Word: ra
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...around the bare stage. Within an hour the seven-member pocket opera company was proving again what it had already shown in 148 other stops of its tour through the French provinces: the liveliest lyric drama in France today comes not from the creaky, crustaceous old Paris Opéra, or even from the more lighthearted Opéra-Comique, but from the weary Renault...
...long last, France decided that the French Revolution had all been a big mistake (some readers will say "I told you so"). Caught in a parliamentary impasse to end all parliamentary impasses, the National Assembly decided to abolish the republic and restore the monarchy. Hour-ra! Vive...
...ready for Elizabeth and her husband. First it was decided that they should sleep in Napoleon Bonaparte's huge bronze and mahogany bed; then, perhaps because of Napoleon's hatred of England, the idea was abandoned. Landscape gardeners lined the Avenue de l'Ópéra with palm trees and changed its name for the occasion to Boulevard Méditerranéen. The managers of Maxim's, a favored haunt of Elizabeth's own playful great-grandfather, Edward VII, completed plans for three days of all-English menus, to the unconcealed horror...
...really Parisians-frothy, but a little stylized for all the sugar-sweet music. Made famous overnight by Louise in 1900, Composer Charpentier spent the rest of his life vainly trying to imitate himself, died in 1956 without having produced another success. In this performance by the Paris Opéra-Comique, an excellent cast is headed by Soprano Berthe Mommart, whose light-textured voice fits the title role like a sheer Dior gown...
...version of Goethe's Faust at La Scala in 1868 only to see it booed off the stage after two performances because of its experimentation with Wagnerian techniques. Intellectually more challenging than Gounod's lovely but un-Faustian version, more dramatic than Berlioz' rambling opéra de concert, it suffers from a tendency to bombast. In this cut version the work gets a rather tame performance, but it still bears the mark of a fine musical-literary mind and is well worth the listening...