(3 of 4)
HENZE: DER JUNGE LORD (Deutsche-Grammophon; 3 LPs). While most aficionados consider Violetta, or Sigmund, or even the sadistic Turandot a familiar acquaintance, or even a friend, few can cozy up to Hans Werner Henze's heroes and heroines. In The Young Lord, the hero turns out to be an extremely well-trained monkey, and the moral of the tale seems to be that the modern world is so fad-conscious that people will imitate practically anyone with a social passport, even if he is an ape in disguise. It might sound like comedy, but the work is filled with bitter misery. Henze has said: "This music fashions, out of itself, its own new dwellings from which it will emerge and explain itself only for those who can show it a suitable visiting card." Those with the right visiting cards will be gratified by the excellent cast from Deutschen Oper Berlin, plus a libretto with color photos of Gustav Rudolf Sellner's lavish original sets and costumes, including the young lord's remarkable monkey suit.
PONCHIELLI: LA GIOCONDA (London; 3 LPs). German tradition holds that opera is not worth listening to unless conductor, orchestra, text, music and singers all work together to produce one whole art. Italians, on the other hand, are partial to individualistic vocalism that is sensually beautiful as well as expressive. This record leans toward the Italian style. Renata Tebaldi, Robert Merrill, Marilyn Home and Carlo Bergonzi are all equipped with voluptuous voices singing this perennial "singers' opera," complete with massive arias and roof-hitting dramatics. Tebaldi, the star of them all, has compensated for the loss of the famous velvet in her voice by inserting pulsating hysteria. Sometimes the effect works, sometimes not. Conductor Lamberto Gardelli makes a valiant effort to keep everybody's bombastics under control.
VERDI: ATDA (Angel; 3 LPs). Who can be nostalgic for the Golden Age while singers like Franco Corelli and Birgit Nilsson are around? Both are near legends—though they are still in their prime. Both have very big voices. And both sing as if they were competing for top billing—which of course they are. Whether Verdi envisaged his heroic opera the way Nilsson and Corelli do it is another question. In any case, the rest of the cast is well-nigh unnoticeable behind all that star sound, and Zubin Mehta's conducting is efficient but not especially revealing.
CINEMA
CHARLIE BUBBLES. Albert Finney proves that he can direct as well as act, but leaves some question as to whether he ought to, in this stupefyingly familiar film about a writer who has descended into a hell of modern materialism.
POOR COW. Actress Carol White is totally convincing as a woman who can find a bit of fun and some fatuous hope in the flat she shares with a thief.
THE PRODUCERS. Zero Mostel as a Broadway producer caricatures Merrick not as David but as Goliath in this often disjointed and inconsistent yet frequently uproariously funny film directed by Mel Brooks.
THE GRADUATE. Director Mike Nichols doesn't quite pull a Babbitt out of the hat in this sophomoronic film about the disillusioning encounters suffered by an idealist college grad (Dustin Hoffman) when he returns home to Los Angeles.
BOOKS
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