Word: choruses
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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Unlike Gluck's Orfeo, Haydn's opera has an unhappy ending: Orfeo's beautiful singing is not enough to bring his Eurydice back from the dead; Orfeo himself is poisoned by the Bacchae. Enthusiastic Robbins Landon, who recorded Orfeo with singers, chorus and orchestra (cut to a Haydn-prescribed 40 pieces) of the Vienna State Opera, was ready to predict that "it will hold its own alongside [Mozart's] Don Giovanni. We don't believe in resuscitating something from the dead unless it's really a killer. And this...
...Benjamin Britten; book & lyrics by Eric Crozier; produced by Peter Lawrence and the Show-of-the-Month Club), which closed at week's end, was half harrowingly cute, half harmlessly dull. At the start, some children and their elders decide to produce an opera, using the audience for chorus. While the cast rehearses in "the school auditorium," Musical Director Norman Del Mar flirtatiously coaches the onlookers through various songs-one of which turns the audience into owls, chaffinches and turtledoves. After that, the opera itself-a period tale about a chimney sweep-is performed...
...then a fresh and familiar female voice chirped in, "That's my boy." As the verses went on there was more motherly comment ("Take a bigger breath next time, son") and finally a chummy duet on the last chorus. Last week, following a family-singing trail somewhat haphazardly blazed last summer by Bing Crosby and his son Gary (TIME, Aug. 7), Mary (South Pacific) Martin and her 19-year-old son Larry cut their first records together...
...turned bits from The Barber of Seville, Rigoletto and Trovatore into sambas; one of his biggest hits is a dance number derived from Carmen in which he sings a jumble of meaningless words in a high falsetto while the rest of the band chimes in with a robust Toreador chorus...
...British Ballerina Moira (Red Shoes) Shearer, who after listening to a frantic chorus, asked Muggsy: "Tell me, do you find ballet dull...