Word: rossini
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...Metropolitan Opera last week, it turned, as it had to, into a free-for-all for her fans and the critics--an orgy of adulation. At 45, she's a superstar who has made it without the Met, which refused for years to recognize her and which now, with Rossini's The Siege of Corinth, has finally mounted for her the kind of production she deserves. Her fans paid up to $500 to see her on opening night and were in no mood for restraint or even courtesy: they cut off a singer in mid-phrase as soon as Sills...
This version of The Siege of Corinth, pieced together by conductor Thomas Schippers from 35 varying scores of the opera and 2800 pages of original manuscript, is seamless and vibrant, and adds a rare tragic work by Rossini to the stock of his popular comic operas. Schippers is apparently as good at sewing musical segments together as Rossini, who constantly borrowed from old operas to write new ones, and who was so cavalier about detail that if a page of his manuscript fell to the floor while he was composing, he'd write a new one from memory, being...
...Sills, the Met debut is a major event in her career, but not in the way it would seem. She's already a superstar, so the Met's belated recognition of her is a slight anticlimax. This production of Siege, mounted in 1969 for the centennial of Rossini's death, was the vehicle for her debut at La Scala in Milan; even then she had already been acclaimed as one of the greatest coloratura sopranos of this century. The production was so successful that the Met bought it and signed its first contract with Sills--that bastion of complacent conservatism...
...arrival at the Met of Beverly Sills, the homegrown soprano who is the finest singer-actress in opera today. Sills' debut next week will be in a work never before heard there, The Siege of Corinth, a grandiose tragedy by a composer best known for his comedies, Gioacchino Rossini...
Thus with Siege of Corinth. It is one of Rossini's grandest operas, set in 15th century Corinth. The Turks, led by their Sultan Maometto (Justino Diaz), are hammering at the gates. Sills plays Pamira, the daughter of Cleomene (Harry Theyard), the governor of Corinth. Beverly, who talks as fast as she trills, narrates the plot in a style redolent of both Anna Russell and Rhoda Morgenstern: "It's very similar to Aida. The only difference being that my lover is a girl. Well, I mean to say, the part is played by a girl. Actually...