Word: rigoletto
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Giuseppe Verdi came from peasant stock and never lost the blunt imprint. But the composer of some of the most moving and impassioned operas ever written-Trovatore, Traviata, Rigoletto, Aïda, Otello-remained a hard man only outwardly. Verdi's music eloquently tells the story of the inner man. And so, in a way, did his will...
...love my music. If I hear people speaking a foreign language, I always include songs from their countries." Aristocrats and foreigners alike seem to enjoy one of his prescriptions: his dance arrangements of familiar arias from Italian operas. So far he has turned bits from The Barber of Seville, Rigoletto and Trovatore into sambas; one of his biggest hits is a dance number derived from Carmen in which he sings a jumble of meaningless words in a high falsetto while the rest of the band chimes in with a robust Toreador chorus...
Those who know the Met an d its inhabitants will enjoy "Opera Soufile" a great deal more than those who don't. Many of the scenes depicted contain caricatures of actual performers. Jan Peerce, in consume as the Duke of Mantua, struts through the seven pages devoted to "Rigoletto," while Leonard Warren, in the role of the jester, glowers at two spear carriers in the malediction scene. The caricatures are bold and simple, and they very seldom miss their mark...
...figures, pick out its "alltime favorites." Victor's selections, announced last week, seemed to put the U.S.'s musical brow somewhere between chin and navel. The first eight: Strauss's The Blue Danube (conducted by Leopold Stokowski); La Donna è Mobile, from Verdi's Rigoletto (sung by Caruso); Carry Me Back to Old Virginny (sung by Marian Anderson); Franz Liszt's Liebestraum (performed by the First Piano Quartet); Victor Herbert's Italian Street Song (sung by Jeanette MacDonald); Bluebird of Happiness (sung by Jan Peerce); Jalousie (performed by the Boston Pops Orchestra); Make Believe...
...Carnegie's big stage, Anna Maria had gone through a program that might have taxed many an older, more experienced singer. She had sailed confidently and surely through the coloratura flights of Rigoletto's Caro Nome and Una Voce Poco Fa from The Barber of Seville, had expertly sung the difficult death aria from La Traviata. In her pink silk party dress, hands clasped in front of her, she sang her songs in a clear sweet voice that made one listener stand up and shout in rapturous Italian: "Un' angelo dal paradiso...