Word: singings
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Were Verrett the Lady Macbeth many had anticipated, perhaps Strehler's mannered direction would have been less bothersome. Both visually and vocally, Verrett conveyed little of Shakespeare's "fiendlike queen." Verdi wanted Lady Macbeth to be "twisted and ugly" and to sing with a "raw, choked, hollow voice." That may be asking too much. But Verrett's bland, unchanging facial expression and her constant concern-except in the sleepwalking scene, her best musical moment-with polished tone did not begin to get inside a character that is more important to the opera than Macbeth...
...bronze and agile. The production is by France's Jean-Pierre Ponnelle; within a delightful children's cutout house, he manipulates his characters like a swinging Coppelius. How, for example, Soprano Margherita Guglielmi (Half Sister Clorinda) can make her hoopskirt behave like a Hula-Hoop and still sing is her secret and Ponnelle's. But it is immense fun to watch...
Pleasant Dreams. Bourjaily recounts these nervous preparations with the expertise of one who has been through them. Unfortunately, he also includes the whole libretto of $4000. Since he wrote it, his fondness for the piece is forgivable. But his tearjerker about a Southern construction crew does not sing on the page. Bourjaily lovingly describes the eventual performance as a smash success; yet it is impossible to imagine how a "solid, bass boom" of a voice could save the line: "I'll see you in the morning, Buster. Pleasant dreams...
...charge of trying to control the rioting that is racking the nation. He has strong opinions on the cause of that rioting. Blaming it on "the black-power movement based in America," he recently told a friendly audience of National Party followers in his native Orange Free State: "They sing We Shall Overcome. Well, they are wrong. We shall overcome. . . The black knows his place, and if not, I'll tell him his place." Several days later, after his words had been widely quoted, Kruger complained that there had been a misunderstanding. What he had said, Kruger claimed...
...perfection of modern studio recording is one thing. The excitement of live performance is another. Who, for example, would not want to hear two of the century's greatest Wagnerians, Soprano Kirsten Flagstad and Tenor Lauritz Melchior, sing Tristan und Isolde together as they did at the Metropolitan Opera before World War II? Trouble is, Flagstad and Melchior never commercially recorded a complete opera together. For that matter, Melchior never recorded any complete opera...