Word: soltis
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...Three years later she surprised everybody by taking a season off to broaden her experience in Europe. There, in the spring of 1973, she scored a smashing success as Mozart's Cherubino in a new production of The Marriage of Figaro at the Paris Opera, with Sir Georg Solti conducting. Suddenly, she found herself an international star, and made a triumphant return to the Met-as Rosina in The Barber...
Among the three international superstars of conducting, Sir Georg Solti and Leonard Bernstein are almost overly familiar to audiences in the U.S. Herbert von Karajan is a more remote, elusive figure. In 1955 he was appointed conductor for life of the Berlin Philharmonic, one of the finest orchestras in the world. In the years since, he has exercised complete control over its rehearsals, working conditions, personnel and guest artists. Today he can say: "I cannot now blame anybody else for not getting the results I want. No excuses. If it's wrong, it's entirely my fault...
Hand Cranks. Finally, the Count's aria ended. Solti scurried to the conductor's dressing room. It was an opportune moment to abandon the podium, because the opera had moved into a recitative section. Thus while Figaro was discovering that he was the long-lost son of two people he could live without, Solti was holding cold compresses to his head. Like the seasoned pros they are, the members of the orchestra began the subsequent sextet by themselves. His arms beating as he ascended into view, Solti returned to his place. His wound turned out to be minor...
Many in the audience were not aware of Solti's dilemma. That cannot be said for what happened at La Scala's first night in Washington. The audience filed into the Kennedy Center Opera House to find the pit raised to the level of the stage. "I've never seen that before," said an usher in response to a ticket holder's question. No one had. The pit had been elevated for a rehearsal that afternoon and the hydraulic lift had stuck. While the audience-including Vice President and Mrs. Nelson Rockefeller and Mrs. Giovanni Leone...
Presiding over an obviously recharged Paris Opéra orchestra, Solti made his first appearance in an American opera house since 1963-64. His Figaro had a spacious relaxation not always heard in his work with the Chicago Symphony. His handling of the surprising events that constitute the wondrous finale of Act II was but one of his many lessons of the evening in how to pace an opera...