Word: basses
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...seemed to many Congressmen at the end of the 1958 session that the man most likely to succeed Texas' 77-year-old Sam Rayburn as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives was Arkansas' courtly, bass-voiced Wilbur Daigh Mills. With his combination of brains, earnestness and Southern charm. Mills was liked and respected on both sides of the aisle. Two years ago, at 48, he became the youngest chairman in the history of Congress' most important committee, tax-writing Ways & Means, and he showed promise of being a great one. He already knew more about...
...firm jaw and conservative business suits, Robert Oliver, 36, is the picture of a successful executive. And so he is: boss of management development at California's missile-making Hughes-Aircraft Co. But when he talks, his voice is that of someone else: an oldtime Wagnerian "black bass," echoing with rare depth and timbre. Executive Oliver's voice is so unusual, in fact, that when Composer Igor Stravinsky first heard him, he added a specially low voice role to his last great work and asked Oliver to sing...
...International Festival of contemporary music last year (TIME, Oct. 6), Stravinsky got his wish. The composer's Threni, id est Lamentationes ]eremiae Prophetae (i.e., Threnody, Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah) is a complex, 33-minute work for six vocal soloists, chorus and full orchestra, and the bass part, ranging from middle B-flat to low E-flat, is the most difficult of all. At Venice, says Conductor Robert Craft, who rehearsed Threni's chorus, the starring role should have been the tenor, "but there was no question that Oliver ran away with all the honors." Last week music...
...Threni. Since then, Oliver has scored other successes singing four Mozart arias with the Santa Monica Symphony, and as Zuniga in the Hollywood Bowl's Carmen. He takes as many as five lessons each week, is now being trained by Strelitzer to sing all of Wagner's bass roles. Oliver insists that he will not turn professional. But he knows that most bassos do not reach their peak until their mid-40s and admits that the idea is attractive. Says he: "There is a great temptation when you have that feeling of raw power over an audience...
...pursues an ebony-eyed half-breed (Susan Kohner) through the three tasteless hours and 14 minutes (with intermission), only to lose her in the end. "Some day I'll find you," he trills after her. And towering woodenly over all the power struggles and polyglot types is big Bass-Baritone Howard Keel, who plays "two-fisted and profane" Simon Peter as if he had never left Carousel...