Word: sopranos
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...verbal intricacies that are his trademark fall prey to melodic ineptitude. Syllables lost in an overly complicated soprano line and choral numbers that have the gentility of a shouting match leave us frustrated. Though nearly always glittering, certain lyrics seem gratuitous as Hugh Wheeler's book parcels out plot in neat bits of dialogue. With such a story-laden vehicle, tangential songs become tiresome; we yearn for songs with more plot in them. Sondheim and Wheeler sensed this tendency for Sweeney to drag and judiciously chopped out half of an appallingly dull number in moving the show from New York...
...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...