Word: stignani
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Composer Giuseppe Verdi, who discovered Egypt some 80 years ahead of Hollywood, set the yarn to some of the finest music ever to come out of Italy. Director Clemente Fracassi has put it in the mouths of Top Singers Renata Tebaldi, Ebe Stignani and Giuseppe Campora (with supporting singers from La Scala and the Rome Opera). He has had his visible actors synchronize their lips and slow-motion movements with the music. Unfortunately, his $3,000,000 budget apparently made no allowances for up-to-date recording equipment. Too often Aida rasps and burbles as though it were being played...
...Verdi's month on records. Victor reissued a superlative performance of one of the most remarkable works of all time: the Requiem (4 sides LP). The music has all the passion and dramatic impact of a Verdi opera, and the soloists, Beniamino Gigli, Maria Caniglia, Ebe Stignani and Ezio Pinza, were all able to do it justice when this version was originally recorded in 1939. Conductor Tullio Serafin does his share with the Royal Opera Chorus and Orchestra of Rome. The recording is good...
Verdi: Aïda (Beniamino Gigli, tenor; Maria Caniglia, soprano; Ebe Stignani, mezzo-soprano; Gino Bechi, baritone; Italo Tajo, bass, and others with the Rome Opera Orchestra and chorus, Tullio Serafin conducting; Victor, 40 sides). With such a cast, Aïda should have come off brilliantly; instead, it just barely comes off, with some good singing (Ebe Stignani's) and some bad (e.g., Gigli's Celeste Aïda is painful). Recording: fair...
Verdi: La Forza del Destine (Maria Caniglia, soprano; Ebe Stignani, mezzo-soprano; Galliano Masini, tenor; Tancredi Pasero, bass; Carlo Tagliabue, baritone, and others with the EIAR Symphony Orchestra and chorus, Gino Marinuzzi conducting; Cetra-Soria, 36 sides). Some of the singers made Verdi's less worthy opera sound far better than the Aïda. Recording: good...
...Stignani is a gay little woman who admits to being "only as old as I look" (early fortyish). The night after her concert last week, she went to dinner with Arturo Toscanini, who had listened in frowning silence to her voice when she was 20, then next day sent her a contract to sing at Milan's La Scala. At dinner, says Ebe, "Maestro was in a reminiscing mood, but he only covered the period 1898 to 1913-not my time...