Word: fortissimo
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...that waft like zephyrs through a movie summer humid with macho derring-do. In their world, romance is bruised but blooming; and the characters are so fully drawn that the moviegoer can become possessive of them, even judgmental, as he would with a friend. Would Sally have faked a fortissimo orgasm in a crowded restaurant? Would footloose Graham come back to Baton Rouge to find a love he lost nine years before? Of course they are not real people, and the difference is crucial in this talk-as-sex era. Real people talk back, act up, walk...
...distinctive, daffy humor and a rhythmic sense that is honed until it gleams. -- A fight for control of Paris' new opera reaches fortissimo...
...warm Carnegie acoustics, which can shelter a whispering flute and accommodate a thunderous fortissimo, the Berliners showed off the strengths that have made them the class of world-class ensembles. First there are the string sections, violins, violas, cellos and basses, which play together as one, producing a dark, creamy sound unsurpassed in lushness and sheer beauty. The brasses gleam like the finest gold, with especially choice nuggets among the horns. And there are the woodwinds, blending their highly distinctive sounds together like expert chamber musicians. In concert, the Berlin Philharmonic becomes a single instrument, devised by a craftsman...
...opera's weaknesses outweigh its strengths. They include awkwardly leaping, ungrateful vocal lines, a wearisome tendency to have everything sung fortissimo, an ultimate sameness of musical vocabulary, and a dramatic shift at the end from an 18th century moral object lesson to a Götterdämmerung of destruction that occurs on "the last day of the earth." Nor was the Boston performance much help. The work was slackly conducted and indifferently staged by Caldwell and only sporadically well sung, principally by Morgan, Hunter and Freni, and John Brandstetter as one of Marie's military lovers...
Last week the only "money" note for the tenor in Aida-the high B-flat at the end of Celeste Aida-was rough and ragged, belted out with a desperate fortissimo instead of the more difficult pianissimo that Verdi called for in the score. Elsewhere, Pavarotti's eyes clung to the safety of the prompter's box and the conductor's baton, leaving most of the acting to Soprano Margaret Price (battling a bronchial infection but singing well nonetheless) and Stefania Toczyska, a sultry Polish mezzo and a star of the future, whose Amneris blazed with passionate...