Word: flutes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Ingmar Bergman's Magic Flute, always cited as the best-realized opera film prior to Don Giovanni, neatly sidestepped all the conceptual problems of the hybrid genre--it pretended to be a filmed record of a performance in a provincial opera house, with shots of the audience thrown in to be sure you understood the universality of Mozart's message. Losey never wavers from his no-holds-barred outdoors staging, using the Palladio villas near Vicenza as an occasional refuge from the bright sun that over-exposes many of the scenes...
Despite the musical ambition implicit in the international cast and the Paris Opera name (Bergman used an all-Swedish cast for his Magic Flute), this Don Giovanni is musically undistinguished. Lorin Maazel's conducting sounds muddy and sluggish throughout--which could easily be the fault of the Exeter Street's Rocky Horror-blasted sound system. None of the singers does very much of the ornamentation most music scholars today believe was a critical part of performances in the composer's time. Most of all, there's a surprisingly lackadaisical air about Mozart's music as Losey presents it--as though...
...productions. Joseph Losey (The Servant, The Go-Between) takes his cast of international singing stars out on location to the waterways of Venice and to some stunning Palladian villas in the countryside around Vicenza. Never mind that Ingmar Bergman's 1975 version of Mozart's The Magic Flute showed what enchanting results a modest, studio-bound production could achieve. Never mind, too, that the locale of the Don Juan legend and the setting of Mozart's opera is not Italy but Spain. The real problem is that in taking the work out of the opera house, Losey...
...anything-just music," says John Thomas, who plays folk music and Bach on his six-string guitar for strolling office workers in Washington. Boston Cellist Paul Stouthamer senses that "people are revolting against mechanical power. They're looking for a cello, they're looking for a flute...
...prepared--the auditions can be grueling, and, especially if you play a popular instrument like the flute, very tough. The worst hazard isn't the auditions themselves but the aspiring freshmen musicians, who will sidle up to you while you're waiting to try out and just happen to mention that they've played as the visiting soloist for the Cleveland Symphony, or studied with Jean-Pierre Rampal. Don't let them psych you out--they probably won't get in either...