Word: wozzeck
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Alban Berg died 17 years ago, but no U.S. opera company has yet found the means or the courage to mount his second opera. So Lulu, an even bloodier yarn than Berg's Wozzeck, is having its American premiere in the latest fashion this week-on records...
Whenever there is a tough baritone part to be sung these days, the call is likely to go to a modest 42-year-old Texan named Mack Harrell. In his 15 years as a professional, he has sung such larynx-cracking roles as the lead in Wozzeck and Rabbi Azrael in The Dybbuk; last season he gave more concerts with orchestra than any other U.S. baritone. Last week, at a time when most hard-working men were snoozing in vacation hammocks, Mack Harrell was still at it: singing Virgil Thomson's intricate new Five Songs of William Blake...
...Dorothy Dow to record it. Erwartung's one-act story is somber, not to say macabre: a woman sings her innermost thoughts as she goes to a woodland tryst, stumbles over the dead body of her lover. The score sounds something like that of Alban Berg's Wozzeck, it is introverted and complex, but it succeeds in expressing terror and, surprisingly, tenderness. Soprano Dow, who comes from Texas, may not have so much Weltschmerz in her polished voice as Schoenberg had in mind, but she sings with great accuracy and lyrical ease. The orchestral part is played...
Milan's La Scala heard Alban Berg's atonal opera Wozzeck for the first time last week and, somewhat to its own surprise, was impressed...
Mitropoulos and La Scala had worked hard to make Wozzeck a success. When Italian sopranos showed little interest in learning the exacting role of Wozzeck's faithless mistress Marie, Mitropoulos gave it to Soprano Dorothy Dow, of Galveston, Texas. The part of the plodding, unhappy Wozzeck went to Italian Baritone Tito Gobbi. Milan admired them both. Another successful touch was the scenery; instead of going in strong for realism, Designer Gianni Ratto made his sets shadowy and changeable, to keep the audience under the emotional spell of Berg's music...