Word: arias
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...know John by sight know him by sound. Many a time during the six months he has lived and worked there, strollers have been startled to hear his rich tenor voice ring out from behind a hedge, have slowed their pace to hear an operatic aria rising above the snip-snip of his clippers. But few of the townspeople of Irvington (pop. 3,272) know that only eight years ago "John" was the first tenor of Moscow's Bolshoi Theater, and a "Merited Artist" of Soviet Russia...
...opening night last month a glamorous audience paid up to $25 a seat to hear La Bohème. The performance was doomed from the start. Derisive whistles greeted the tenor's vain struggles for the high notes. After the soprano's first-act aria, a critic cracked: "They call me Mimi, but my name is Brünnhilde...
Most of the selections have been chosen so that they do not duplicate commercial recordings. The bass aria, "O ruddier than the cherry," is an exception. Obviously it has been included for the very good reason that Paul Tibbetts is singing it, but it is one of the dullest pieces the Handel ever wrote. Marguerite Willauer has much better material for her fine soprano voice in "As when the dove laments her love" and "Heart, the seat of soft delight...
...stage with true aestheticism. Walls' face was a delight to behold as it changed to meet the mood. But credit for the best single performance from a list of many excellent ones must go to Elizabeth Spencer, who was suitably padded with pillows to play Lady Jane. Her aria in the beginning of the second act-done with a bass fiddle-brought down the house...
...singers are different today, although since his retirement from the Met in 1939 he has tried to teach newcomers the old ways. "Nowadays," says he, "there are very few great voices because everybody is in such a hurry to become a star. They win a contest by singing one aria - and they are stars before they are ready...