Word: accompanists
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Maggie Teyte opened her mouth wide to sing it fortissimo but not even the faintest pianissimo came out. At the end of the piece, the audience bravoed noisily. Maggie Teyte seemed to feel that some of the applause was more kindly than genuine. She turned to her accompanist, snapped a "To hell with them" and signaled for the piano to take the last ten measures again...
When she sent her accompanist out for a glass of water, it was too much for the New York Times's stodgy critic Olin Downes, who chided her for overacting "both histrionically and vocally." Says Maggie: "That Olin Downes! When I sing about fire, I want people to see the buildings and hear the screaming, and he says 'go away and don't bother me.' He has no soul, no imagination. He is stone cold, like a piece of mutton...
Grace Moore, clowning her way through her annual song recital at Chicago's Orchestra Hall, giggled and gagged, told the audience her accompanist was "scared to death," got him so muddled that Tribune Critic Claudia Cassidy walked out. "I left in sheer commiseration," she wrote. "I don't know what his nerves can stand, but I know my own limitations...
Pennsylvania-born Blanche was set to be an office worker-until, at a ship's concert on a trip to Sweden with her Swedish-born parents, she found her career. To a fellow passenger, Marian Anderson's onetime accompanist Kosti Vehanen, her untrained mezzo-soprano sounded like unmistakable opera material. Vehanen shouted his enthusiastic opinion to anyone who would listen. When Blanche got home, her boss's parents agreed to finance her training...
...Accompanist. In Springfield, Ill., Sheriff Walter Hagler listened carefully, then broke up a prisoners' quartet and took away the discordant saw with which one of the singers was cutting through the bars...