Striking Russian opera singer and wife of Mstislav Rostropovich, she was made an 'unperson' during the Soviet era
The soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, who has died aged 86, coloured her performances of opera, and especially of Russian song, so beautifully that full comprehension was not essential for enjoyment. Of course, once you did understand the words, you realised how much meaning she brought to them.
Possessed of a striking physical presence with lustrous dark hair, she was such a natural actor that she became the star of her generation at the Bolshoi opera company in Moscow, forging artistic relationships with the stage director Boris Pokrovsky and the conductor Alexander Melik-Pashaev. And – appropriately for a performer who sang with all the skill of an instrumentalist – for more than half a century she was married to Mstislav Rostropovich, not just a great cellist, but also a considerable conductor and pianist.
Their marriage – her third...
The soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, who has died aged 86, coloured her performances of opera, and especially of Russian song, so beautifully that full comprehension was not essential for enjoyment. Of course, once you did understand the words, you realised how much meaning she brought to them.
Possessed of a striking physical presence with lustrous dark hair, she was such a natural actor that she became the star of her generation at the Bolshoi opera company in Moscow, forging artistic relationships with the stage director Boris Pokrovsky and the conductor Alexander Melik-Pashaev. And – appropriately for a performer who sang with all the skill of an instrumentalist – for more than half a century she was married to Mstislav Rostropovich, not just a great cellist, but also a considerable conductor and pianist.
Their marriage – her third...
- 12/11/2012
- by Tully Potter
- The Guardian - Film News
Egyptian filmmaker Atef Hatata is set to direct a romance/political drama set against the backdrop of the real-life production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida at the 3,500-year-old Pharaonic Temple in Luxor (Egypt) in 1987, titled The Exile, which Cairo-based Zad Communication is producing, in its first international co-production, teaming with Paris-based Mact Productions on the project. The reportedly $2.2 million project will "explore suppression and political corruption under the rule of deposed President Hosni Mubarak through the tale of a female French ceramics expert who goes to Egypt to study the work of a traditional master craftsman." As if...
- 12/11/2012
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
While the Disney musical itself was suspiciously not nominated for Best Musical, the 2000 Tony Awards committee saw it fit to award Elton John amp Tim Rices stylish and emotional rock musical Aida in four significant categories on June 4, 2000 - Best Actress In A Musical for Heather Headley charismatic lead performance, Best Score for Elton John and Tim Rices moving and expressive music and lyrics, Best Scenic Design for Bob Crowleys stunning set-pieces and Best Lighting Design for Natasha Katzs enveloping illumination of the Palace Theatres rightly famous stage. The show has gone on to a rich life around the world and in amateur productions, with generations of theatergoers hooked on the classic story once told in an opera by Verdi in a totally modern and dynamic new way - with some songs we are not soon to forget.
- 5/19/2012
- by Pat Cerasaro
- BroadwayWorld.com
Opera novice Mike Figgis is taking charge of Lucrezia Borgia at the Eno. Trouser parts and Renaissance porn were part of a steep learning curve
Mike Figgis is about to make his debut as an opera director at English National Opera. But his production of Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia is hardly the fulfilment of a dream for the 62-year-old Oscar-nominated director. "I was never an opera-goer growing up. I was a jazz musician. I'd go and see Miles Davis. It would never cross my mind to go to the opera. My only preconceptions about opera were based on clips I had seen, to be honest." He smiles sheepishly beneath his mop of hair. "I only went to my first opera three or four years ago, when my girlfriend took me to the Met in New York."
Figgis is the latest in a long line of Eno's recruits from the worlds...
Mike Figgis is about to make his debut as an opera director at English National Opera. But his production of Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia is hardly the fulfilment of a dream for the 62-year-old Oscar-nominated director. "I was never an opera-goer growing up. I was a jazz musician. I'd go and see Miles Davis. It would never cross my mind to go to the opera. My only preconceptions about opera were based on clips I had seen, to be honest." He smiles sheepishly beneath his mop of hair. "I only went to my first opera three or four years ago, when my girlfriend took me to the Met in New York."
Figgis is the latest in a long line of Eno's recruits from the worlds...
