Word: puccini
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...Ethel had tried to bolster her own and her husband's spirits by singing the aria Un bel di from Madame Butterfly in a clear though tremulous voice. Julius, no musician, had responded with The Battle Hymn of the Republic, a brave if rather grimly impersonal answer to Puccini's aria of love and longing...
Mitchell's triumph has come just in time. In any generation, the number of sopranos who can superbly handle the most demanding dramatic roles in the Italian repertory (Verdi's Leonora or Aida, Puccini's Tosca or Madama Butterfly) is always small; these days it is minuscule. Montserrat Caballe, 49, has the right combination of fire and ice to make for a memorable Tosca, for example, but she often cancels performances. Price, 55, still makes occasional forays into what was once her strongest territory, but she wisely no longer sings as frequently as she once did. Enter...
...riotous Paris premiere of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring in 1913? The hostile demonstration in Vienna that prevented the first performance of two of Alban Berg's Altenberg Lieder a couple of months earlier? The disruptive reception accorded Verdi's La Traviata or Puccini's Madama Butterfly...
...dramatically, to range from angelic purity to raw urgency made her a superb choice to sing Mimi opposite Tenor José Carreras' Rodolfo in Franco Zeffirelli's spectacularly realistic new production of La Bohème at the Met-perhaps the most lavish setting ever created for Puccini's tale. (The production, which PBS is televising nationally this Wednesday on Live from the Met, surpasses in opulence even Zeffirelli's famous La Scala staging of 1963. In the second act, it seems that tout Paris is milling about the Café Momus...
...what price? What has become of the sweet voice that made its owner the most affecting Rodolfo of his generation in Puccini's La Bohemel What has befallen the technique that allowed Pavarotti to toss off the famous nine high Cs in an aria from Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment with the effortless abandon that marks only the greatest tenors? What has happened to the suave phrasing and sure sense of style, which made his recording of Nessun dorma from Turandot an example to musicians everywhere? Have Pavarotti's duties as operatic emissary to the world...