Word: basso
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Business at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera, the highest-priced theater in Manhattan, is booming like a basso profundo. Since opening its new house in September, the Met has been 100% sold out and has turned away thousands of ticket seekers, who are 100% furious. But the smell of success is not sweet. Last week, pleading "a gross miscalculation" in budgeting, the Met announced that it must hike ticket prices by roughly 20%, or an increase from $13 to $15.50 for the top-priced seats. The reason, explained the Met's board of directors, is that, like dreamy-eyed...
...Leontyne Price was so heavily costumed in bolts of sparkling cloth that she looked like a junior-sized pyramid herself; it was a wonder that she eould sing at all, though sing she did, and her burnished voice never sounded better. At the top of their form, too, were Basso Justino Diaz as Antony and Tenor Thomas as Caesar. Composer Barber's setting for Shakespeare's text was notable chiefly for an orchestration built of conflict ing clouds of moody, often eerie thun-derbursts of sound, punctuated with enough jutting exclamations of dissonance to label it contemporary...
...conducts the Royal Society Orchestra in highlights only, but the cuts are not really missed: Sir Malcolm wisely opts for the graceful Mendelssohnian airs; Soprano Elizabeth Harwood gives a limpid account of "Hear ye. Israel"; John Shirley-Quick delivers "Is not his word like a fire" in an opulent basso style. The only low points, in fact, are the hammer-heavy choruses, which remind the listener that this florid form was not really suited to the urbane Mendelssohn, and that when he essayed heroism he often made only noise...
...Whitsunday holiday weekend in Paris, the prop men were unable to find any whipped cream to use in the Barber's shaving mug. Baritone Robert Merrill experimented with a gooey mixture of sour cream and beaten egg whites, finally, in keeping with the stage directions, had to smear Basso Fernando Corena's face and mouth with the fluffy filling from French cream puffs...
...excellent production was something of a United Nations effort, what with an Italian conductor (Bruno Amaducci), an Estonian director (Ulf Thomson), a Greek baritone (Rudolf Constatin), an Australian soprano (Althea Bridges), a Japanese basso (Kunikazu Ohashi) and a Spanish tenor (José Maria Perez). The libretto deals with Attila's siege of Italy in the 5th century and is embellished with the usual subplots of revenge, lust and political hanky-panky. What makes the opera worth the salvaging is the vigor and sheer melodic beauty of the score. Though Verdi the patriot worked at odds with Verdi the composer...