Word: rudel
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...Earth as a dying planet illuminated by the corpse of a setting sun. The production was strongly cast in other major roles. Carol Neblett, a vocally arresting but inexperienced soprano, did both Margherita and Helen of Troy. As Faust, Tenor Robert Nagy sang powerfully but with obvious effort. Julius Rudel's conducting rose successfully to the peaks but tended to coast through the occasional deserts of Boito's score...
Sneaky Monk. When City Opera General Director Julius Rudel asked Corsaro to stage Faust, he got a wild-eyed stare in return. "I loathed Faust," Corsaro admits. "In fact, I've started off by basically disliking every opera that I've done so far. They all seemed like such old salami." But as he began thinking about it, he became fascinated with the prospect of doing Faust as a grim Gothic tale in which sheer horror and grizzly humor intertwine. He decided to introduce Mephistopheles in different guises that would fit credibly into each scene. After materializing first...
...going to be influenced by Gounod's score, either. "It's sweet, it has charm and grace, and it's romantic -but it can bend any number of ways," he explains. Fortunately, Soprano Beverly Sills (Marguerite), Tenor Michele Molese (Faust), Bass Norman Treigle (Mephistopheles) and Conductor Rudel were on hand to see that it did not bend too much. Some traditionalists felt that it was going too far to deprive Marguerite of her usual departure for heaven in full view of the audience. But Corsaro decided that angels, bells and harps would be too much...
Metaphysical Anxiety. Under the firm baton of New York City Opera Director Julius Rudel, the singers projected their parts with clarity and polish while threading their way through Ming Cho Lee's surrealistic settings. Mexican Tenor Salvador Novoa eloquently voiced the pain and weakness of the Duke, and statuesque Joanna Simon, as the courtesan, sang her seduction aria in a lustrous mezzo-soprano...
Despite last week's switch to glittering new quarters, Rudel insists that he is not switching his basic aim "to reinstate a sense of adventure in the public." Opera, he says, must not reek of the museum...