Word: sicilianism
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...first opening night at La Scala, last December, 30-year-old Soprano Callas made a smashing hit in Verdi's Sicilian Vespers. Milan critics kissed their fingertips in ecstasy over her sureness, her "miraculous throat" and the "phosphorescent beauty" of her middle range. Her performances of Norma (eight of them) were enthusiastic sellouts. Last week she was collecting more bravos in a difficult role in which even her most ardent admirers had feared for her: the vocally acrobatic part of Constanze in Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio...
...Edward Lasker, whipping him in 38 implacable moves when Lasker overstepped his allowable time limit of 40 moves in 2¼ hours. Interest promptly centered on the match between Cuba's Rogelio Ortega and Najdorf, who moved into a technical position known to chessplayers as a Sicilian defense. After six feverish, hours and 60 moves, Najdorf finally gained an attacking advantage, turned it into a game-ending checkmate, and tied for top honors with Reshevsky...
Aubrey Menen is a half-Irish, half-Hindu satirist who likes nothing better than to undo the mental shoelaces of the English. In The Prevalence of Witches, he spoofed the pukka sahib set in India. In The Backward Bride, he showed a good Sicilian lad in the process of being poisoned by the toxic doctrines of an Oxford freethinker. In his latest novel, Author Menen grafts his wit on another culture, lets his English hero bloom like a quirky Renaissance prince...
Last week Tenor Conley, 43, reached a peak in his career; he became the first American-born-and-trained singer ever to star at a La Scala opening. The opera: Verdi's Sicilian Vespers, a bloody tale of revolt of the Sicilians against the oppressing French, not heard at La Scala since...
Conley was cast in the difficult role of the Sicilian patriot Arrigo, and at first his small but silvery tenor seemed hemmed in by the sumptuous sounds of Soprano Maria Meneghini Callas (also U.S.-born) and the rumbling bass of Bulgarian Boris Christoff. But by the second act his voice had warmed up, and so had the elegant and traditionally indifferent first-night audience. When the final curtain came down on the blood-bathed stage, Milanese were shouting "Conelay, Conelay" from their carnation-decked boxes...