Word: operettas
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David Bachrach and Ruth Harcovitz are most familiar to Harvard audiences for their operetta roles. This Sunday they change styles and are the soloists in two of the better Bach secular cantatas, the Peasant and Coffee. K.T.H...
...companion piece on the Symphony recording is the overture Di Ballo. Despite brilliant engineering and adequate musicianship, it remains a mediocre work. Curiously enough, it is the only large non-operetta of Sullivan's that has survived straight through in the repetoire from its composition. It may still be heard occasionally played by the Boston Pops. But it remains an inferior piece, especially when contrasted to the better examples of a form in which Sullivan excelled. The record of Di Ballo and the E-minor Symphony is avoidable for all but the most avid students either of symphonic history...
...week's end there was no clear-cut evidence that Constantine had any knowledge of the attempt to overthrow the junta, which government spokesmen initially brushed off as an "operetta" involving "a handful" of men, including two retired admirals. But shortly afterward, 32 senior naval officers were arrested and presumably will be tried on charges of treason. Then 31 other navymen, led by the commander of the destroyer Velos, mutinied and were granted asylum at the port of Fiumicino in Italy. Then the government admitted that the "operetta" had been a serious attempt at revolution...
...rare chance to see and hear where it all began: Sullivan's first operetta, Cox and Box, was written at age twenty. Though played with only three characters, the genius that flowered in Ruddigore and Gondoliers is already evident. A contemporary (1862) critic noted in the journal Fun, "Mr. Sullivan's music is funny here and there, and grand or graceful where it is not funny." The man who offered that opinion was W. S. Gilbert before the fateful meeting. Also on the South House program to fill out the evening is Mozart's Impresario...
Annemarie's success story was as schmaltzy as a Viennese operetta. Born to a poor mountain-farm family in Klein-Arl near Salzburg, she was the sixth of eight children. When "Annemie" was 4, her father whittled her first pair of skis. "From then on," says her mother, "I hardly saw Annemie during the day. She even skipped breakfast to make a few runs before school began." She paid at best only minimal attention to her studies during her nine years of schooling, much preferring to test, and often beat the boys in climbing, skiing, even schoolyard brawling...