Word: traviata
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Robert Leuze never thought of singing, on the street or anywhere else, until he was past the make-or-break age for most vocalists. Now, two or three evenings a week, he stands in front of Broadway theaters, performing baritone arias from The Marriage of Figaro or La Traviata to the accompaniment of a tape recorder. A Yale liberal arts graduate and a former high school science teacher, Leuze has been trying to launch a career with small opera companies in the New York area. "It usually blows someone's mind to hear me in full voice...
Whatever the truth, the principals were coolly going about their business last week. The tireless Tito visited Iraq, Syria and Jordan, while Minutic was singing La Traviata in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. Minutic's father, when reached at his home in Dalmatia, denied the gossip about his daughter's romance. "The only thing they have in common," he said, "is their love for good music...
Verdi: La Traviata (Deutsche Grammophon, 2 LPs). Conductor Carlos Kleiber gives a fresh, strikingly opinionated reading of an opera that is usually ill-served...
...came out of an unhappy childhood-appallingly fat and resentful and lonely-and clawed her way to success and greatness with a singlehearted ferocity that awed even her enemies. Conductor Tullio Serafin, her indispensable mentor in the crucial early days, was tossed aside temporarily-for daring to record La Traviata with another soprano. Enraged at the Callas ego, La Scala Tenor Giuseppe di Stefano declared, "I'm never going to sing opera with her again." Later he changed his mind about Callas, but then so did a lot of people...
Bing and Callas sparred continually over her roles and her schedules. In 1959, after she refused to sing Traviata and Macbeth in the 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...