Word: sopranos
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Opera Star Eleanor Steber, 57, now largely confines herself to concert appearances and to teaching at the Cleveland Institute, Juilliard and the New England Conservatory. But for the American première of Benjamin Britten's opera Owen Wingrave, in Santa Fe, N. Mex., the soprano sang the role of the old battle-ax aunt to Alan Titus' young Owen. Letting out all the stops, Steber, done up in Victorian rig, calls her nephew a coward for not following in the family's military tradition. How did it feel to play the heavy for a change...
Chausson: Poem of Love and the Sea; Canteloube: Songs of the Auvergne (Soprano Victoria de los Angeles; Lamoureux Concerts Orchestra, Jean-Pierre Jacquillat conductor; Angel, $5.98). A vocal record to cherish, with De los Angeles, now 49, as ear-ravishing as ever. By the standard of the classic Madeline Grey Auvergne recording (1930), this version is a shade operatic, but in its own opulent way nonetheless irresistible. The Chausson, delicately contrasting the ephemera of love with the eternity of the sea, is a pre-Impressionistic gem, hauntingly burnished by De los Angeles, rapturously accompanied by Conductor Jacquillat...
Chicago's Ravinia Festival had not had such prestige and excitement since Seiji Ozawa stepped down as music director in 1968. Part of last week's furor was over Soprano Beverly Sills, unfurling the druidical delights of Bellini's Norma. But even more of it was over the short, pudgy, bespectacled white man with a modified Afro who ambled out to the podium and called the Chicago Symphony to work with a mighty sweep of his left fist...
...permanently retired after all. Maria Callas, the volcanic soprano whose last role was Tosca at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1965, explained that she had "developed some bad vocal habits. So I retired to start again." Now a worldwide Callas tour that would begin in the fall was being announced. For some time she has been moving back into music. Her voice has lost its reach, no doubt, but she still has a grasp of dramatic music to hold any audience in thrall. Callas will be heard only in concert, so the fascinated public will be spared those...
...from Herbert Witherspoon, who died within weeks of taking over in 1935, Chapin is the Met's first American-born general manager in 77 years. It was appropriate therefore that Chapin should take the opportunity to announce, as his first official act as manager, that at long last Soprano Beverly Sills will make her Met debut in 1975 in Rossini's Siege of Corinth...