Word: sopranos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...down the middle and the surrounding temple exploded, filling the stage and auditorium with steam. But mostly the singers forgot about the drama and one another, turned toward the audience, and simply belted out their best. Frequently it was more than good enough. Drenched by the robust melodiousness of Soprano Elena Suliotis and Basso Nicolai Ghiaurov in Nabucco, and of Tenor Carlo Bergonzi and Mezzo Soprano Fiorenza Cossotto in Trovatore, the Montreal audiences hardly seemed to notice anything missing elsewhere...
...retelling of the Romeo and Juliet story that owes little to Shakespeare, Capuleti, with Bellini's intimate scale, pervading sweetness and utter predictability, is a distinct contrast to Verdi's powerful, primitive themes and vaulting imagination. But the company -notably the two leads, Tenor Giacomo Aragall and Soprano Renata Scotto-traded the flawed gusto of its Trovatore and Nabucco performances for restraint and quiet artistry, making Capuleti the only production of the week to come off with cohesiveness and unity of effect...
...that only illustrates the composer's remarkable capacity for turning great poetry into sentimental salon entertainment. Furthermore, the performance was sadly deficient in the French accent, both in words and music. Franco Corelli nearly strangled on every attempt to produce the pure Gallic B-flat, while all of Soprano Mirella Freni's undeniable charm was defeated by the pallid music she was asked to sing. New Director Paul-Emile Deiber grouped his singers around Rolf Gerard's workaday sets in a series of static tableaux that had little to do with Shakespeare, Gounod, or anything in that...
...offered a lot more to see and hear. Designers Ming Cho Lee and Jose Varona filled the New York State Theater stage with a zany array of colors and shapes, set off from time to time by flickering strobe lights and blats from offstage brass players. Soprano Beverly Sills and Bass-Baritone Norman Treigle curved their pliant voices brilliantly around the sinuous Rimsky-Korsakov melodies, and the results restored to life a witty, fantastic and unduly neglected score...
...major companies meanwhile survived a pair of backstage cliffhangers and got their seasons smoothly under way. The sets for Seattle's Otello had somehow got onto the wrong ship from Italy, and were put in place only 30 minutes before curtain time. San Francisco Opera Soprano Regine Crespin was forced out of the first-night Gioconda with a throat infection, and Substitute Leyla Gencer (who in past Coast seasons has filled in for Callas and Tebaldi) had to learn one of opera's cruelest roles in less than two weeks...