Word: sopranos
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...backstage friends call her Bubbles, and by now everyone knows why. The effervescent soprano made her arias appear effortless; the years of striving before she became an overnight star at 37, the tribulations and ironies of raising a deaf daughter, the difficulties of administering the New York City Opera were kept in the wings. All the public saw was a golden diva with a smile they could pour on a waffle. But Beverly Sills is 57, as she is the first to admit, and in her twinkling autobiography she is ready for revelations. She brings back the days of doing...
...Oooooooh," swooned a chorus of soprano literati...
...answer, as it happens, is none of the above. No one, however, has asked for a refund, for Zeffirelli's vision is as vivid as ever. In addition to Soprano Eva Marton as Princess Turandot, Tenor Placido Domingo as Calaf, her suitor, and the other principals, there are 286 singers and supernumeraries. By comparison, Zeffirelli's Boheme at its most gargantuan fielded a cast of merely 280. Much of the Turandot scenery was shipped from Italy in eleven cargo containers, each 40 ft. long. There are 300 costumes, and the headgear alone uses 44 lbs. of pearls, golf balls, chandelier...
...cast spent much of the performance looking down at its collective feet so as not to stumble across the treacherous obstacle course of risers and steps. As a result, Marton, born for the title role, was oddly tentative, the sturdy Domingo seemed distracted and ill at ease, while Soprano Leona Mitchell's hey-look-me-over Liu was too aggressive. Only Cuenod's crotchety Emperor -- a Swiss singing Italian the way he imagines a Chinese might -- hit the mark. James Levine conducted grandly, and the powerful choruses were declaimed lustily if not suavely...
Scholars and lovers of the American musical theater had other reasons to cheer when Soprano Erie Mills sang Naughty Baby, from the 1924 Gershwin show Primrose. The number, with its infectious syncopation and George's own nimble charts, was receiving its first public performance in six decades. It is part of a trove of music by Broadway's old masters -- Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers, Victor Herbert, Cole Porter -- discovered in 80 boxes in a Secaucus, N.J., warehouse. Now, after five years of archaeology, Historian Robert Kimball has prepared a 178-page inventory of some of the contents for the first...