Word: otello
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DIED. Tito Gobbi, 70, Italian baritone considered one of the finest singing actors of his generation, best known for such operatic roles as the sinister Scarpia in Tosca, lago in Otello, and the title character in Rigoletto; of cancer; in Rome...
...talk about his colleagues' performances. He refuses to be pinned down about his favorite pieces of music. Says Levine: "There is a general tendency in the world to be preoccupied with evaluating things, and this is a trap. If you agree that Verdi's masterpieces are Otello and Falstaff, then what about Ernani and Macbeth? In finding a level on a kind of musical Richter scale, it implies that you should not be altogether involved with works that get only a 3 or a 5." Yet, with the fervor of the true specialist, he will happily expatiate...
Interviewer: Of course, you went on to write the masterpieces of Otello and Falstaff, so your Shakespearean credentials are well in order. And Sir Peter, director of Britain's National Theater, obviously knows the Bard. His staging is almost cinematic in spots, using dissolves from one scene to another and staging a climactic final battle in stop action. What advice did you give...
DIED. Mario del Monaco, 67, celebrated, booming-voiced tenor who was most renowned for his rendition of Verdi's Otello, which he played in 427 performances; of a heart attack; in Mestre, Italy. Blessed with a magnificent though sometimes unsubtle voice, the virtuoso proclaimed, "When I sang, people would not say they were going to hear Otello or Tosca, but Del Monaco." He was buried in his Otello costume while the funeral hymns were sung by his own recorded voice...
There is another side to Rossini, one that his contemporaries knew well but that is now being rediscovered. This is the serious Rossini, the composer of such dramas as Semiramide, Otello, Tancredi, Mosè, La Donna del Lago and Guillaume Tell. Several of these works have returned to the repertory in recent years; in the U.S., two of them were given new productions last week. Mosè and La Donna del Lago-produced, respectively, in Philadelphia and Houston-have not been seen in this country for more than a century...