Word: traviatas
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...enough. He calls her "Carroll sweetheart" but usually talks only when prompted by her, saying a few lucid words before sliding again into a kind of dreamy trance. Sir Rudolf may not be in Anguilla after all, but back home at the Met, savoring a favorite performance of La Traviata or something he said to Maria Callas...
...shambles of Gian Carlo Menotti's opera Goya, which got its world premiere in Washington this month, there was one bright spot: at least the sets are reusable. One of them could double as Lillas Pastia's tavern in Carmen; another might suit Violetta's death in La Traviata. But as for Menotti's already recycled libretto and music, there can be no future...
...repertory. Although it has been years since Menotti has had a hit, his name still means opera to those for whom annual Christmas telecasts of the treacly Amahl and the Night Visitors were a cultural high point. Goya, however, is a new low: a brazen melange of elements from Traviata and Puccini's La Rondine, served up with music that is a degenerate descendant of the once proud lyric tradition. Sung in English, Goya may be the piece that writes fine to Italian opera...
...bother to film Verdi's Otello if you are going to omit its most famous aria, the haunting Willow Song, thus reducing Desdemona to a walk-on? Director Franco Zeffirelli never quite answers that question. The flamboyant Italian's 1983 cinematic version of La Traviata widened the opera's scope with tender reminiscences only implied in the libretto. In Otello, however, flashbacks to the Moor's slave childhood are maudlin, and Zeffirelli's camera, jumping edgily from storm to massed choruses to brawls and bedrooms, tires the mind. As Otello, Tenor Placido Domingo is in robust voice, and Bass Justino...
...opera lover. But while filmmakers have long since perfected the art of adapting plays and musicals to their medium, opera on film or videotape is in its infancy, the equivalent of shellac 78s in the age of digital CDs. Except for such movies as Franco Zeffirelli's La Traviata or Francesco Rosi's Bizet's Carmen, most videos are theatrical presentations rather than cinematic creations in their own right. Still, there is much to be said for having the best seat at the Vienna State Opera or Covent Garden right in your living room. A sampling of the current releases...