Word: violettas
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Price has been a shrewd judge of her limitations as well as her talents. With few exceptions, she sang only parts suited to her voice and physique. She never sang those consumptive lost souls Mimi in La Boheme and Violetta in La Traviata, accurately observing, "I'm just too healthy for coughing spells." Although she toyed with the idea of tackling the Marschallin in Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, she rightly realized that "Verdi is definitely my friend...
...like a would-be lover who never got the bad news. Suddenly there is a blast of trumpets and the scene is abruptly transformed, flashed back to a glittering party. As the music gathers force, so does the action; magnificent chandeliers are reflected in a thousand champagne glasses. Enter Violetta, laughing. For now, the watchword is joy, but the last word must be, inevitably, tragedy...
...successfully translating opera from stage to screen lies in respecting the musical source but exploit ing the film medium's restless, inquiring mobility. As both a film maker (Romeo and Juliet, The Champ, Endless Love and an experienced opera director, Zeffirelli understands both genres. In Soprano Teresa Stratas (Violetta) and Tenor Placido Domingo (Alfredo), he has chosen two exceptionally convincing singing actors. But film also demands motion, sweep and scope, so at intense moments the camera breaks free of its traditional front-row-center moorings and begins to roam. As counterpoint to Alfredo's second-act aria...
...three are one-eyed, one is a dwarf, and one has been classified as a homosexual. Many of the stragglers are brought in by neighborhood youngsters who have heard about the Milsters' cat colony. The cats' names are chosen eclectically: Nanki-Po, Twiggy, Dick Deadeye, Pigpen, Anastasia, Violetta, Wilfred Shadbolt, Don Alhambra del Bolero and Mad Ludwig...
...weariest ear could hear them as new works of art. Her musical values were the strictest and most scrupulous. She sang with complete fidelity to the composer and his idiom; yet the human essence of each heroine shone through her interpretation. Audiences felt that they were seeing Norma or Violetta. Hers was not a conventionally "beautiful" voice, like that of her great rival Renata Tebaldi. It could be volatile and reedy. Her wanderings impaired her health and her voice. She enjoyed only about ten years of international fame before serious vocal trouble began...