Word: verdis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
People have written comic opera and talented people have even written funny comic operas, but no one before or since Verdi has taken a full orchestra and the incredibly indiscreet apparatus of grand opera and wheedled out of them a 100 per cent foolproof light comedy. Verdi himself only did the trick once--in his last and most brillant opera, Falstaff...
...jokes in Falstaff are foolproof because Verdi built the comic timing into the music. If the singers stick to the notes, they can't help but deliver the punchline faultlessly every time. Add to this the fact that any joke, no matter how hackneyed, quadruples in laugh-value the moment it is set to music, and you see why the opera Falstaff is as much funner than the play The Merry Wives of Windsor as Gilbert and Sullivan is funnier than Gilbert...
...secret of Falstaff's miraculous funnies doesn't end there. The phenomenon of Falstaff is that the composer, Verdi, and his librettist, Boito, changed roles. Verdi composed like a playwright and Boito wrote like a musician. Take away all the words from Falstaff and you will still know exactly what is going on. When the orchestra trills from one end to the other, you know that Falstaff has just taken a colossal chug of wine which is going to work on his insides; when the trombones blast, you know that Ford is feeling the full gamut of green-eyed emotions...
Belting Their Best. La Scala's two Verdi productions, Il Trovatore and Nabucco, illustrated the company's faults-and how it turns them into virtues. Both performances tended to be concerts in costume. Nicola Benois' massive, upward-sweeping sets were effective in a traditional vein. Nabucco, in particular, had moments of rousing stagecraft, especially when a 35-ft. purple statue of Baal split down the middle and the surrounding temple exploded, filling the stage and auditorium with steam. But mostly the singers forgot about the drama and one another, turned toward the audience, and simply belted...
...Capuleti e i Montecchi, a bel canto relic that the company recently revived after a century of relative neglect. A retelling of the Romeo and Juliet story that owes little to Shakespeare, Capuleti, with Bellini's intimate scale, pervading sweetness and utter predictability, is a distinct contrast to Verdi's powerful, primitive themes and vaulting imagination. But the company -notably the two leads, Tenor Giacomo Aragall and Soprano Renata Scotto-traded the flawed gusto of its Trovatore and Nabucco performances for restraint and quiet artistry, making Capuleti the only production of the week to come off with cohesiveness...