Word: nilsson
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Wagner has not fared well at the Metropolitan Opera during the 21-year regime of Rudolf Bing. No fault of Bing's: except for the shining example of Soprano Birgit Nilsson, most singers during that period barely coped with Wagner's long, heroic, leading roles. On the whole, it was left to stage directors and designers to make up in looks what was missing in sound, usually with limited success...
Tristan (Jess Thomas) and Isolde (Birgit Nilsson) down their love potion on the deck of a palpably realistic ship. Suddenly they are obscured by swirling clouds, as if seen through a delicatessen window on a cold day. Later, in a dense, lushly tropical garden, they embrace, then shoot skyward via an elevator. They float among color-slide-projected stars, perch on the solid-looking edge of a planet examining a literal representation of the sun's corona, finally end their galactic tour by strolling across what seems to be an asteroid before ending up again in their dank garden...
Conductor Erich Leinsdorf, returning to the Met after a ten-year absence, leads a performance that surges excitingly, especially when Soprano Nilsson pours forth oceans of brilliant sound. Tenor Thomas does not give the world the Tristan that it has lacked since Lauritz Melchior retired in 1950. He looks romantic, but is overwhelmed by Wagner's demands. Still, thanks to Leinsdorf and the unique Nilsson, there are moments when one can forget that this new Tristan looks like an astronomy lecture with visual aids from Hallmark...
...Wagnerian roles like Brünnhilde in Götterdämmerung. But she is ideally suited to bel canto, and to the French lyric romanticism of Gounod and Massenet. In these areas she is unbeatable, and even among the diverse other sopranos in this age of great sopranos?Birgit Nilsson, Sutherland, Price, Marilyn Horne, Monserrat Caballé?she more than holds...
...concert tour and the LP provided Mary Magdalene and Pilate. "There's a special kind of singer needed for rock opera," O'Horgan explains. "It's much more gut, more street. We have vocal ranges in this show that no one could produce without a mike, not even Birgit Nilsson...