Word: otello
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...personal triumph: he had also satisfied a debt of honor that had nagged him for 30 years. As a young man he had conducted Boito's pompously romantic opera, Mefistofele. Their friendship had ripened while Boito was busy winning greater fame as the librettist of Verdi's Otello and Falstaff-and plugging away for years at another opera of his own, Nerone...
...even Verdi finally fell before the power of Boito's poetry and his superb dramatic skill. Said Verdi, after completing Otello at 73: "If I were 30 years younger, I should like to begin a new opera tomorrow-on the condition that Boito provided the libretto." Boito did, and the result (with Shakespeare's help) was Falstaff, one of the greatest triumphs of both words & music of them...
...Turin, where he conducted next, couldn't have kept Toscanini from a job he had his eye on. With his cello under his arm, he scurried to Milan to join the orchestra-as second cellist-that was preparing the premiere of Verdi's new opera, Otello...
...appreciative words seemed quite adequate to the task. But the New York Times's Critic' Olin Downes tried. Toscanini's radio performance of Otello, he wrote,'was "a performance literally unsurpassable, or indeed to be equaled in the hearing of this generation. . . . Mr. Toscanini achieved a reading of this great score which represented the summit of his own interpretive powers...
Once, in rehearsal, Toscanini directed his scorn at big-voiced Chilean Tenor Ramon Vinay, who has done the role of Otello at the Met. Said Toscanini: "Haven't you ever been in love? You have to be persuasive and gentle in love-even if she is your wife...