Word: otello
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...Nervous Nelli One man who was always sure about Soprano Herva Nelli's voice was Arturo Toscanini. The first time he heard her sing he said, "There is my Desdemona," and gave her the role in his 1947 Otello. Some objected that Italian-born Nelli had sung only in minor-league opera in the U.S., and that she had not been heard by many others. "If she hasn't," said Toscanini, "she will be now." But up to last week, Herva Nelli's U.S. reputation was based on what she could do with the Maestro conducting...
...season opener, the San Francisco Opera picked Otello and cast Nelli in her old role of Desdemona. She tackled it without a qualm, despite the fact that, with diplomats overflowing the opera house for the Japanese Peace Treaty, early rehearsals had to be held in an old downtown theater. The only thing that gave her the slightest pause was a feeling that Conductor Fausto Cleva might not do things exactly Toscanini's way. But when the big moment came, Cleva did just fine ("He was perfect"), and Soprano Nelli covered herself with glory too, singing in a voice that...
Said one veteran operagoer: "I've heard Otello several dozen times, but Nelli is the first Desdemona I can recall who sang the Ave Maria as if it were a prayer and not an aria...
Music Researcher Dorothea Bourne took something of a busman's holiday. Landing from the new S.S. Independence in Naples, she was soon enjoying a magnificently costumed production of Otello at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera, later, in Venice, met Composer Gian Francesco Malipiero and Conductor Angelo Ephrikian. In Florence, while sampling the music at hand, she insists that in a nightclub she discovered the "last resting place of bop." At opening night of the Maggio Musicale she saw her first performance of Verdi's Macbeth, was a bit disappointed in the production...
...orchestra and chorus of Radio Italiana, Fernando Previtali conducting; Cetra-Soria, 6 sides LP). Verdi's third opera, but the first to win him international fame. Composed when he was 29, Nabucco (short for Nebuchadnezzar) has much of the rousing spirit and power of Aïda and Otello. Performance and recording: excellent...