Word: vespri
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...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...
...flurry of rumors that Maria Callas this year would finally return to opera. Last week in Turin, Italy, she did just that- but in an unaccustomed role. This time Callas appeared on the far side of the footlights as regista of an elaborate production of Verdi's I Vespri Siciliani...
Predictably, Italian critics did not spare their barbs at the once tempestuous diva. "A boring and costly family party" was how one described the first-night folderol. Critic Duilio Courir tartly suggested that I Vespri Siciliani, as one of Verdi's most complex works, was "surely not advisable for beginners...