This new production of Bellini’s Norma by Jürgen Rose (sets, costumes, stage direction, and lighting) to honor Edita Gruberova’s first staged assumption of the title role was taped in January and February of 2006 in Munich. It does neither the opera nor the soprano any favors. In most ways, it’s a pretty gloomy affair.The sets are minimal angular wood constructions comprised of a step or two here and there and a not-very-high platform or two that the players can climb up and down. Everything is dark. The costumes are modern but only can be defined as such because they evoke no particular era; Norma’s rich blue outfit for the first scene, complete with scarf/hood that effectively covers everything but her apple-shaped face and hands, allows for little expressivity.
Anita O'Day celebrated her 50th year as a professional singer at Carnegie Hall on Friday evening with a program that reviewed her big-band years with Gene Krupa and Stan Kenton and her work with small groups over the past 30 years.
Miss O'Day was relaxed and casually high-spirited, cutting through the formality that a performance in Carnegie Hall suggests.
And when she and Roy Eldridge remembered what they once did with ''Let Me Off Uptown'' with Gene Krupa's band, they both showed that the spirit that created that performance was still there, even though Mr. Eldridge now only sings his part and no longer blows the crackling trumpet he once did since a heart attack five years ago forced him to give it up…