- 1/21/2011
- by Tom Service
- The Guardian - Film News
Just like I did for my previous Shadow and Act holiday music break on Thanksgiving on Duke Elllington (Here), here’s another incredible music moment. The date was January 1985 and opera singer Leotyine Price, after an extraordinary and history making career spanning decades, was making her final operatic performance at The Metropolitan Opera in New York in her perhaps, signature role in Verdi’s opera Aida.
The moment came during Act III in the opera when Aida sings the famous and moving aria O Patria Mia. At the end of the aria, which Price despite singing the role countless time sang it that night more beautifully than during any other time of her career, the audience responds with an thunderous ovation so intense and rapturous that it’s still in the record books of the Met Opera.
But watch Price’s reaction. At first she struggles to control her emotions,...
The moment came during Act III in the opera when Aida sings the famous and moving aria O Patria Mia. At the end of the aria, which Price despite singing the role countless time sang it that night more beautifully than during any other time of her career, the audience responds with an thunderous ovation so intense and rapturous that it’s still in the record books of the Met Opera.
But watch Price’s reaction. At first she struggles to control her emotions,...
- 12/24/2010
- by Sergio
- ShadowAndAct
American opera singer Richard T. Gill has died, aged 82. He passed away in Providence, Rhode Island on Monday, October 25 after suffering heart failure.
Gill, an economist and longtime faculty member at America's esteemed Harvard University, quit his tenured job after discovering his voice through formal vocal training, which he began as an anti-smoking regimen at age 40.
He went on to perform featured roles with the New York City Opera in the early 1970s after a few years of study and later joined the Met, where he sang alongside opera greats including Placido Domingo, Beverly Sills, Kiri Te Kanawa and Shirley Verrett, between 1973 and 1976.
Gill's roles included Panthus in "Les Troyens", Frere Laurent in Gounod's "Romeo et Juliette", the Commendatore in Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and the King in Verdi's "Aida". He retired from opera in the mid-1980s, and went on to publish several academic books, including "Our Changing Population", "Posterity Lost: Progress,...
Gill, an economist and longtime faculty member at America's esteemed Harvard University, quit his tenured job after discovering his voice through formal vocal training, which he began as an anti-smoking regimen at age 40.
He went on to perform featured roles with the New York City Opera in the early 1970s after a few years of study and later joined the Met, where he sang alongside opera greats including Placido Domingo, Beverly Sills, Kiri Te Kanawa and Shirley Verrett, between 1973 and 1976.
Gill's roles included Panthus in "Les Troyens", Frere Laurent in Gounod's "Romeo et Juliette", the Commendatore in Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and the King in Verdi's "Aida". He retired from opera in the mid-1980s, and went on to publish several academic books, including "Our Changing Population", "Posterity Lost: Progress,...
- 10/29/2010
- by AceShowbiz.com
- Aceshowbiz
Jose here.
As I was watching The Story of Adele H. yesterday it struck me how Isabelle Adjani is still one of the few actresses to have been Oscar nominated more than once for performances in a foreign language.
Only twelve actresses have received Best Actress nominations for non-English speaking roles (the Academy usually waits for them to work in Hollywood and then reward them...see Simone Signoret, Juliette Binoche, Ingrid Bergman and Penélope Cruz) and out of these ladies, only three have repeated; Adjani (75 and 89), Liv Ullmann (72 and 76) and Sophia Loren (61 and 64).
Out of them only Ms. Loren won.
This bears repeating and celebrating today, more than any other time, because it happens to be her birthday.
She was born, wait for it, 76 years ago in Rome where she spent her childhood dancing, playing the piano and migrating to the country after she was injured during an attack in WWII.
As I was watching The Story of Adele H. yesterday it struck me how Isabelle Adjani is still one of the few actresses to have been Oscar nominated more than once for performances in a foreign language.
Only twelve actresses have received Best Actress nominations for non-English speaking roles (the Academy usually waits for them to work in Hollywood and then reward them...see Simone Signoret, Juliette Binoche, Ingrid Bergman and Penélope Cruz) and out of these ladies, only three have repeated; Adjani (75 and 89), Liv Ullmann (72 and 76) and Sophia Loren (61 and 64).
Out of them only Ms. Loren won.
This bears repeating and celebrating today, more than any other time, because it happens to be her birthday.
She was born, wait for it, 76 years ago in Rome where she spent her childhood dancing, playing the piano and migrating to the country after she was injured during an attack in WWII.
