Word: nabucco
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Belting Their Best. La Scala's two Verdi productions, Il Trovatore and Nabucco, illustrated the company's faults-and how it turns them into virtues. Both performances tended to be concerts in costume. Nicola Benois' massive, upward-sweeping sets were effective in a traditional vein. Nabucco, in particular, had moments of rousing stagecraft, especially when a 35-ft. purple statue of Baal split down the middle and the surrounding temple exploded, filling the stage and auditorium with steam. But mostly the singers forgot about the drama and one another, turned toward the audience, and simply belted...
...Shakespeare, Capuleti, with Bellini's intimate scale, pervading sweetness and utter predictability, is a distinct contrast to Verdi's powerful, primitive themes and vaulting imagination. But the company -notably the two leads, Tenor Giacomo Aragall and Soprano Renata Scotto-traded the flawed gusto of its Trovatore and Nabucco performances for restraint and quiet artistry, making Capuleti the only production of the week to come off with cohesiveness and unity of effect...
...VERDI: NABUCCO (3 LPs; London). Lamberto Garelli, conducting the Vienna Opera Orchestra, has produced an unexpected smash hit. The biggest surprise is Elena Suliotis, a 23-year-old Greek soprano who has arrived like a gift from Olympus for opera fans who want Msria Callas reborn. Their voices have striking similarities: three-octave range, "white" tone, unflinching attack. But whereas Callas used all her skills and wiles to project a so-so voice, Suliotis is blessed with a strong, clear instrument that never quavers. It will be some time before she matches Callas' artistry, but in the florid role...
...news of the 1848 rebellion against the Austrians, who were then ruling most of Italy, is indicative of the flaming patriotism that consumed the composer's early life and work. He was then 35 and had already written twelve operas, most of them bristling with propaganda. In Nabucco, for example, the "Va, pensiero" chorus was a call to arms that was later sung by Garibaldi's army. Italian opera audiences, quick to recognize the freedom slogans Verdi managed to slip past the Austrian censors, often erupted into flag-waving demonstrations. "Viva Verdi," scrawled on walls up and down...
Trouble was, Verdi too often neglected the cause of integrating music and drama. Of his first 14 operas, only Nabucco and Macbeth displayed any real staying power; the rest moldered in obscurity. Now, in opera's relentless campaign to resurrect the least-known works of the best-known composers, some of Verdi's early operas are being given a fresh hearing-with unpredictable results. Gianna d'Arco (1845), performed this month by Manhattan's American Opera Society, was a thundering flop. But Attila (1846), as staged last week by the enterprising opera company of Graz, Austria...