[Met Performance] CID:244770
Aida {829} Metropolitan Opera House: 04/3/1976.
(Debut: Ljiljana Molnar-Talajic
Review)
Metropolitan Opera House
April 3, 1976
AIDA {829}
Giuseppe Verdi--Antonio Ghislanzoni
Aida....................Ljiljana Molnar-Talajic [Debut]
Radamès.................James McCracken
Amneris.................Mignon Dunn
Amonasro................Louis Quilico
Ramfis..................Jerome Hines
King....................Richard T. Gill
Messenger...............Charles Anthony
Priestess...............Marcia Baldwin
Dance...................Susana Aschieri
Dance...................William Badolato
Dance...................Jack Hertzog
Dance...................Naomi Marritt
Dance...................Stanley Perryman
Dance...................Ellen Rievman
Conductor...............James Levine
Review of Irving Kolodin in the Saturday Review
In the later "Aida"s of the Metropolitan Opera's season, New York made the acquaintance of a newish dramatic soprano from Yugoslavia named Ljiljana Molnar-Talajic. By "newish" is meant that she has previously appeared (also in Philadelphia), and with several of Europe's leading opera companies. She is somewhat short and of stocky build, but there is no doubt that she is, truly, a dramatic soprano, with a bright, strong voice capable of piercing Verdi's brassiest instrumentation. She can also reduce it skillfully to the dimensions required for such phrases as "Numi, pieta" - (in two different circumstances). What she cannot, at present, do is keep all the vowels in Italian from sounding like "e." This gives her verbal enunciation a somewhat exotic character amid the more correct practices of what happened to be an all-North American cast.