Word: corinth
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...downbeat at 8 p.m. But the show that everyone had been waiting for did not begin until 8:22. That was when Beverly Sills emerged from the wings at the Metropolitan Opera to join her fellow Greeks in the grim doings of Rossini's The Siege of Corinth. Looking slender and vulnerable in a long blue gown, Sills moved down a small set of stairs, but never had a chance to sing her opening line, "Che mat sento?"(What do I hear?). She knew what she heard-a minute-long roar of welcome not experienced at the Met since...
...Pamir a, the doomed daughter of the governor of Corinth, Sills successfully re-established her claim as the most radiant and musical of prima donnas. The dilemmas that Pamira finds herself in would try even Aida, and Sills rose to them all. Briefly, Pamira loves Maometto (Bass Justino Diaz), the leader of the attacking Turks. Her father wants her to marry the Greek warrior Neocle (Mezzo Verrett...
...elopes with Maometto, but persuaded by loyalty to her homeland, she returns to Corinth and stabs herself to death as Maometto's troops enter and sack the burning city...
...tossed off the intricately ornamented bel canto lines with fire and easy grace; her voice is a light silvery instrument that takes cadenzas at breakneck speed and makes them sparkle. Sills the actress managed to breathe life into the flat character of Pamira--the daughter of the governor of Corinth who is torn between love for her country and love for the Turk King Maometto, her father's enemy. Sills's Pamira was emotionally focused--a earess of Maometto's arm conveyed sexual delight, and one act later a subtly different touch of the sleeve of Neocle, the Greek warrior...
This version of The Siege of Corinth, pieced together by conductor Thomas Schippers from 35 varying scores of the opera and 2800 pages of original manuscript, is seamless and vibrant, and adds a rare tragic work by Rossini to the stock of his popular comic operas. Schippers is apparently as good at sewing musical segments together as Rossini, who constantly borrowed from old operas to write new ones, and who was so cavalier about detail that if a page of his manuscript fell to the floor while he was composing, he'd write a new one from memory, being...