Verdi

After only four years, Verdi's Il Trovatore has returned to Washington National Opera's lineup, primarily to provide an opportunity for homegrown favorite Denyce Graves to try out the role of hyper-vengeful gypsy Azucena for the first time. Any occasion to hear this compelling mezzo is welcome, and the production has another major attraction as well - Bulgarian soprano Krassimira Stoyanova, making her company debut as Leonora. Hers is one of the most interesting, colorful and sensitive voices I've heard in some time.

With more than 800 season subscribers and an international array of musicians and dancers on its performance roster each year, the Naval Academy's Distinguished Artists Series has become a cultural force to be reckoned with throughout the region. That will remain true in the 2004-2005 season, which begins Sept. 14 at the academy's Alumni Hall with Yuri Temirkanov conducting his Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in performances of Schumann's Piano Concerto and Brahms' monumental 1st Symphony.

Rejoice! The Muslim's pride is buried in the sea." Ordinarily, when the flawed hero of Verdi's Otello delivers that rousing entrance line, fresh from a decisive battle with his enemy, we are safely situated mentally and visually back in the 15th century with Venetians and their jealousy-prone Moorish general. A very different, even uncomfortable picture greets audiences for a new production by Summer Opera in Washington. The opening scene is an aircraft carrier with a deck full of troops in desert camouflage gear.

Adding a multimedia dimension to a classical concert is nothing new, but an imaginative and sensitive application can still seem fresh. There was an extraordinarily compelling example over the weekend. I've heard performances of Verdi's Requiem by more seasoned choruses and orchestras, and certainly heard them in better spaces than Catholic University's Pryzbyla University Center, but none that moved me more deeply or left me more unsettled than the one given there Sunday night. Created a few years ago as "a concert drama" by Murry Sidlin, dean of CU's school of music, this Defiant Requiem - Verdi at Terezin combines a presentation of the profound score with visual and spoken documentary.

In the classic film comedy A Night at the Opera - when, as one wag put it, the Marx Brothers do to Il Trovatore what should be done to Il Trovatore - hardly a note of Verdi's tragic tune-fest is left undisturbed. Why pick on this poor opera? It's just ripe for ridicule and parody, thanks to an ever-so-slightly convoluted plot that registers rather high on the implausibility chart and concludes with a high body count. And yet, Trovatore always survives. In any decent performance, it is still remarkably easy to be swept along, both by the swift undercurrent of the music and the heated emotions behind this story of love and vengeance.

On July 7, 2003, MRS. VERDIE IRENE CABNESS. On Wednesday, friends may call at VAUGHN C. GREENE Funeral Services EAST, 4905 York Road from 3 to 8 P.M. On Thursday, Mrs. Cabness will lie in state at Zion Baptist Church, 1700 N. Caroline Street, where the family will receive friends from 11 to 11:30 A. M with services to follow. Inquiries to 410-433-7500.

Logically speaking, an opera in concert form is all wrong. No scenery, no costumes, no lighting; the orchestra sitting up on the stage, instead of in a pit. Can such a thing really be opera? More to the point, can it possibly be as rewarding as a theatrical production? You bet it can, as the Washington Concert Opera demonstrated to brilliant effect Tuesday night at the Kennedy Center with Verdi's Stiffelio. Although occasionally revived, it remains one of the composer's least appreciated creations.

In another of those rare and fortuitous alignments of local musical forces, the two greatest choral works of the 19th century will be performed in the space of two days this week - Beethoven's Missa Solemnis by the Baltimore Choral Arts Society and Verdi's Requiem by the Handel Choir of Baltimore. Some people who adore Beethoven's symphonies, concertos, etc., pass over his sacred music. Likewise, you can find devoted Verdi opera fans who don't get as enthused about his setting of the ancient Latin Mass for the Dead.

To bring off Giuseppe Verdi's perennial favorite, La Traviata, you need three excellent soprano voices. That's the easy part. The hard part is that they all must emanate from the same throat. For Violetta Valery - the flighty Parisian courtesan who falls for handsome, aristocratic Alfredo Germont, only to let him go at his father's request - is no ordinary role. Violetta the Act I party girl must be nimble and lyrical enough to sprint through the fearsome coloratura passages of "Sempre libera," her hyperactive ode to free love.

Annapolis Opera conductor and artistic director Ronald J. Gretz and his cast of singers are in the final week of rehearsal of Verdi's La Traviata. The second fully staged opera of this 30th anniversary season is to be presented March 21 and 23 at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts. Often described as the world's most popular opera because of its compelling love story and its relatively small cast and orchestra size requirements, La Traviata is also the most contemporary Verdi opera. Having premiered six years after the death at age 22 of Marie Duplessis, the woman that Alexandre Dumas loved and described in his La Dame Aux Camelias, Verdi's opera was criticized when it opened in Venice in 1853 for being too modern.