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Product Description ------------------- In this 1975 production from the Wolf Trap Festival, Beverly Sills is joined by John Alexander, Susanne Marsee, and Richard Fredericks in a stunning live performance. .com ---- Roberto Devereux, the last and probably the greatest opera Gaetano Donizetti composed for the San Carlo Opera House in Nes, is based on the intense, tangled relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex, who was beheaded for treason in 1601. The role of the queen is one of the strongest in the bel canto soprano repertoire. In this video (essentially a New York City Opera production transed to the Filene Center at Wolf Trap performing arts center outside Washington, D.C.), Beverly Sills gives one of the great performances of her career. She had been singing the role in New York for several years, to great critical accl, and had made it her own, though her voice was beginning to lose some of its freshness when this performance was filmed in 1974. In discussing the soprano stars of bel canto opera, we find a 180-degree polarity--at one extreme, the dramatic potency and vocal problems of Maria Callas; at the other, the vocal agility and smoothness of the dramatically unconvincing Joan Sutherland. Midway between these extremes is Sills, who acted almost as well as Callas, sang almost as beautifully as Sutherland, and balanced the two sides of her art more effectively than either. John Alexander is solid in the title role. Susanne Marsee is relatively problem-free once she gets warmed up, and the supporting cast performs capably. Julius Rudel conducts with a good sense of style and proper balance between voices and orchestra. --Joe McLellan P.when('A').execute(function(A) { A.on('a:expander:toggle_description:toggle:collapse', function(data) { window.scroll(0, data.expander.$expander[0].offsetTop-100); }); }); From the Back Cover ------------------- In the summer of 1974, The Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association began videotaping a number of live operatic and concert performances at the Filene Center in Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts in Vienna, Virginia, for telecast in an innovative new series entitled In Performance at Wolf Trap. The series met with overwhelming success, and set the stage for the many live performance telecasts which have since followed. In 1975, In Performance at Wolf Trap presented Beverly Sills in perhaps her most accled portrayal, that of Queen Elizabeth I in the Donizetti rarity Roberto Devereux. When Miss Sills first sang the role at the New York City Opera in 1970, Winthrop Sargeant wrote in The New Yorker: "She was Elizabeth, from the extreme pallor of her makeup to the royal sweep of her train. It was a characterization that I shall never forget. The combination of skills she brought to her role made this a historic moment." Daniel Webster wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Miss Sills sang the towering role with such authority and portrayed Queen Elizabeth with such fervor that the opera, unstaged [in New York] for more than 125 years, now is one of the theatrical events of the year." Beverly Sills: Queen Elizabeth Richard Fredricks: Duke of Nottingham John Lankston: Lord Cecil David Rae Smith: Sir Walter Raleigh John Alexander: Roberto Devereux Susanne Marsee: Sara Filene Center Orchestra and Wolf Trap Company Chorus, Julius Rudel, conductor Live performance, 1975 Approx. 132 minutes See more ( javascript:void(0) )