Word: sopranos
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...Terrani. She really has too hefty a look for an ideal Cinderella, but her voice was lusciously bronze and agile. The production is by France's Jean-Pierre Ponnelle; within a delightful children's cutout house, he manipulates his characters like a swinging Coppelius. How, for example, Soprano Margherita Guglielmi (Half Sister Clorinda) can make her hoopskirt behave like a Hula-Hoop and still sing is her secret and Ponnelle's. But it is immense fun to watch...
...stageworthiness, Figaro lives by its music, as any great opera must. It has been many years since New York has heard it sung and played so exquisitely. To describe the entire cast, the word perfect for once seems apt. Among the women, British Soprano Margaret Price sang the Countess with an appealingly fresh vocal bloom and a masterly control of the Mozartean style. From New York's Frederica von Stade came a Cherubino of distilled soprano beauty and ebullient range of boyish emotion. Soprano Mirella Freni remains the best Susanna of the day. Belgium...
...course, not talking about bringing back the good old days when a Caruso would stride forward, plant his feet squarely behind the prompter's box and, as it were, deliver his aria in person. When Strehler puts a soprano at her ease, or when he positions a chorus so that it does not have to shuffle around the stage while performing, he does it with logic and a convincing illusion of action. At his best, he preserves and freshens the essence of an older work. Says he: "That point of contact between past and present is fleeting. Often...
...name conductor-such as Paris' Sir Georg Solti (who will conduct Le Nozze di Figaro and Otello) or La Scala's dashing Claudio Abbado (Macbeth, La Cenerentola, Simon Boccanegra). Or being present when an important artist breaks through into international stardom-as, say, Paris' dulcet-voiced soprano Margaret Price (the Countess in Figaro, Desdemona in Otello) may well do this time. Before La Scala and Paris wind up their two-week stands (Paris will then follow La Scala into the Kennedy Center), it should be quite a show-both in front of the footlights and backstage...
Died. Lotte Lehmann, 88, famed German-born prima donna and legendary lieder singer; at her home in Santa Barbara, Calif. A warm, sensitive actress whose amber soprano was infinitely expressive, Lehmann could electrify an audience by merely stepping on the stage. She made her debut with the Hamburg Opera in 1910, four years later with the Vienna Opera, where she created several roles for her friend Richard Strauss, and in 1934 with the Metropolitan. Notable among her 100 roles were her yielding Sieglinde in Die Walküre, her devout Elisabeth in Tannhäuser and, most outstanding...