Word: opera
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Ever since the 16th-Century Florentines first evolved it (under the impression that they were re-creating the Greek tragedy), opera has been to Italians what cinema is to the U. S. public. Nearly every theme in literature has been through the operatic chutes. A total list of the operas written by Italians during the past four centuries would run well into the tens of thousands...
...where symphonic music is concerned, Italy has been strangely unproductive. Though proverbially musical, and as hungry for opera as for pasta, the Italian public can hardly be dragged to a concert hall. Of Italy's thousands of composers, perhaps only one, the late Giuseppe Martucci, ever turned out a really respectable symphony...
Twenty years ago, when gentlemen wore starched cuffs and ladies hid in corsets, musical shows were romantic, exotic and historical. The best of them, known as operettas, became minor classics and were repeatedly performed by stock light-opera companies throughout the U. S. During the peak years of U. S. operetta (1910-20), four composers dominated the field: Irish-born Victor Herbert (Naughty Marietta, etc.), Bohemian-born Charles Rudolph Friml (Katinka), Hungarian-born Sigmund Romberg (In Blossom Time), and Manhattan-born Jerome David Kern (Sally, Show Boat...
...least a generation modernistic esthetes and masterminds have been prophesying a speedy decline for the sentimental operas of the late Giacomo Puccini. Sensible critics,*however, have often pointed out that, though they may be bathetic, Puccini's operas are masterpieces of musical stagecraft, shaped by one of the surest hands that ever penned an aria. Meanwhile Tosca, La Boheme, and Madame Butterfly have been played incessantly wherever opera is given. During his lifetime, Composer Puccini made a fortune from them-a rare feat for a composer of serious music-and today they are still tops on the list...
...Annunzio's bald head. But in this he falls short of D'Annunzio himself, who declared that his "highly polished cranium," as a thing of beauty, could be ranked with a greyhound or the legs of Actress Ida Rubinstein. One of the worst pieces of horse opera to find a U. S. publisher, D'Annunzio runs to 583 pages, carries conviction in none of them. To U. S. readers it is a striking demonstration of Author Antongini's ability to write much and say little, an even more striking demonstration of his ability...