//www.youtube.com/watch?v=34t8JkqNWLc
Pleased eightieth birthday soprano Kiri Te Kanawa
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTWBieDvZb8
On today in 1964 Metropolitan Opera debuts of Leonard Bernstein, Franco Zeffirelli, and Luigi Alva in a brand new manufacturing of Verdi‘s Falstaff
Overview of Irving Kolodin within the Saturday Overview:
On this sixth “Falstaff” that [Franco] Zeffirelli has staged and designed in numerous elements of the world, the sunshine in addition to the shade are so brilliantly depicted within the motion that even the unknowing needs to be captivated by its recreation of a bygone period…From its starting within the musty however strong inside of the Garter Inn, by the sunlit backyard with its flowering shrubbery and the elegant “lived-in” front room of Ford’s home to the strikingly evocative conclusion within the moonlit forest, it’s a triumph of creative thoughts over the extremely materials impediment of flat flooring, no equipment and insufficient methods of getting issues on and off between scenes,
Into this self-created visible world, the nonetheless youthful Italian has cajoled into being a dramatic motion that’s animated however not stagy, stuffed with lifelike touches-such because the burlap sack Falstaff plucks off the Garter wall in Scene 1 of Act III to wrap round him after his immersion within the Thames-that are ingenious with out being obtrusive.
As [Leonard] Bernstein is 5 “Falstaff” productions behind Zeffirelli, his course doesn’t but command the identical assurance of contact. However there isn’t any conceivable doubt that musical theater is his predestined milieu, that he offers extra to it and it takes extra from him that even his live performance conducting. He plunged into the efficiency with a sort of bull-in-a-china-shop recklessness, tending to tug up and decelerate when one thing fragile impends. However by the power of his impulse, in addition to the fertility of his thoughts, he achieved a way of exhilaration within the pleasures of this marvelous rating that’s enormously infectious.
A lot for the B to Z inside the parentheses of Bernstein and Zeffirelli. At present missing is the A of a very distinguished Falstaff. Anselmo Colzani works laborious, performs effectively, sings maybe an excessive amount of, doesn’t characterize as efficiently because the textual content and phrases allow. There may be little however pleasure within the musical ensemble in any other case (that little is the Ford of Mario Sereni, a reasonably inventory Italian mannequin reasonably than the English sort needed). Gabriella Tucci sings a pleasant Alice and appears the “sirena” described within the textual content. Rosalind Elias is nearly demure as Meg, and Regina Resnik reaches her profession’s peak with a Dame Rapidly that’s not merely chucklesome however lovable. Judith Raskin was a sweet-sounding Nannetta and a delight to observe, a worthy companion to the assured Fenton of the achieved Luigi Alva in his debut.
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfX8mQOz8ZY
On today in 1831 Vincenzo Bellini‘s La Sonnambula premiered in Milan
Birthday anniversaries of composer Oscar Straus (1870),
tenor Fernand Ansseau (1890),
soprano Gina Cigna (1900),
conductors Julius Rudel (1921), Sarah Caldwell (1924) and Lorin Maazel (1930),
and bass-baritone Norman Treigle (1927)
Pleased 81st birthday tenor Michail Svetlev
Pleased 78th birthday soprano Nan Christie
