Word: verdis
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Like many Verdi operas, it works well enough with the usual bella voce cast tossing forth one hit aria after another...
...Verdi's venture into what might be called upper-class verismo-he set it in the drawing rooms of his own time-the work cries out for an elegant musical approach and superior acting on the part of the heroine. Both were in ample supply last week. At long last, Conductor Sarah Caldwell (TIME cover, Nov. 10) made her debut at the Met, and Soprano Beverly Sills sang her first Met Violetta-her second role there since her successful debut last April in The Siege of Corinth...
Barn in Winter. Under Caldwell's baton, the orchestra became an involved member of the drama, not a bored bystander. She gave Verdi's familiar music breadth, intimacy and, when appropriate, thoughtful pause. Her bold use of the brass and low strings, for example, gave the orchestral fabric a strikingly firm and secure bottom. One heard small details, often lost, that underscore Violetta's isolation: the clarinet obbligato accompanying the Act I "Ah! fors' é lui" and the oboe solo in the death scene...
Thomas Moore, tenor, accompanied by James Mann, pianist, perform songs of Beethoven, Faure and Strauss; arias of Handel, Verdi and Tchaikovsky. Kirkland...
...final rehearsal for Verdi's Don Carlos in 1973 lasted nine hours. The orchestra call was only for five, and on the dot the players got up and walked out. A pianist picked up where they had left off, and Caldwell went on conducting, barely missing a beat, giving cues right and left to the absent musicians. When the pianist dropped out after two hours, another took over...