Word: puccini
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...China, O China, How restlessly you tremble and stand astounded . . . -Ping, in Puccini's Turandot
...letter writer to a British newspaper last week enthusiastically observed that Giacomo Puccini showed uncanny foresight when he named two characters in his opera Ping and Pong. Perhaps so. The China of the opera was a place gilded with unreality; but what excited Americans last week about the astounding venture in Ping Pong diplomacy was that China was becoming real...
...course." He also took on broader targets. The technology of today's recording engineers, he complained, removed natural sound and human errors, producing "a super-glossy, chem-fab music substitute that was never heard on sea or land, including Philadelphia." And to him, the one conspicuous success of Puccini's La Fanciulla del West was "the attempt to make it American-simple-minded...
...back his $5,000 fee. "Nothing doing," said NBC, and Menotti eventually came up with that bright and sturdy Christmas evergreen, Amahl and the Night Visitors. All told, Menotti has been cornered by circumstances enough times to produce a larger number of effective popular operas than any composer since Puccini and Strauss...
...accepted blacks emotionally," Menotti explains. Musically, The Most Important Man is blatantly eclectic. Strains of Richard Strauss float from the pit during one interlude. By the final duet between Toime and his white girl friend Cora (Soprano Joanna Bruno), Menotti is unashamedly into the heart-throbbing lyricism of Puccini. Much less original than his 1950 Broadway success The Consul, or even his recent and endearing children's opera Help! Help! The Globolinks, the new opera hardly represents a step forward for Menotti. Yet its smooth orchestrations-notably a deft use of African rhythms in Act II-and easy...