Word: traviatas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Price has been a shrewd judge of her limitations as well as her talents. With few exceptions, she sang only parts suited to her voice and physique. She never sang those consumptive lost souls Mimi in La Boheme and Violetta in La Traviata, accurately observing, "I'm just too healthy for coughing spells." Although she toyed with the idea of tackling the Marschallin in Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, she rightly realized that "Verdi is definitely my friend...
...recent a spate of opera films are making it possible to munch away on popcorn, Junior Mints or anything else while basking in some of the world's sophisticated music. The film adaptations of Mozart's "The Magic Flute", Puccini's "La Traviata" and now Bizet's "Carmen" return opera to its intended audience, the general public, more successfully than any low-budget opera company ever could...
...TRAVIATA...
Musically, Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata begins at the end, and so does Franco Zeffirelli's new film. The attenuated strains of the prelude depict not the high spirits and even higher passions of the heroine's demimonde, but the lonely, last-act gasps of a woman dying of consumption; the camera prowls through her empty apartment like a would-be lover who never got the bad news. Suddenly there is a blast of trumpets and the scene is abruptly transformed, flashed back to a glittering party. As the music gathers force, so does the action...
...Magic Flute delighted in the playfulness of Mozart's fairy tale but missed its underlying seriousness. Joseph Losey's Don Giovanni emphasized the same composer's brooding drama but failed to locate it within the realm of the human comedy. Zeffirelli's La Traviata strikes just the right note. Visually stunning and musically thrilling, it is the finest operatic movie yet made. It should appeal even to those who have resolutely resisted opera's charms...