Word: placido
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When the biggest hand of an operatic evening is not for the singers -- Leona Mitchell as the eponymous Ethiopian slave girl, Placido Domingo as her hapless Egyptian lover Radames -- but for towering sets and slick stage machinery, then the era of content-free opera is at hand. Under the artistic direction of James Levine and departing general manager Bruce Crawford, the Met has ( suffered from a hardening of its arteries, offering up one lumbering spectacle after another without much apparent thought as to whether they make artistic sense...
...productions, the book is visually gorgeous; in fact, it is too pretty to cook by. It would be nice to have a recipes-only version for the kitchen. With luck it would still include Sherill Milne's Hungarian goulash soup, Regina Resnik's cold stuffed veal roast and Placido Domingo's opulent zarzuela de mariscos, a symphony of shellfish, wine, saffron, olive oil, peppers and garlic...
Sometimes, alas, it is business as usual. This year's season opener, Giacomo Meyerbeer's hoary grand opera L'Africaine, typifies the ills that have afflicted the company. As Vasco da Gama, Tenor Placido Domingo sounds tired and wan, Maurizio Arena's conducting is enervated and Mansouri's own stage direction merely serviceable. Only veteran Soprano Shirley Verrett, as the regal Selika, captures the fiery spirit of Meyerbeer's diffuse and improbable last opera...
Colleagues do, though. Tenor Placido Domingo sang the premiere of Lloyd Webber's 1985 Requiem under Conductor Lorin Maazel, who also recorded the orchestral version of Lloyd Webber's Variations. Maazel, former music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and a longtime Lloyd Webber supporter, praises the composer's "great talent -- I would even say genius" for melody...
Move over, Zeffirelli. For a $10 million staging of Verdi's Aida this month, Egyptian-born Impresario Fawzi Mitwali rejected sets for the real thing: the Temple of Luxor on the site of ancient Thebes. Besides Tenor Placido Domingo, opening night featured the 525-member Arena di Verona Opera Company, 180 Egyptian soldiers and 200 extras tramping down the Avenue of the Sphinxes...