Word: puccini
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...which set a high standard of treachery and lubricity, but because of the special demands of Baroque convention, which included the casting of castrati in principal roles. Further, the musical idiom of early 17th century opera sounds strange to audiences accustomed to the ripe lyricism of Bellini, Verdi and Puccini...
...wonderful that TOT can do this. It is perhaps even more wonderful that its members want to, and are willing to put up with almost any touring mishap and slap-happy road-company misfortune in order to let people in places far from regular opera companies sample a little Puccini or get a glimpse of Rossini's Cinderella. In characteristic down-home fashion, a TOT invitation for that work urges, "Come see Cinderella win out over her two grasping stepsisters. Come see her wed the handsome Prince." Notes the Houston Grand Opera's general director, David Gockley: "Opera...
...from 1815 to the mid-1920s, from The Barber of Seville to Turandot. "All we contemporary composers, without exception, are so many pygmies beside this great master," Bellini said of Rossini. But he was wrong. Geniuses followed each other like monarchs in a royal procession: Bellini himself, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini. Opera lovers became so accustomed to dazzling new works that they thought the parade would never end, that the extraordinary had become the usual...
Other composers have turned turgid melodrama into art--Puccini exhumed Belasco creakers to create Madama Butterfly and La Fanciulla Del West--but Sondheim's score achieves little distinction. It flounders in a pool of notes instead of gushing with passion. Only the lushness of "Pretty Woman," the dissonance of "Epiphany," and the insouciance of "A Little Priest" salvage the first act from musical banality. Even here, the Metropolitan Center's gully of an orchestra pit prevents Sweeney's blazing razor attack from terrorizing even the first...
...Even if Puccini had written the score, it would be hard to imagine sadder sounds emanating from the Metropolitan Opera. First the Met postponed its season premiere, a performance of Turandot, because of contract disputes with its unions. Then last week, the Met's management officially canceled the 1980-81 season. Though the decision was not irrevocable, every day the impasse continued made it more likely that the U.S.'s greatest opera company would find a year erased from its history...