Word: orchestra
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...flashing, vibrant voice that galvanized her audience and conveyed an immediate sense of the turbulent passions that animate the role. As the opera unfolded, Soprano Nilsson continued to dominate the stage with such ringing power that she cut without difficulty through the opulent textures of the Wagnerian orchestra-particularly in the climactic Liebestod in Act III. Perhaps because of debut stresses, the voice also had its marked drawbacks; at times it sounded strained, took on a steely glitter when more opulent warmth was called for. Apparently a more severe critic of herself than some of Manhattan's reviewers, Soprano...
...Tristan for the ailing Ramon Vinay, had neither stage presence nor the power to match the Nilsson salvos. Baritone Walter Cassel as Kurvenal and Bass Jerome Hines as King Mark both turned in workmanlike performances, and Soprano Irene Dalis was impressive as Brangaene. Conductor Karl Boehm led his orchestra through a methodical reading. As for the decor, with the world's best to choose from, the Met had again picked the second-rate. The sets by German Designer Teo Otto were pedestrian and confusing: starkly realistic castle turrets and ramparts set alongside fanciful, gold-leafed trees and stylized, sawtooth...
...long-awaited score proved to be typical Orff, avoiding such devices as standard harmonic progressions or even the modern "tone row." Instead, it sustained for page after page a single chordal theme, varied only with starkly primitive rhythm in the orchestra and percussion-punctuated declamation by the singers. The work was typical, too, in its close welding of music to text (by 18th century German Poet Friedrich Hölderlin). The oddly assorted orchestra-which included four pianos for eight players, four harps, a glass harmonica, marimbaphone, xylophones, bongos, congas, gongs and no strings except for nine double basses-served...
Roar of Agony. Without overture or curtain, the opera opened with Oedipus singing expository lines of 69 German syllables, every one of them on middle C. The orchestra then established the only genuine motif in the entire work-a rapid, stepwise up-and-down flourish that occurred again and again, eventually became Oedipus' climactic roar of agony. The work unfolded without set pieces or arias, and the staging by Director Günther Rennert was similarly spare, e.g., when Jocasta (Soprano Astrid Varnay) learned that she was the mother of Oedipus she threw her head back with mouth agape...
...extra bow by the performers. The odd thing about the performance: Bernstein's fellow pianists had never before played for such an audience. They were David M. Keiser, board chairman of the Cuban-American Sugar Co. and president of the New York Philharmonic, and Carlos Moseley, the orchestra's associate manager and press chief...