Word: verdis
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Wobbling Sphinxes. To build the new production of Verdi's triumphal tragedy of the Nile, Bing had brought in the same crack team that gave Verdi's Don Carlo a new glow last season: Broadway's Maggie Webster and Designer Rolf Gerard. They soon found out what everyone from Bing to Conductor Fausto Cleva definitely did not want: "All those wobbling sphinxes, painted canvas temples, unrehearsed supers in ridiculous costumes, and four-footed beasts." They set out to make the new Aïda "as simple and uncluttered as possible...
...blues, greens, purples, pinks and yellows. Seldom in its history had the Met's old stage flashed with such brilliant array as in the second-act pageant where Radames returns in triumph from his campaign against the Ethiopians; the scene onstage comes close to matching the color of Verdi's music...
Ruth Page got the idea for it five years ago. It was to be a spoofing treatment of Verdi's // Trovatore (Verdi's subtitle: "The Gypsy's Revenge"). But two years ago, she heard a rousing performance of Trovatore by the Metropolitan Opera, and "the first thing I knew, I was crying." She tore up her burlesque and designed a "serious" ballet, full of dramatic fire and intensity. In reducing Verdi's tortuously complicated, four-act opera to 52 minutes of dance, she "left out enough good music and plot to make three more ballets...
...Page's side almost as soon as the curtain went up. She had engaged top Spanish Designer Antoni Clave to do the sets, and he had turned out some breathtaking ones in melodramatic black, blue and crimson. Then the Gypsy Azucena (Sonia Arova) lashed into a dance to Verdi's crackling Stride lavampa music, and Page and the dancers were in full command. In the Anvil Chorus, the dancers whirled with so much gusto that the crowd could hardly keep from stomping out the rhythm with them. Standout scene: Azucena's duet with Manrico, her foster...
...Verdi: La Traviata (Licia Albanese, soprano; Jan Peerce, tenor; Robert Merrill, baritone); the NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini conducting; Victor, 4 sides LP). The recording loses a little of the fervor of the splendid 1946 broadcast...