Word: verdis
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...VERDI: ATDA (Angel; 3 LPs). Who can be nostalgic for the Golden Age while singers like Franco Corelli and Birgit Nilsson are around? Both are near legends-though they are still in their prime. Both have very big voices. And both sing as if they were competing for top billing-which of course they are. Whether Verdi envisaged his heroic opera the way Nilsson and Corelli do it is another question. In any case, the rest of the cast is well-nigh unnoticeable behind all that star sound, and Zubin Mehta's conducting is efficient but not especially revealing...
...Serafin, 89, Italian conductor of Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera from 1924 to 1934; of a heart attack; in Rome. For half a century Serafin conducted at Milan's La Scala, the Met, London's Covent Garden, and Paris' Opéra. A great interpreter of Verdi and Puccini, he also championed such U.S. composers as Deems Taylor and Louis Gruenberg...
...also carry an entire production herself. In recent seasons she has frequently done both, demonstrating the versatility as well as the power of her portrayals by encompassing the quirky pathos of the aged countess in Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades, the bawdy wit of Mistress Quickly in Verdi's Falstaff, the blood-crazed wrath of Klytemnestra in Strauss's Elektra...
BELL TELEPHONE HOUR (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Donald Voorhees hosts "Zubin Mehta: A Man and His Music," a profile on the life and career of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's brilliant young (30) Indian conductor. In one segment, Mehta will be seen conducting a performance of Verdi's Aida...
Aside from writing a tone poem, Verdi wrote brilliant accompaniment, using a lot of strings and woodwinds to give the music an uncanny gossamer, translucent sound. Verdi always leaves the range where the voices are pitched free from interference, so that the audience can hear nearly every word of the text...