Word: verdis
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...past three years her star has been steadily rising. Last week Kiri began to shine in New York too. In the grandest of operatic traditions, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut on a mere three hours' notice. Substituting for an ill Teresa Stratas, she sang Desdemona in Verdi's Otello, with Tenor Jon Vickers. Said the New York Times: "Her voice had a lovely fresh sound. She won the audience from the very beginning." Kiri herself credited Vickers. "He made me feel," she explained, "like a wee baby being taken care...
...Vespri Siciliani is the kind of work with which grand opera has frequently made a spectacle of itself, in more ways than one. Written by Giuseppe Verdi for the Paris Opera in 1855, it had something to please every vagary of the self-indulgent French musical taste of the time-five acts, a lengthy ballet, historical fireworks, huge choruses, soulful solos. The story is set in 13th-century Palermo, where the French colonists are oppressing the Sicilian natives. Arrigo, one of the principal revolutionaries, discovers to his horror that he is the illegitimate son of the chief oppressor, Montforte...
...libretto was a piece of hack work from a Parisian scenario factory run by an enterprising auteur of sorts named Eugene Scribe. Having just successfully completed Rigoletto and La Traviata with Italian Librettist Francesco Maria Piave, Verdi despised the messy French text with the passion he brought to everything...
...would have deduced from its century or so of neglect. The over ture is more or less an orchestral favor ite. The first-act aria, "O tu, Palermo, " is a recital staple for basses. What a surprise, though, to discover the power of the quartet and chorus with which Verdi concludes the second act - a moment of grand confrontation in which every body perceives everybody else's seeming treachery. Or to find that Verdi has rarely written anything lovelier than Elena's farewell to Arrigo, "Ah, parli a un core." Spinning out its delicately chromatic cantilena like...
...also has an abiding love of opera, with the works of Verdi and Puccini particular favorites. He and his wife Marianna, 62, have two children, Peter, 22, a student at Seton Hall University law school, and Margaret, 30, wife of Newark Judge Charles A. Stanziale Jr. Rodino served for two years as chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Nationality, and has been a staunch proponent of immigration reforms. He has also supported bills that would restrict employment of illegal aliens, who frequently are in competition for jobs with blue-collar workers in his district...