Word: arias
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Anna Russell Sings? (Columbia). A woman's-club-type lecture-recital on how to be a concert singer that is sometimes too true to be funny. Examples include a noisy aria for singers with "resonance where the brains ought to be," art songs for singers with "artistry but no voice." modern music for tone-deaf singers ("the more off-key, the more contemporary...
...program ended with a soprano aria and a violin concerto by the Leroy Anderson of the Eighteenth Century, Frederick Telemann. Lyrical and witty, it is easy to understand why such pieces were so popular in their...
...nights later, at a second performance, Tenor Baum redeemed himself magnificently. Extra police were in the balcony to keep Florentines from violence if he fluffed again. The big test was the fourth act, where the tenor has an aria lasting ten minutes and running the entire tenor scale. As Baum began to climb to the high notes, the usually noisy galleryites were quiet as mice. When he got to the stratospheric climax and crashed out the finish, the audience applauded its hands raw, cheered itself hoarse. Tenor Baum grinned like a schoolboy...
...Every movement of the body, even the turning of the pages, becomes important," explains Laughton. "You mustn't move, except for a startling effect." As the tempo increases, an actor will slip from his stool and move to center stage in time for his big prose "aria." As theater-wise Director Jed Harris pointed out: "By appearing to read, but actually knowing their parts by heart, they make the whole thing come alive. In a theatrical production, the power of illusion would be much more difficult." Playwright J. B. Priestley, who saw the show in Brooklyn, was inspired...
Anne English, from the New England Conservatory, brought stature to the title role. Her big, well-disciplined voice and perfect diction made her the outstanding soloist of the evening. She sang the "Endless Pleasure," aria about the joys she expects to find in heaven as Jupiter's mistress, with Iyric fluency. The poorly danced, unimaginative ballet sequence that accompanied her, however, was distracting...