Word: puritani
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...haunting, universal fear that some day he will jump and miss?"that I shall open my mouth and no sound will come out" ?gives Pavarotti the whim-whams before every performance. In 1972 he made a transatlantic call to Beverly Sills about their upcoming appearance in I Puritani, arguing that their last-act duet, with its punishing high D-flats for tenor, should be transposed downward. Sills assured him he could hit the notes. "Only if you castrate me," he said. Last year, minutes before Pavarotti's TV recital, Metropolitan Assistant Conductor Gildo Di Nunzio found inm slumped...
...only Cosima's existence kept him from suicide. On their son's first birthday she writes, "At 4:30 I am awakened by sweet sounds, R. at the piano proclaiming to me the hour of birth." He would sing to her as she worked, a cantilena from / Puritani, a melody of Beethoven. He cared about his three children, happily pitching in and cutting toenails...
...prime, Callas sang dramatic, lyric and coloratura roles with equal ease. Almost singlehanded she created the revival of bel canto. It was because of her voice and presence that Norma and I Puritani are now popular after decades of neglect. For this one accomplishment, hordes of opera lovers, as well as Sopranos Joan Sutherland, Montserrat Caballe and Sills herself, owe Callas a lasting debt. And she acted these roles with a devouring intensity that might do justice to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf...
...Puritani contains scarcely any drama at all. What plot it has concerns two noble lovers who are temporarily made unhappy by conflicting allegiances to Cavaliers and Roundheads in 17th century England. The opera unfolds like a torpid, benign Lucia di Lammermoor: it has a hero who prefers politics to love, a heroine who goes mad. By the time all turns out for the best, it is hard to remember what went wrong: three scenes contain no action of any kind...
...makes a fitting backdrop for the evening's vocal triumph. In the current vogue for bel canto opera, I Puritani appears increasingly in the repertory of major companies. Often the production is not much more than a vehicle for a soprano. But the Met also offers a stirring male trio: Pavarotti, Milnes and James Morris, 29, whom the company has brought along carefully. Though Mimes' baritone is too dramatic for a legato line, his declamations are thrilling. Pavarotti, a money tenor in the way that Tom Seaver is a money pitcher, revels in his recklessly high flourishes. Sutherland...