Word: scotto
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...played the title role in Puccini's Madama Butterfly every year since she was 19 years old. Inevitably, Soprano Renata Scotto has developed some strong ideas about the role. Now she has a chance to test them: next month, in a revived production of Butterfly, Scotto will become the first diva ever to direct herself at the Met. "I'm really looking forward to seeing the role from another perspective," she admits. There is a disadvantage to wearing two hats, of course. "I'm used to relaxing in the dressing room when I'm not in rehearsals, or during...
...Renata Scotto, 49, opera singer whose husband Lorenzo Anselmi abandoned his work as a violinist after they were married 24 years ago: "The biggest decision a man can make is to give up his own career to dedicate himself to his wife...
...lacks a single memorable melody, the essential ingredient that keeps a relic like Francesco Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur on the boards. Its plot, however, is operatic gold. Based on a play by Gabriele d'Annunzio, it recounts an episode from Dante's Inferno. Francesca (Soprano Renata Scotto) is tricked into marrying the deformed Gianciotto (Baritone Cornell MacNeil) when his handsome brother Paolo (Tenor Placido Domingo) comes courting in his place. Inevitably, though, wife and brother-in-law fall into an adulterous embrace and are discovered by Gianciotto, who murders them...
...credit, the Met has given Francesca the full star treatment. Domingo is in top form, Scotto's kittenish acting is appropriate, even if her distressing vocal wobble is not, and MacNeil's fraying baritone sounds better than it has in years. Ezio Frigerio's sets evoke both the splendor and the asceticism of medieval Ravenna and Rimini, but Director Piero Faggioni compensates for the music's static quality by moving the cast around a bit too hectically. The second act, however, is spectacular. It depicts a ferocious battle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, replete with...
...voices are total," complains a Met singer. "When he finds a voice he likes, he uses it over and over." Like any other conductor, Levine has a roster of singers he finds congenial, among them Soprano Teresa Stratas, Tenor Placido Domingo and Baritone Milnes. Sometimes, as with veteran Diva Scotto, their voices are long faded but still histrionically effective. Sometimes they are not up to major-house standards, as with Tenor Philip Creech, whom Levine has pushed beyond the limit of his modest gifts. But his commitment to certain singers has paid off in the development of several young Americans...