Word: sopranos
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Inevitably, the wreckers are wrenching a few heartstrings. Frantic efforts to save the venerable, 83-year-old opera house ended in failure last week as the Old Met Opera House Corp., whose trustees included Soprano Licia Albanese and U.S. Senator Jacob Javits, admitted "with a heavy heart" that it was unable to raise the $8 million to $12 million needed to save the building. Commented the New York Times: "It is live opera that opera lovers support, not dead houses...
...which it was named than the Twentieth Century Limited. A 1902 passenger once declared that it made New York and Chicago practically suburbs of each other. It did so with an all-Pullman splendor that offered both fresh-and saltwater baths, barbers and a library. Soprano Nellie Melba, the Armours, the Swifts and Teddy Roosevelt rode the train, and oldtime waiters recall that early-rising Herbert Hoover was invariably first up for breakfast. But in recent years, ordinary coaches had to be added to match the fare ($43) at which jets now fly, in two hours, as against the train...
...brocade curtain and announced that it would cut the drapery into 45,000 patches and include one in each copy of a souvenir-record album called Opening Nights at the Metropolitan. Of course, the curtain did shrink some in the cleaning, but there was enough to go around as Soprano Leontyne Price scissored off the first snippet for publicity's sake. Then she hurried back to rehearsals at the new Met, where she will star opening night as Cleopatra in an opera written for her by Composer Samuel Barber...
Magical Forest. The theater was aptly opened with a performance of Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Next week Dancer-Choreographer Edward Villella will perform the world premiere of his Narkissos. Next month Ormandy's Philadelphia Orchestra will accompany such artists as Soprano Leontyne Price, Violinist Isaac Stern and Pianist Van Cliburn. Talking about his musicians, the maestro is already picking up the language of the track. "My Phillies are chomping at the bit," says Ormandy. "But I will have to schedule rehearsals during racing hours because I saw what happened when the orchestra played...
MENDELSSOHN: ELIJAH (Angel). In a superb recording, Sir Malcolm Sargent conducts the Royal Society Orchestra in highlights only, but the cuts are not really missed: Sir Malcolm wisely opts for the graceful Mendelssohnian airs; Soprano Elizabeth Harwood gives a limpid account of "Hear ye. Israel"; John Shirley-Quick delivers "Is not his word like a fire" in an opulent basso style. The only low points, in fact, are the hammer-heavy choruses, which remind the listener that this florid form was not really suited to the urbane Mendelssohn, and that when he essayed heroism he often made only noise...