Word: sopranoes
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...love all those demented old dames of the old operas," she says. "They're loony, but the music's wonderful." The following evening offered Soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, 49, making her belated debut at the Met singing the demanding role of the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier. Blondly radiant, and in sure control of her pure soprano, grown a shade harder over the years, Schwarzkopf proved that her Marschallin is still the most memorable since Lotte Lehmann's in the 1930s...
...Mario Giulini does so here, and it is unlikely that anyone could be more eloquent. He does not set the Dies Irae ablaze as Toscanini did, but his performance has a steady incandescence. Honors also go to London's Philharmonia Orchestra, its huge chorus, and the four soloists, Soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Tenor Nicolai Gedda, Bass Nicolai Ghiaurov, and the especially lustrous Mezzo-Soprano Christa Ludwig...
...Soprano Lisa Delia Casa has carved a career for herself in Strauss operas and can also confidently interpret his lieder. Here she sings Zueignung, Stündchen, and other songs of Strauss's youth in a voice like silver filigree. Her accompanist, Arpad Sandor, achieves the same fragile brilliance on the piano as they evoke both the dark and lighter moods of love...
OLIVIER MESSIAEN: THREE LITTLE LITURGIES OF THE DIVINE PRESENCE (Columbia). Scored for soprano chorus, strings, and a miscellany of soundmakers including a vibraphone, Chinese cymbals, gongs and the electronic instrument called Ondes Martenot, this 20-year-old work is a reminder of Messiaen's Orient-tilted talents. Like a preacher shaking his fist, the French composer uses wild, sliding sounds, surprise rhythms, and his own effusive text to insist that God is omnipresent. Leonard...
Magnolias and edelweiss make a proud device even in Moscow. And so last week Laurel, Miss., Soprano Leontyne Price, 37, and Salzburg-born Maestro Herbert von Karajan, 59, gathered at the Bolshoi Theater with the La Scala Opera Company to show what they could do with Verdi's Requiem. Quite a lot, as it turned out. The crowd, including Nina Khrushchev, enveloped the visitors in a bear hug, howling "Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!" and mashing its way down the aisles to pelt the stars with carnations in a 26-minute storm of applause that included 16 curtain calls...