Word: violettas
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Callas' own performance had the familiar virtues and faults: warmth and purity in the lower and middle registers, edginess and wobble in the upper ones. But she infused the character of Violetta with ardency, hectic gaiety and a dampened passion that flickered through the role like a wayward fever. Her deathbed agonies had the quiet poignancy and the ring of truth that so often evade lesser artists. All in all, Callas gave the Met its most exciting Traviata in years, and demonstrated again that she has lost none of the turbulent appeal that can magnetize an audience...
...Fair Lady) Smith seemed to be desperately attempting to fill the vast, open spaces of the Met's stage with Todd-AO-sized vistas of a kind rarely viewed by a courtesan in Verdi's mid-19th century Paris. Under Tyrone Guthrie's posturing direction, Violetta entertained her first-act guests in a towering, vine-entwined conservatory, while in the third act the chorus moved confusingly up and down a curving marble staircase. Costume Designer Rolf Gerard provided the principal ladies with frothy, subtle-hued dresses scarcely calculated to deliver a message even to the most lickerish...
...skip that part, please, and come back to it"). When trying to identify the character in La Traviata who sings the aria Sempre libera, he half-whispered: "She sings it right at the end of a party given by ... What's her name! Soprano. Her name is like . . . Violetta. Violetta!" Some viewers get the feeling that he knows most of the answers immediately and simply makes the audience squirm for the money he gets. But Charlie and those who know him best insist that it is actually his technique of ferreting out the answers ("You can see him making...
...interesting than either plot or music, for it was further indication that she is the heiress presumptive to Margot Fonteyn as the company's prima ballerina. Born in Lithuania, Svetlana trained in New York and Paris, joined Sadler's Wells in 1950. With the retirement of Dancer Violetta Elvin (to marry for the third time), Beriosova stepped into more and more of Fonteyn's roles. More enthusiastically than ever, the critics applauded her lithe, leggy build, her cool, fluid movements, which are reminiscent of the early Fonteyn's. Although the restrictions of Pagodas' choreography gave...
...Mezzo-Soprano Grace Hoffman was asked to sing Amneris in Aïda, despite the fact that she had to sing in Italian while the rest of the cast sang in German. She wowed the crowd. In Amsterdam, U.S. Coloratura Soprano Marilyn Tyler accepted a rush call to sing Violetta in La Traviata, although she sang in unpopular German while the rest of the cast sang in Italian. After the first act, a year's contract was offered to her. In Munich, U.S. Tenor Howard Vandenburg arrived unannounced, auditioned and was hired on the spot. All over Europe...