Word: coloratura
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...Designers Helen Pond and Herbert Senn, have devised one of their loveliest productions-a succession of murals and drops, in blacks, golds and reds, patterned after the finely detailed Palekh lacquered boxes that were fashionable in Russia after the 1917 Revolution. The Canadian bass Victor Braun and the American coloratura Jeanette Scovotti, both of whom work primarily in Europe, made a valiant pair of lovers. John Moulson, a member of East Berlin's Komische Oper, sang the wizard with an uncommonly sweet and powerful tenor. From Pittsburgh Soprano Marianna Christos, in the minor role of a slave girl, came...
...revival of Esclarmonde is the idea of Richard Bonynge. Over the years he has earned grudging respect from critics for his workmanlike conducting, but his real talent is in finding music that will show in some new way his wife Joan Sutherland's extraordinary voice. There are few coloratura fireworks in Esclmonde. One hears instead her middle-high range - lustrous, dusky, moving seamlessly between registers. No other singer could bring this music so close to distinction. Among the other principals, Mezzo Huguette Tourangeau, as the Empress' sister, sang with impeccable French style. The sets by Beni Montresor consist...
...successful entertainment. And this "Party" was a vastly entertaining performance. Comden and Green are careful to say they are writers, not performers, but they are almost as talented on the boards as on paper. Dramatics were perfectly designed, blocking and business minimal but maximally suggestive. Their voices, Comden's coloratura in particular, were the biggest surprise of all. Any entertainer able to transform the cavernous spaces of the Loeb mainstage into an intimate club has quite a noisemaker...
Cenerentola is less popular than Rossini's The Barber of Seville, probably because of its emphasis on bravura ensemble work over traditional solo arias. Further, the title role is written for an almost extinct species, the coloratura contralto. La Scala has such a rara avis in Lucia Valentini Terrani. She really has too hefty a look for an ideal Cinderella, but her voice was lusciously bronze and agile. The production is by France's Jean-Pierre Ponnelle; within a delightful children's cutout house, he manipulates his characters like a swinging Coppelius. How, for example, Soprano Margherita...
...flourishes. Sutherland fits into this bravura company, partly because she never tries to outshine her colleagues. A languid, settled presence onstage, she has been called in Italy, with affection and an edge of wit, La Serenissima (the most serene). At 49 she still sings with supple power, and her coloratura flights have the brilliance and definition of a fire works display when it first spreads out against the sky. She and her colleagues seemed to enjoy their tasks, which included standing still during the long episodes of applause. It was a serene evening, devoted confidently to the glories...