Word: verismo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...with his spectacular philandering. In less amorous moments, he found time to compose three minor operas and The Excursions of Mr. Brouček, a light, satirical tale about a flight to the moon and the Hussite wars of the 15th century. He also wrote one powerful but somber verismo work: Jenufa, the story of a village girl made pregnant by the local womanizer, whose formidable foster mother kills her baby...
Maybe you had to be there to appreciate it. Same as with the 1960s. All these books and movies dribbling out now about that fine old decade are so heavy, they lack the old ring of verismo. But this bright and mellow spring Sunday just might turn out to be, well, different, you know, together. Milos Forman, the Czech-born director (One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest), trying to turn the Aquarian Age stage hit Hair into a movie, needs an authentic circa 1968 "bein" as backdrop for crucial scenes. Those affairs having gone the way of peace...
...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...
Rimmed World. Though it can be placed well enough among turn-of-the-century verismo works, Jenufa is an elusive opera in some ways. The setting is a Moravian village, and the composer knew its inhabitants with detachment and compassion. He creates no heroes, but a world of people working, flirting, taking naps, worrying about saving face or avoiding the draft. The plot, however, concerns deadly primal emotions: love, jealousy and ambition. Jenufa is pregnant by števa, a wastrel who chases every girl in town. Jenufa still hopes to catch him, but her world is invisibly rimmed...
...Masks. None of the characters are very believable, even by opera's standards. Menotti's style, as always, is symbolic verismo, and his principal theme in The Most Important Man is that whites, despite frequent good intentions, are unable to live up to their promises to blacks. "We have made the gesture, but we have not accepted blacks emotionally," Menotti explains. Musically, The Most Important Man is blatantly eclectic. Strains of Richard Strauss float from the pit during one interlude. By the final duet between Toime and his white girl friend Cora (Soprano Joanna Bruno), Menotti is unashamedly...