Word: verdis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Darlin' Aida (music by Giuseppe Verdi; book & lyrics by Charles Friedman) shifts its scene from the Memphis, Egypt of Aida to Memphis, Tenn. in 1861. Aida, Amneris and Radames of Verdi's opera become respectively a lovely slave girl (Elaine Malbin), her imperious young mistress (Dorothy Sarnoff) and a Confederate officer (Howard Jarratt) who loves the slave girl but is engaged to her mistress. The story is a tangle of Negro uprisings, hooded night riders, beatings, and death for the lovers...
...Seven months ago they had run the station without help. Now there is a staff of six. Like Manhattan's cultural (and partly audience-sponsored) WABF, the Jacobs station is unabashedly highbrow: Debussy's St. Sebastien, Hindemith's Herodiade, the BBC recordings of The Canterbury Tales; Verdi's Macbeth. All works are played in their entirety and without interruption for commercials or station breaks. No work is repeated within three months...
...last-ditch Verdi-lovers turned out to express their disapproval, greeted the opening curtain with whistles, catcalls and shouts of "Vergogna, vergogna!" (Shame, shame!). But the ruckus was feeble compared with the uproar they raised over Gian-Carlo Menotti's Consul and Juan Jose Castro's Proserpina (TIME, Feb. 5, 1951; March...
Listeners used to the blood & thunder accompaniments of Verdi, for instance, found Vivaldi's music often "lively as gunfire," but hardly theatrical. Holofernes got his head lopped off in a few bars of refined fiddling-where Verdi would have unleashed all the brass and tympani in the pit. And Judith was always genteel, a decapitator in old lace. Sung in Latin, the vocal lines were always elegant, sometimes floridly difficult...
...Verdi: Otello (excerpts) (Ramon Vinay, tenor; Eleanor Steber, soprano; Frank Guarrera, baritone; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Fausto Cleva conducting; Columbia, 2 sides LP). This anthology includes the best duets and arias of Verdi's best opera. Vinay defends his title as the finest Moor of the day, and Steber makes a pure-voiced Desdemona; Guarrera is not malignant enough to do Iago full justice. Recording: excellent...