Word: sopranos
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...third act, the entire theater seemed to rumble and shudder. Chandeliers began swaying. Members of the audience stood up in confusion; some bolted for the exits. "What is happening?" Pavarotti hissed to the prompter between phrases. "Terremoto?earthquake!" the prompter breathed back. Pavarotti gripped the hand of his Mimi, Soprano Dorothy Kirsten, a little more tightly, but kept on singing at full voice and never missed a beat. The earthquake drew to a peaceful conclusion and so did the performance...
...were president of the band, star soprano for the chorus, leading chamber music player and organizer of the jazz band in high school, huh? Join the club--everyone else was, too. During Freshman Week you will have a chance to show your stuff in endless auditions held by the marching, concert and jazz bands, the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, the Harvard Glee Club, the Radcliffe Choral Society, Collegium Musicum, and the Bach Society...
Michael Tilson Thomas' conducting matches the urgent pace of the staging without blurring the transparent intricacies of Berg's twelve-tone score. As Lulu, Soprano Nancy Shade sings her precipitous vocal lines strongly and accurately, which is more of an achievement than it may sound. But she only acts out bewitching allure; she does not embody it. During rehearsals, the cast screened Louise Brooks' Lulu in the 1928 silent film of Wedekind's Pandora's Box- which may partly account for Shade's tendency to play the role as a jazz-age vamp...
Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, Tenor Nicolai Gedda, Bass Dimiter Petkov, Ambrosian Opera Chorus, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Mstislav Rostropovich conductor, Angel; 3 LPs). Soviet critics thought they heard a masterpiece when this, Shostakovich's second opera, was premiered in 1934. Then Stalin walked out of a performance and they listened again. This time they heard "din, gnash and screech" (Pravda). The work was withdrawn, and Shostakovich pursued more orthodox ways. A sanitized version, unveiled in 1963, found its way to the West on records, but this is the first recording of the original score. Harsh, erotic...
Benjamin Britten: Spring Symphony (Soprano Sheila Armstrong, Mezzo Janet Baker, Tenor Robert Tear, St. Clement Danes School Boys' Choir, London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Andre Previn conductor, Angel). Berlin born and Hollywood bred, Previn continues to show a surprising flair for English music. Here he leads a zesty performance of a piece that, like so much English music, makes a strength of its provincialism: it has medieval and folk echoes, strikes a resolutely winsome and pastoral note, and is steeped in native literature (with settings of verses by poets from Herrick and Blake to Auden). Britten composed it when...