Word: opera
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Reinhold A. Faust, 74, of No. 2517 North Richmond Street, Chicago, last week told where he was on the night of Nov. 16, 1917. He was at the opera, hearing Galli-Curci sing in Dinorah* in Chicago's Auditorium Theatre. Midway through the first act, Galli-Curci left the dim-lit stage. Reinhold Faust left his seat in Row K, four off the aisle. A woman saw flame, and screamed. Chicago Fireman (now Fire Commissioner) Michael J. Corrigan grabbed a bomb, yanked out its phosphorescent fuse, rushed outside before it could spray buckshot among the 2,200 people present...
...Hughes-Hallett also collects Chinese prints and Bessarabian rugs, is an accomplished pianist and mezzo-soprano, has sung under the name of Mme Vimara, has composed an opera called Chimera and a march named Dynamic Detroit, and has a book of poems entitled White Magic to her credit. Detroit is more likely to remember her, however, for her frequent appearances around town with a pet bull snake ("A perfect lamb," she called him) coiled around her neck, and for her always interesting parties...
...rarely are the crystal springs of Henry Purcell's music tapped. There is a great feast of choral, instrumental, and harpsichord music which is never served to moderns except in isolated events such as the Lowell House production of the opera-play, "King Arthur." And this is in spite of his unquestioned genius: of the simple and dignified charm of all his works, of the amazingly conceived and thrillingly beautiful harmonic progressions which could be surpassed only by those of J. S. Bach...
Purcell was English opera; it was born, lived, and died with him. He created a peculiarly national music-drama, which drew heavily on the popular Italian opera, but which also possessed an individuality and spirit more in keeping with English folk music. Such works as "King Arthur" are not operas in the ordinary sense, but combine in a different way music with drama. The story is told in plain, unaccompanied speech, and the music is interjected in incidental interludes, unconnected with the plot. Incidental music of this kind provided Purcell with his most fertile medium; "King Arthur," moreover, is commonly...
Last week Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera completed a Ring of the Nibelung cycle, thereby accomplishing for the ninth successive year one of the greatest mechanical labors required of the stage. The four full-length Ring operas lasted a total of 14 hours, required 18 complete changes of scene, 34 major singers, a large chorus, 80 stage hands and technicians, an orchestra of 114, ten full beards, one horse. Richard Wagner's masterpiece contains practically every theatrical trick except Eliza crossing the ice-swimming Rhine maidens, a roaring dragon, a rainbow, galloping Valkyries, a Nibelung forge going full tilt...