Word: traviatas
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Metropolitan Opera (Sat. 2 p.m., ABC). La Traviata, with Tebaldi...
...come and gone, leaving the field to her great rival, Renata Tebaldi. As Mimi in Boheme, Tebaldi had already caused an emotional demonstration by partisans who tied up Manhattan traffic around the Met long after midnight. Last week in a brand-new production of Verdi's La Traviata, the Met's first in 21 years, Tebaldi's performance was memorable...
...talking to himself, muttering little associated fragments of knowledge. Like a boxer staying down for a count of nine, he takes all the time he can possibly get ("Let's skip that part, please, and come back to it"). When trying to identify the character in La Traviata who sings the aria Sempre libera, he half-whispered: "She sings it right at the end of a party given by ... What's her name! Soprano. Her name is like . . . Violetta. Violetta!" Some viewers get the feeling that he knows most of the answers immediately and simply makes the audience...
...Impresario Sol Hurok put some of music's brightest stars into dazzling constellation. The camera let the viewer hover over the fingers of Guitarist Andres Segovia and Pianist Artur Rubinstein, linger in closeup on the intense face of Marian Anderson, share the lilt of Verdi's La Traviata with Victoria de los Angeles, stand amid the powerful climax of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, superbly acted and sung by Bulgaria's Boris Christoff. Festival showed, far more eloquently than in its first edition ten months ago, that TV can add to music a certain intimate magic...
Professionally, Callas is just as ruthless. This year she broke with the maestro who helped her first and most, Conductor Serafin. Her complaint: he recorded Traviata with another soprano. Her decision automatically eliminates Serafin from his old job as conductor for her opera recordings and the old man is finding that other singers are now mysteriously unable to sing under him. Says he: "She is like a devil with evil instincts." Says La Callas: "I understand hate; I respect revenge. You have to defend yourself. You have to be strong, very, very strong. That's what makes you have...