Word: sopranos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Schoenberg wrote this gargantuan cantata before he made his break with tonality, but he deploys the oversized orchestra and chorus in daring polyphonic passages that alternate with romantic solos, sung beautifully in this recording by Soprano Inge Borkh and Tenor Herbert Schachtschnei-der. The Bavarian Radio Orchestra is con ducted by Rafael Kubelik...
Record companies are understandably annoyed. This spring, for example, after Spanish Soprano Monserrat Caballe made her widely acclaimed U.S. debut in Lucrezia Borgia, RCA Victor quickly signed her to make a recording of the opera. But not quickly enough. A black-market version of her debut was already selling briskly for $25. Artists, who naturally get no royalties from the piratings, are equally irritated. Mezzo-Soprano Regina Resnik, rummaging through a record bin a few years ago, was startled to hear a recording of Wagner's Ring cycle, whose label listed a cast of singers and an opera company...
...lighter moments-a duet between two village lovers, the chorus celebrating the festival of Midsummer's Eve-were charmingly melodic, but the overall impact was blandly uncompelling. The sets, which Rorem confesses he "hates," were gingerbread concoctions totally antithetical to the spirit of the opera, and Soprano Marguerite Willauer in the title role sang with the handicap of a severe cold...
...Soprano Phyllis Curtin makes the same point in terms of everyday life by noting that "children sing when they really mean it: 'You're a dirty bul-ly.' " She even illustrates music's power by citing, "Double your pleasure / Double your fun, / With Doublemint, Doublemint, / Doublemint...
...often anything in a Wagner opera that one could call by such a violent name as acting. As a rule, all you would see would be a couple of people, one of them standing still, the other catching flies." And Critic Ernest Newman said of the typical soprano: "She looks like an ox; she moves like a cart horse; she stands like a haystack...