Word: bel
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Taking the Plunge. Thomas has not yet graduated into the ranks of the full-fledged heldentenor. Basically, this requires a voice with the coloring of a baritone and the range of a tenor. Unlike the bel canto tenor who must employ vocal embroidery, the heldentenor must possess the raw power and endurance to sing the weightiest and longest roles in opera. The supreme tests are Wagner's Tristan and Siegfried, which require 65 and 90 minutes respectively, as compared, say, with the 22 minutes for Tosca. Lauritz Melchior, the last great heldentenor, did not attempt Tristan until...
...standards, Brazil's Highway BR-14 is certainly no Indiana turnpike or New York State Thruway. Meandering 1,350 miles from Belém to Brasilia through the jungles and scrub of Brazil's wild interior, it is barely two lanes wide; the surface is dust in the dry season, mud in the wet, and some of the ruts could swallow a Volkswagen alive. Yet in the eyes of former President Juscelino Kubitschek, who built the road between 1956 and 1960, BR-14 is "the highway of dreams" for underdeveloped Brazil, and the means to "a new civilization...
...still is Anápolis. In 1950 it was a sleepy back-country town of 18,000 at the end of a railroad from São Paulo. Today it boasts 80,000 people, and last week construction crews were putting the finishing touches on four 15-story buildings. Belém, at the northern terminus of the road, has developed from a ragged river port into a thriving commercial center of 430,000, shipping jute, pepper and rubber to markets in the south...
Redeeming Feature. Kubitschek, currently in self-exile in Manhattan, is a man without honor in Brazil. President Humberto Castello Branco's revolutionary government has suspended the ex-President's political rights for ten years on charges of corruption in office. Nevertheless, Castello Branco has tripled the Belém-Brasilia budget to $9,000,000 yearly for maintenance and road improvement. Even so bitter a Kubitschek critic as Carlos Lacerda, the acid-tongued ex-governor of Guanabara (Rio), gives the ex-President his due. "I'm an old enemy of Juscelino's," Lacerda told some road...
...prima donnas are made of, held the final high note beyond everyone else on the stage and, with an arrogant toss of her head, strode off still singing full throttle. Her warm, artfully shaded voice is not as large as Birgit Nilsson's, nor does she favor the bel canto filigrees of Joan Sutherland. Instead she infuses a role with an earthy energy reminiscent of Maria Callas, a quality which, above all else, excites...