Word: sopranos
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...minute work for a speaking actor and small ensemble of synthesizers, amplified winds and wordless soprano voice, 1000 Airplanes resurrects the hoary genre of the melodrama. As a musical term, melodrama refers to a composition in which one or more actors recite to musical accompaniment. Schubert's world-weary Abschied von der Erde and Ralph Vaughan Williams' radiant An Oxford Elegy are examples...
...White radio commercials. Then she retired. By 32, she had come back and was a leading singer at the New York City Opera. Then she retired. By 49, she had not only returned but was also the company's prima donna. Again she retired. Last week the brilliant coloratura soprano announced that next January she will once more retire, this time from her incarnation as director of City Opera. "So far," says Sills, "I have been lucky to know the right time to leave. Ten years is a long time." She plans to vacation with her husband Peter Greenough...
...Sergei Slonimsky's sprightly two-minute Novgorod Dance -- hellzapoppin', cossack- style, ending with the clarinetist, trombonist, cellist, pianist and conductor all merrily hoofing it around the stage -- bespeaks a composer with both an ear and a sense of humor. Best of all is Schnittke's silvery Three Scenes for Soprano and Chamber Ensemble (1981), a theater piece for percussionists, soprano and conductor that apes a funeral procession, ending with a solemn cortege in which the vibraphone is held aloft like a coffin...
...easily forgiven. As his rival, Steve Barton is blandly tuneful and smugly self-assured, which is all the role demands. The narrative tension is meant to emanate mainly from the virginal Christine, the part Lloyd Webber wrote for his wife Sarah Brightman. Vocally she has the needed equipment: her soprano is clear and sounds youthfully innocent along a wide range. But as an actress she has learned almost nothing from years in the role. Her vocabulary of gesture is limited to a flutter of hands and a gape of astonishment, accented by huge black circles of makeup around her eyes...
East European performers fume over the sluggish official talent agencies, which routinely do little more than collect the state's fat share of hard- currency earnings. Says Jana Jonasova, 44, a soprano at Prague's National Theater who has lost up to 70% of her fee for West European engagements to the Czechoslovak Pragokoncert agency: "I have to pay a Western agent another 20% to do the work. If I didn't organize things myself, I would never appear outside Prague...