Word: orfeo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last week enterprising Tom Scherman, 34, was in the midst of his most ambitious and successful musical venture yet: concert versions of opera. He had experimented with concert opera before-Orfeo ed Euridice two years ago (TIME, March 14, 1949) and Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio last season. Abduction was such a hit that he decided to repeat it this season and add two more Mozart operas, Cost Fan Tutte and Idomeneo. To Scherman, all were "particularly suited" for concert versions because "stagewise they are big bores...
Thornton plans to add some interesting features to the all-music fare. Among these are a series of critical discussions on new records by music experts and engineers. Sometime in March, WXHR will premier Haydn's opera "Orfeo and Eurydice," which is now being recorded in Venice. The score for this opera, which has been missing since the composer's death, have just recently been found after a year long search. The station hopes to expand its record collection now around 400 LP recordings, to 3,000, and to offer live music as well. Although this is an ambitious program...
...Killer." Last week Robbins Landon completed a Haydn Society coup he was sure would become a major musical event: the recording of Haydn's last opera, Orfeo ed Euridice, a four-act work that has never been staged...
...score together. Haydn composed the opera in London in 1791 when he was 59, on a commission from the Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV). On the day of the premiere, King George III, who was sponsoring a rival theater and tiffing with the Prince, closed up the Orfeo theater with troops. Haydn pocketed his ?300, forgot the opera for the time being. Landon found one score in Berlin's State Library, another in the Esterhazy archives of Budapest's State Library, but both were incomplete. At one point, the frustrated musicologists had begun composing a recitative...
Unlike Gluck's Orfeo, Haydn's opera has an unhappy ending: Orfeo's beautiful singing is not enough to bring his Eurydice back from the dead; Orfeo himself is poisoned by the Bacchae. Enthusiastic Robbins Landon, who recorded Orfeo with singers, chorus and orchestra (cut to a Haydn-prescribed 40 pieces) of the Vienna State Opera, was ready to predict that "it will hold its own alongside [Mozart's] Don Giovanni. We don't believe in resuscitating something from the dead unless it's really a killer. And this...