Word: rossini
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...ROSSINI: MOSÈ (3 LPs; Philips). Made in 1956 but issued for the first time in the U.S., this is the opera's only recording. Mosè is closer in spirit to the oratorios of Handel and Haydn than to Rossini's own sparkling Barber of Seville, though a few light lovely Italian airs occasionally creep into the repertoire of the Egyptians. Basso Nicola Rossi Lemeni, as Moses, sounds too muffled and unfocused to convince anyone to follow him into the Red Sea, but the orchestra and chorus of the Teatro di San Carlo di Napoli play...
Listening to the Bach Society Concert, one might have recalled Rossini's wry remark about Wagner: "He has his brilliant moments, yes--and his dull quarters of an hour." Yet the orchestra's successes, as surely as Tannhauser's, more than compensated for the generous lapses in between...
...ROSSINI OVERTURES (Deutsche Grammophon). These brief episodes are gems that rank with the wisest and wittiest works of Mozart. In them Rossini displays a full range of musical motifs, from somber reveries to brilliant marches with a Pied Piper fascination. Tullio Serafin conducts the Rome Opera Orchestra with elegance and exuberance...
...opera's first production was almost as heavy with intrigue as Wagner's plot. Though the composer grandly pronounced Tristan "the greatest musical drama of all time," opera houses in Dresden, Berlin, Vienna and Munich rejected it as "unperformable." Moreover, to a public reared on Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Meyerbeer, most of Wagner's works seemed to be joyless monstrosities...
...ventures. There are eight verses with tremendously varied settings: a simple hymn; a lament that borders on the sublime (and I'd like to shoot the guy that made the open fifth of the final chord into a major triad); songs of Thanks giving with the longest crescendi since Rossini stopped writing overtures; and a chorus of "Woe unto them that..." that reminds me of the brand of hell fire and damnation I thought you'd only hear when the brothers and sisters got happy in that one story wooden church, the one up the side street back home...