Word: tristans
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...while, and enjoys the company of friends, his two children and his grandchildren. It sounds fulfilling, but a poignant passage from a personal journal several years ago suggests an underlying sadness: "Sun streams into our living room. My hi-fi is midway through the first act of Tristan and Isolde. A very pleasant environment. A man would be a fool not to enjoy himself in it. In a moment I will work on a manuscript which may help mankind. So my life is not only pleasant, it is earned or deserved. Yet, yet, I am unhappy...
...That was the reaction to the appointment from almost everybody, except Swedes, on the tight little island of international opera. As opera directors go, he is a virtual unknown whose work has been seen outside Europe only once. At Montreal's Expo 67, his company staged productions of Tristan, Ballo in Maschera and an Ingmar Bergman-directed Rake's Progress to excellent critical acclaim. In the guessing game that followed Bing's decision to retire, Gentele's name did not figure among the popular favorites: Conductors Leonard Bernstein and Erich Leinsdorf, Impresarios Julius Rudel...
...Philips' recording (five disks, $29.90) Les Troyens turns out to be better than even its most extravagant admirers have claimed. Nor does it seem all that long: uncut, it runs a bit under four hours, shorter than either Die Meistersinger or Parsifal, roughly the length of Tristan und Isolde. It is Berlioz's greatest work, epic in scale, richness and power...
...fairy tale but a human story. Thus he brought passion and pain to a work that all too often seems pale. In the famous scene where Melisande (Soprano Elisabeth Soderstrom) looses her hair over the ardent Pelleas (Tenor George Shirley), Boulez whipped the music to a Tristan-like sexual intensity. Then, at the entrance of Melisande's jealous husband Golaud (Baritone Donald McIntyre), he cut through the sensuality with harsh, jabbing chords, tightening the singing until it strained with barely suppressed violence...
...ruin voices by demanding odd and un-vocal sounds. Though this attitude is widespread, there is evidence that it is less a matter of fact than fashion. Birgit Nilsson, though she sings no contemporary opera at all, points out that composers are usually ahead of performers. Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, she observes, was abandoned as un-performable, "yet nowadays no dramatic soprano can be considered accomplished if she is incapable of singing an Isolde." Beverly Sills, who sang many modern roles before going on to fame in Italian bel canto operas, endorses Nilsson's and Reardon...