sea to drown himself. The score is Mozartian in its classical simplicity, Wagnerian in the way it jumps from recitative to aria without stopping the action of the story. The scenes are bound together by biting symphonic interludes...
With a sheaf of Metropolitan names and half the critics in town on their payroll, his rivals looked as if they might take the box office out from under the remarkable British Mozartian. Worried, British AmBassador Charles Bateman thought Sir Thomas ought to leave Mexico in a huff...
Last week the rival Don Giovanni came off. Despite a few first-rate voices, it resembled a turgid Italian antipasto rather than an exquisite Mozartian souffle. One of the first-rate voices, the Metropolitan Opera's great comic basso, Salvatore Baccaloni, summed it all up by saying: "It stank, if I say so myself." Said the critic of Novedades: "The performance could only be described as weird. Unfortunately, those who did not attend may have been misled by one of my distinguished colleagues who rushed into print Sunday morning stating that the performance could hardly be equaled at Covent...