Word: sopranos
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...whom seem to be having an infectiously good time. This is the American Repertory Theater's first venture into the form of the musical, and many of the company's members are making their debuts as singers and dancers. The voices hold up surprisingly well, ranging from the operatic soprano of Susan Larson (who sand io Oriando last year) to the amusingly gruff song-speech of Jeremy Geidt. And while the dancing is not going to put Tommy Tune out of work, there are some fine numbers, including an amusingly effeminate soft-shoe by Harry S. Murphy ("Dear Old Syracuse...
WHEREAS THE MUSIC always benefits from Bush's incorporation of new influences, the changes she has made in her singing style don't always add to her appeal. On her early albums, her voice had an eerie, hyper-soprano pitch which was part of her appeal, but might also have prevented her from getting airplay on the stodgy American radio stations. More people have probably heard Pat Benetar's more conventional and far less appealing rendition of "Wuthering Heights," Bush's hit from The Kick Inside. Perhaps this motivated Bush to make some changes in her voice...
Several major singers, among them Mirella Freni, Joan Sutherland, Von Stade and Alfredo Kraus, are too rarely heard at the Met, although all four are appearing this season. And British Soprano Margaret Price, who sings in the major international houses, has never sung there. Somewhat ingenuously, Levine blames their absence partly on the Met's distance from Europe. Even in the Concorde age, he contends, they prefer to work closer to home, no more than a couple of hours' flight from Covent Garden, the Paris Opéra or Milan's La Scala, rather than take...
...patience before the uncouth hordes could be formed into a people who would be more than the usual community to whom the ordinary was comfortable ..." Too often, there is an air of comfortable ordinariness about the Met, such as casting a popular opera like Il Trovatore with a soprano past her prime and a tenor who never had one, or substituting a less-than-star-quality singer like Herman Malamood for Pavarotti in Idomeneo. Still, on a day-to-day basis, the Met's productions are the equal of any, the result of Levine's mighty and long...
...performances, Levine strives to banish interpretive routine to get at the heart of the composer's message. "My function," he says, "is to be a necessary middleman, not a willful, distorting, idiosyncratic, egocentric middleman." His high performance standards are derived from three major influences: Toscanini, Soprano Maria Callas and Director Wieland Wagner. From the incandescent Toscanini, Levine learned the value of a taut, singing musical line. Callas, the indomitable spirit who assaulted her audiences with intense, molten performances, taught Levine that opera must always be convincing as drama, not simply a collection of voices gift wrapped in period costumes...