- 9/20/2010
- by Jose
- FilmExperience
Chicago – When the initial production of Elton John and Tim Rice’s “Aida” made its foray to the Broadway stage, following what was surely a tempestuous artistic adolescence, the public hurrah with which it was met signaled the birth of two eminent stage relations. First, that of John’s with both Broadway and West End investors, a collaboration that has far outstretched the boundaries set forth by “The Lion King”.
Second, and perhaps more ardently, was “Aida’s” indication of what was to be an unpredictable dance between the Walt Disney Corporation and the mouse’s previously untapped territory, the stage. Technically ambitious if artistically clumsy, “Aida”, with its droves of pubescent followers, always appeared content with its hollowed bellwether position.
Play Rating: 4.5/5.0
Forgoing the more recent and bellicose film interpretations, Lookingglass has once again mounted its decidedly percipient excursion down Carroll’s rabbit hole. What “Alice” wants in vicious...
Second, and perhaps more ardently, was “Aida’s” indication of what was to be an unpredictable dance between the Walt Disney Corporation and the mouse’s previously untapped territory, the stage. Technically ambitious if artistically clumsy, “Aida”, with its droves of pubescent followers, always appeared content with its hollowed bellwether position.
Play Rating: 4.5/5.0
Forgoing the more recent and bellicose film interpretations, Lookingglass has once again mounted its decidedly percipient excursion down Carroll’s rabbit hole. What “Alice” wants in vicious...
- 7/21/2010
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
The ability to suspend disbelief has always been the operagoer's stock-in-trade. You have to be able to squint just right to imagine that the 40-something soprano who could best you at arm wrestling is a callow, put-upon waif.Or that the wooden tenor with the spindly legs has the charm to make those comely village girls swoon in their dirndls. Sometimes the magnificence of the voice alone will prime your imagination. But sometimes, beautiful notes are not enough.The opera world surely felt vindicated, then, when Brazilian-born baritone Paulo Szot won the 2008 Tony Award for best actor in a musical for his performance as Emile de Becque in the Lincoln Center revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "South Pacific." Like Szot, many of today's opera stars pride themselves on being fluid, believable actors. Back Stage spoke recently with Szot and others about how they have developed the acting side of their craft,...
- 5/20/2010
- backstage.com
Booing -- an honored tradition you might have thought had disappeared at the Metropolitan Opera as finally as the echoes of bravos past -- is back. Luc Bondy's new Tosca reaped sustained hoots when the director joined the opening night cast at the curtain call a few weeks ago. Mary Zimmerman was resoundingly catcalled as she stepped out to link arms with Natalie Dessay after unveiling last year's La Sonnambula mangling. Not to mention last week's yowling after Daniele Gatti's Aida conducting. No, I'm not about to make a case for booing, though in theory I'm not against it. I sometimes think it's well deserved. What keeps me from supporting it as a response as worthy in certain situations as are applause and the epidemic standing ovation is that often those who've earned the boos...
- 10/7/2009
- by David Finkle
- Huffington Post
On Tuesday, July 14, during Seattle Opera's Annual Meeting at McCaw Hall, General Director Speight Jenkins announced that the company's 2008/09 Artists of the Year awards went to mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe for performing the role of Amneris in Verdi's Aida in August 2008, and to François Racine for his stage direction of Seattle Opera's double bill of Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle with Schoenberg's Erwartung in February and March, 2009.
- 7/15/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
Acting COACHINGThe following individuals or companies specialize in one-on-one acting coaching. Private coaching is also available from the majority of those listed in the "Acting Schools and Classes" category. Coaches in other specialties, such as musical theatre, voiceover, or young performers, are listed in those categories.Jules Aaron(323) 660-7342Aaron, the former head of of graduate programs at CalArts and U.C. Riverside, is an award-winning director and acting teacher. He has won directing awards from the L.A. Drama Critics Circle and Back Stage. He coaches actors for specific auditions, develops appropriate monologues, and conducts cold reading sessions. By audition only.Phyllis APPLEGATEOne-On-One(323) 655-5167Emmy-nominated character actor Applegate studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute on scholarship. She offers ongoing individual performance coaching combining Strasberg's methods with her own. Applegate coaches actors on audition techniques, cold readings, character creation, scene study, and text interpretation.The Audition COACHWest Hollwood, www.myspace.
- 3/25/2009
- backstage.com
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