Word: scala
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Home. The Met survived the Depression on the box-office pull of Kirsten Flagstad and Lauritz Melchior. Now doing better business than ever under General Manager Rudolf Bing, the yellow brewery ranks with La Scala and the Vienna Staatsoper as one of the Big Three of the operatic world. The Met is hampered by a physical plant that was antiquated in 1910 (to be abandoned in three years for the Met's new home in Lincoln Center) and by the difficulties of competing for top talent with the state-supported European houses. But in addition to its European stars...
...with Pa's bell) has built a European reputation as perhaps the fastest-moving young conductor of his generation. In the five years since he made his European debut, he has conducted most of the Continent's great orchestras, has appeared often at Milan's La Scala and in Vienna. A superb technician, Maazel invariably impresses older musicians with the vast amount of music he carries about in his head and the maturity of his musical ideas. "He is not sensational," said Violinist Isaac Stern after playing with him recently. "He is a little better than that...
...Scala. Having survived its roles as a furniture warehouse in World War I and a dance hall in World War II, Covent Garden is blooming as radiantly as the famed flower market at its doorstep. The home of the Royal Ballet (formerly Sadler's Wells), it gives Londoners an almost year-round season of first-rate ballet and fine opera, although, in the opera department, Covent Garden is not in the same league as the Big Three (the Metropolitan, La Scala and the Vienna Staatsoper). But it has the daring to experiment with difficult new productions, e.g., its mounting...
...Scala began peace talks with Tebaldi this spring, hoped she would sing at a special performance this summer at the Brussels World's Fair. Last week her fans were still throwing radishes at Callas, and so were some critics. "[Maria Callas'] well-organized claque," said Milan's Il Giorno, "does not prevent her voice from damaging well-formed ears." The final blow came when Manager Ghiringhelli, who had avoided her for months, cut Callas dead backstage. Enraged, she took public revenge at her next performance of Il Pirata. Instead of pointing offstage to her lover mounting...
...even before Callas quit, Tebaldi made a surprising maneuver: she announced that she would not sing at La Scala without Callas. "I sing only for artistic reasons; it is not my custom to sing against anybody," she said. Groaned Manager Ghiringhelli: "This is a stab in the back." To some critics and subscribers, a Scala with no top diva seemed a disaster. Others considered the price well worth the exit of Callas. "She corrupts public taste," cried the Giorno critic. "She lowers the noble assembly of the theater to the level of an arena...