Word: bassos
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...than anyone else at the Metropolitan. What's more I can sing [a continuous perfect high note] for 13 seconds without taking in more air." Tenor Jan Peerce countered with his boast: "I can hold my breath one minute and 13 seconds with my mouth full of pebbles." Basso Norman Scott said he could better Peerce by at least one second, and the contest was on. Winner: Scott with a time of one minute, three seconds. Last in the field: Coloratura Pons, who had to gasp for air after 39 seconds...
...Telephone Hour (Mon. 9 p.m., NBC). Basso Ezio Pinza...
...singers were in good voice. All of them acted their parts with lively bumptiousness, which was appropriate enough, since Gianni Schicchi is broad farce set to thin musical fare, and it needs all the guffaws it can get. But most of the time, only the strenuous antipasto English of Basso Salvatore Baccaloni in the title role could be clearly understood. The English-speaking singers mumbled through their mother tongue as if their diction could be taken for granted...
Died. Leon Rothier, 76, French-born, grand-mannered basso at the Metropolitan Opera (1910-39), who sang a record-breaking 1,687 performances in 75 roles, was best known for his Mephistopheles in Gounod's Faust; of a heart ailment; in Manhattan. After retiring at 68, he gave voice lessons, ran a radio program, brought the house down at a soth anniversary concert in 1949, admitted: "My voice is still very good, you know, but it can't compare with the golden voice I once...
First-nighters sat through the first act in a ho-hum mood, but the second brought them to life with Billy's fight with one of Claggart's henchmen and Claggart's bitter monologue rejoicing in his own depravity -sung by Basso Frederick Dalberg. Britten's triumph was the third act, in which Captain Vere (Tenor Peter Pears) walks to Billy's door, accompanied by long-measured chords, to deliver the death verdict. When the curtain fell for the act, there were seconds of silence, and then shouts of "Bravo, Benjy." Billy's fourth...