Word: scarpia
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When Scotti announced his retirement from the Metropolitan Opera Company three years ago, Manhattan newspapers devoted columns to his proud career, his intelligent use of a voice that was never booming, his subtle impersonations of such villains as Iago in Otello, Chim-Fen in L'Oracolo, Scarpia in Tosca (TIME, Jan. 30, 1933). When he sang his farewell performance a great audience cheered, wept, sang For He's a Jolly Good Fellow. When he died in Naples last week there were only four mourners to follow him to his grave...
...musician she was so sure that she was able to prompt any one who sang on the stage with her. Her impersonations seemed completely spontaneous, but they were all carefully considered before she gave them their seething, transfigured quality. As Tosca she was so tigerish that every Scarpia who sang with her dreaded the moment when she would spring on him, brandishing the knife. Her Isolde had a nobility so flamingly tense that when it was matched once with Toscanini's conducting a halt had to be called in rehearsal for the other singers to regain their repose. Critics...
Last week it was Lotte Lehmann's turn to exhibit a Tosca who was a simple, genuine woman, expertly tender in her scenes with Cavaradossi, wildly furious when she murdered Scarpia, crouched gloatingly over his body. The Scarpia was Baritone Lawrence Tibbett and it was his big chance to add another telling impersonation to his Simone Boccanegra and his Emperor Jones. But Tibbett was no great villain. He made himself a bigger nose but his make-up in general was unworthy of an actor with cinema training. His big voice boomed and he used brute force in his tussle...
...years Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera Company had a villain without peer. He seemed kindly enough backstage but when he strode before an audience as Baron Scarpia, Chief of the Roman Police in Puccini's Tosca, he became so sinister and malevolent that he set an all-time standard for that melodramatic role. Antonio Scotti was stabbed by 17 different Toscas from the time the opera had its U. S. premiere in 1901 until he sang his farewell (TIME. Jan. 30, 1933). Last week when the Metropolitan revived Tosca for the first time in three years, there...
There would also have been a new Cavaradossi, victim of Scarpia's evil plotting, if, as the curtain went up, Tenor Richard Crooks had not been under ether for a serious appendectomy and Oldster Giovanni Martinelli had not rushed on to take his place. A new Tosca at the Metropolitan is bound to be compared with other singers who have made the role seem great. There were people in last week's audience who remembered Milka Ternina, dramatically exciting but plain to look at. Emma Eames had beauty but her emotions were chilled. In pre-War days Olive...