Word: toscas
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...interpretation of Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger; after a long illness; in Amersham, England. Schoeffler sang in Vienna during and after World War II and regularly made the operatic grand tour during the 1950s. At New York's Metropolitan Opera he was popular as Scarpia in Tosca and as Don Giovanni. Despite his success, he complained that "this business of dressing up in a silly costume, putting on a wig and paint on the face and getting killed or poisoned or drunk every night" made for a less than ideal profession...
Meanwhile, Rostropovich and his family are enjoying their new freedom and fresh celebrity. In addition to the dacha and the Moscow apartment, they keep flats in Paris and New York and one near Lausanne. Olga, 20, and Elena, 19, are studying at Manhattan's Juilliard School. Galina sang Tosca last week at Covent Garden. Friends report that her life with Slava is often tempestuous, partly because his career is rising and hers is fading; after all, Rostropovich was largely responsible for destroying her position at the Bolshoi. While Galina supported her husband's defense of Solzhenitsyn, she feels that Slava...
...same week, Bing fired her. Callas snarled publicly about "those lousy Traviatas that he wanted me to do." Bing riposted: "Mme. Callas is constitutionally unable to fit into any organization not tailored to her own personality." By 1965 almost all was forgiven. Bing brought her back for two Toscas. Justly they became the hottest tickets of the season, for Callas' Tosca was revelatory, not so much a posturing, jealous bitch, as a woman unsettled by fear and made crafty by the desire to save her lover...
...Puccini: Tosca (Soprano Montserrat Caballé, Tenor José Carreras, Baritone Ingvar Wixell, orchestra and chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Colin Davis conductor, Philips; 2 LPs). This interpretation of Tosca is nothing if not eccentric. Davis' reading of the florid score is rich and clear but systematically undramatic. As the idealistic painter Cavaradossi, Carreras gives a properly ardent performance, but it seems lost on this particular Tosca. The elegant Caballé can no more be made into the hot-blooded actress than the eyes of Cavaradossi's Mary Magdalen can be changed from blue...
...Metropolitan Opera in Boston opens its engagement this week, including a performance of Puccini's tragedy-opera "Tosca," first produced in 1900. Hynes Veterans Auditorium, 31 St. James Ave., Boston. For tickets and info...