Word: soltis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...more than routine interest because it is the one year in seven when a new Ring cycle debuts. In addition, the conductor for the first time is James Levine, the Metropolitan Opera's powerful artistic director and the leading interpreter of Wagner on the international scene ever since Georg Solti largely retired from theatrical work. Levine's partners are Alfred Kirchner, an experienced European opera and theater director, and set and costume designer Rosalie, the professional name of Gudrun Muller. This is the pair's first time working on the Ring at Bayreuth as well. The result is an expected...
...Cleveland would not have achieved its current prestige without Dohnanyi, who arrived in 1984 after having worked his way up the traditional German opera-house ladder. Beginning with the Frankfurt Opera, where he was Georg Solti's assistant, Dohnanyi spent time in Lubeck, Cologne and finally his adopted hometown of Hamburg before heading to the shores of Lake Erie. He has ended any doubts about his abilities as a symphonic conductor with performances that combine Szell's rigor, Boulez's unerring ear and a controlled interpretative fire...
What finally explains Cleveland's eminence is the happy intangibles that previously elevated Stokowski and Philadelphia, Karajan and Berlin, and Solti and Chicago to musical supremacy: leadership, talent, discipline and desire, perhaps especially the last. "For musicians there's not much else to do here," Dohnanyi points out. "There's no opera, there's no freelancing; you don't come to Cleveland to enjoy the weather. You come here to play in the Cleveland Orchestra." And play they do, better than anybody...
...treasures the experience of rehearsing with him. "Bach was another world to me," she says. "At the beginning I was always in a rush. Karajan taught me to take the tempo tranquilly, to take a breath. This is something I use for everything." To those names, add Sir Georg Solti, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Chailly -- a stellar fan club...
...recording of Verdi's Otello on London Records uses this formula neatly. The music is one of the best-known operas by one of the best-known composers of opera, the names are big (Pavarotti, Kiri te Kanawa and Leo Nucci, with Sir Georg Solti at the helm), and the pretext is a double celebration: the 100th anniversary of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the 100th recording on CD of Solti with the CSO. But, unlike the "Three Tenors" concert or the Amadeus soundtrack, a new recording of Otello is the kind of project that must stand...