Word: puccini
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Puccini: Madama Butterfly (Soprano Renata Scotto, Tenor Placido Domingo, Baritone Ingvar Wixell, Philharmonia Orchestra and Ambrosian Opera Chorus, Lorin Maazel conductor, Columbia; 3 LPs). Madame Butterfly is one of opera's most endearing and enduring heroines. Scotto makes a warm Butterfly; she effortlessly holds the almost whispered high notes of her Un bel di aria. Domingo's Pinkerton is such a hearty fellow that it is hard to hate...
...first time in living memory, the voices of the city's world-renowned Choir Boys will not be heard in the Hofburg chapel this Christmas. Seven Masses, traditionally sung by the Sängerknaben, have been canceled; so has the State Opera's year-end performance of Puccini's Tosca. The reason: a 30-year-old federal law forbidding children under 14 to work for pay. The law was designed to prevent mine operators and the like from exploiting youngsters. But the city fathers were forced to rule that it also applies to the choir...
...cast falter, unsure whether to play the operetta utterly deadpan--letting the audience laugh at these ridiculous characters--or to reveal that they, too, know the whole thing is a joke. Catherine Weary's sparkling Josephine holds the stage through sheer vocal perfection alone--she could probably handle Puccini with ease. Donald Hovey's Ralph Rackstraw, too, has a full, clean tenor. Now, admittedly there isn't all that much anyonecan make of the milquetoast roles of the love-struck couple; but both Weary and Hovey shuffle between dead seriousness and deadpan tongue-in-cheek...
...Puccini: La Fanciulla del West (Soprano Carol Neblett, Tenor Placido Domingo, Baritone Sherrill Milnes; Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Zubin Mehta, conductor; Deutsche Grammophon; 3 LPs). Fanciulla (1910) is a second-rate Italian opera comically posing as a shoot-'em-up thriller. Neblett makes a dramatic frontier heroine. Domingo, as her lover, sings everyone else under the bar, and Milnes is dashingly villainous. With Mehta in the saddle, chorus and orchestra ride smartly home...
...this one a world premiere by American Composer Stephen Douglas Burton, 35, and Librettist-Conductor Christopher Keene, 31. Strikingly different?one discordant, the other warm-bloodedly romantic?the two Duchesses show a growing divergence in modern music: between contemporary dissonances and a return to the romantic melodies of the Puccini...