Word: scala
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Last week "Frau Professor" Wallmann's 127th production, a three-act spectacular, Clitennestra, by Italian Composer Ildebrando Pizzetti, had its world premiere at Milan's La Scala. Musically, the work was something of a dud-somber, repetitive, unnecessarily difficult to sing. But as exciting theater, the bloodthirsty Agamemnon legend is hard to beat, and Wallmann did not try: instead she moved her chorus in a plastic combination of Greek tragedy and modern ballet, guided Star Soprano Clara Petrella in a performance of icy majesty, and won unanimous critical acclaim for what Milan's Corriere d'Informazione...
...took her two years to recover. She turned to choreography as a full-time job. Not until 1952 did she consider a latter-day career directing opera, convince La Scala authorities to give...
Magnolias and edelweiss make a proud device even in Moscow. And so last week Laurel, Miss., Soprano Leontyne Price, 37, and Salzburg-born Maestro Herbert von Karajan, 59, gathered at the Bolshoi Theater with the La Scala Opera Company to show what they could do with Verdi's Requiem. Quite a lot, as it turned out. The crowd, including Nina Khrushchev, enveloped the visitors in a bear hug, howling "Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!" and mashing its way down the aisles to pelt the stars with carnations in a 26-minute storm of applause that included 16 curtain calls...
...Mimi, which she has sung at La Scala, Mirella Freni, 29, an Italian lyric soprano of talent and beauty, can hold her own with Tebaldi, De los Angeles and Moffo. Her voice is easy and focused, but her particular strength as the little seamstress is her touching youthfulness. Tenor Ni colai Gedda is equally melodious and moving as her lover. Thomas Schippers conducts the Rome Opera House Orches tra and Chorus impetuously but artfully...
Conductor Nino Sanzogno explained to his cast at Milan's Piccola Scala that the Italian premiere of Kurt Weill's Mahagonny would have to include some English lyrics: the bitter logic of Bertolt Brecht's libretto demands them. The cast did its best with a baffling array of polyglot lines ("Good morning, caro Signor Jack O'Brien!"), but when it came to singing "Worst of all, Benares is said to have been perished by an earthquake," the chorus sensibly defected. "Guarda qua Benares, è state messa giù da un terremoto," sang the mutineers, leaving American...