This, in other words, is a big personality. Better technique was not the reason for Miss Fabbricini's success better technique just made access to her estimable dramatic talents a little quicker. Every detail was considered and every word and tone invested with theatrical art. Yet Miss Fabbricini sings badly with considerable style, and the Mad Scene, where her technical aberrations remained in abeyance, was a spellbinder.

There are enough problems here to keep a diligent voice teacher busy for a decade. In 'Lucia,' Donizetti offers more of a progression, but this did not ease Miss Fabbricini's troubles: top notes that don't quite get there, soft tones that go flat, blurred coloratura, coarse, husky patches in the middle passage of the voice. In 'La Traviata' this is dangerous, for Verdi's heroine comes out both guns blazing from the opening curtain.

'She's the most important person in opera,' answered another opera-minded critic stationed nearby, and in a tone that made one think toward one's physical safety.Īppearing as Lucia in an intimate, almost cramped, production borrowed from the Welsh National Opera, Miss Fabbricini once again proved herself a slow starter. First a few words of caveat, then some compliments. At the Houston Grand Opera's 'Lucia di Lammermoor' last night, I took what he thought might be a more prudent tack. When the Italian soprano appeared in 'La Traviata' at the Metropolitan Opera some months ago, I ventured a kind word toward one opera-minded critic who snarled a catalogue of vocal deficiencies and then left after Act I. Opera's hot stove league burns year round, and Miss Fabbricini promises to keep a lot of people warm. She is Tiziana Fabbricini, whose talent to enrapture and enrage will provide endless bickering at impromptu intermission symposiums and those long evenings in front of the record player. The god who watches over opera fanatics has blessed them with a new and unusual gift.

Lucia di lammermoor met opera review