Word: sopranoes
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...Verdi's La Traviata, the Evanston, Ill., company was regarded as something of a musical mystery. Its general manager and financial "angel," Stephen Griffeth, had been able to conjure up a first-season budget of $400,000, a stunning amount for a group of virtual unknowns. Its star soprano was Griffeth's wife, Myra Cordell, a Northwestern University voice graduate. The music director was a former security guard who had conducted a children's choir in West Germany. Even Griffeth, a $369-a-week credit manager for a Chicago company, seemed miscast as an impresario...
...What do they mean by 'lifetime achievement?' " asked the 62-year-old composer-conductor. "I'm just beginning." Onetime Stage Queen Lynn Fontanne had no such quibble; she turned 93 on the evening she joined Bernstein, Actor James Cagney, 81, Choreographer Agnes de Mille, 71, and Soprano Leontyne Price, 53, in receiving a coveted Kennedy Center honor for career achievement in the performing arts. At weekend-long festivities that included a musical tribute at the Kennedy Center, star-struck Washingtonians clustered around such visiting Hollywood idols as John Travolta and Lauren Bacall. But Jimmy Carter did what...
Verdi: Aïda (Mirella Freni, soprano; José Carreras, tenor; Agnes Baltsa, mezzo-soprano; Piero Cappuccilli, baritone; Ruggero Raimondi, bass; é van Dam, bass; Katia Ricciarelli, soprano; Thomas Moser, tenor; Vienna State Opera Chorus and the Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, conductor; Angel; three LPs). That old Ethiopian slave girl and would-be war bride finds a new and glorious incarnation in Mirella Freni, whose voice may not move pyramids but finds its way to the heart of the role. This is particularly true in the Nile Scene, where Aïda tussles with her passion for Radames...
...Stravinsky: Three Movements from "Petrushka. "Serge Prokofiev: Piano Sonata No. 7. Béla Bartók: Concertos for Piano and Orchestra Nos. I and 2. Arnold Schönberg: 17 short piano pieces. Anton Webern: Variations for Piano. Pierre Boulez: Second Sonata for Piano. Luigi Nono: Music for Soprano, Piano, Orchestra and Magnetic Tape (Slavka Taskova, soprano, and the Symphony Orchestra of the Bayerischen Rundfunks, Claudio Abbado, conductor; Deutsche Grammophon, five LPs). Pollini's herculean fingering stands out even in that select circle of great young pianists to which he belongs. His Chopin Etudes...
...show's most touching number, "Thank Heaven for You", Everett Gibson, a solid tenor whose voice fills the theater with a marvelous operatic resonance, and Cheryl Coston, a petite soprano with a versatility that can conquer both ballads and jazzy scat-singing, perform a coppella love song that showcases the two most distinctive vocalists in a singer's show. Gibson and Coston dominate throughout, invigorating their songs with a range of expression that many of the other more static soloists lack. Although the choreography is both graceful and jazzy, the frozen and unnecessary presense of several non-singing...