Word: sopranoes
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...machina theatricality that so delighted baroque audiences: dragon-drawn chariots fly through the air belching smoke, monsters writhe, and looming castles collapse in a heap of rubble. Bright and vivid, Rinaldo is a bauble for the eye; as sung by an imposing cast that includes Bass Samuel Ramey and Soprano Benita Valente, it is a treat for the ear. But whether it serves Handel or the thorny cause of baroque opera faithfully is moot...
...essentially a vehicle for Home, in a title role composed for a castrate. The outlines of Handel's opera are preserved in the plot, which concerns the struggle for the Holy Land between the Crusaders, led by Rinaldo, and the Saracens, under Argante (Ramey) and the sorceress Armida (Soprano Edda Moser). But Martin Katz, Home's longtime accompanist, has conflated the 1711 and 1731 versions, trimming the recitatives, shortening some arias, shuffling others and even adding a duet from Handel's Ad-meto. It may be argued that Katz is only following a convention to which Handel...
...Jenufa (London). The greatest of Leoš Janáćek's nine operas gets a recording worthy of its stature from Sir Charles Mackerras and Soprano Elisabeth Söderstr...
Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (Philips). Soprano Hildegard Behrens is a stellar Wagnerian in Leonard Bernstein's incandescent performance of the most erotic of operas...
Singing her first Briinnhildes last summer in Bayreuth, she emerged as one of the dismal production's few saving graces, a Wagnerian of fiery voice and passionate temperament. At the Metropolitan Opera last week, the German soprano solidified that reputation in Tristan und Isolde, harnessing the mercurial spirit of the Irish princess to a voice of raw, almost primal urgency in a finely calibrated, carefully nuanced reading that gave flesh and blood to a mythical archetype. Says Behrens: "I want to make music in its logical context. I sing the beautiful parts as beautifully...