Word: birgit
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Vienna Philharmonic, Georg Solti again heaps high all the sumptuous glories of the Wagnerian orchestra, at the same time charging every passage of Wotan's family fracas with drama. The lush and beautiful singing is alive with emotion, the stars being an international assemblage of accomplished artists: Birgit Nilsson as Briinnhilde, Regine Crespin as Sieglinde, Christa Ludwig as Fricka, and Hans Hotter as Wotan. Not quite so great but still outstanding are James King as Siegmund and Gottlob Frick as Hunding...
...physiques have dwindled, psyches have flourished. With so much riding on every note, singers today tend to treat their voices like some strange visitor who, if not properly managed, will suddenly desert them. Birgit Nilsson lubricates her pipes with beer, Eileen Farrell quaffs warm Coca-Cola and follows it with burping exercises, Gwyneth Jones takes hot and cold showers and yawns a lot. The rage for eating raw garlic is so popular among German tenors (a cashew-sized sliver two hours before performing is supposed to strengthen the heart) that one indignant Italian soprano recently went onstage with an aerosol...
...singers continue their eating and drinking while performing, following the tradition of Soprano Giulia Grisi, who, whenever she had to fall onstage, always landed near a trap door so that a stagehand could sneak her a glass of beer. In the Metropolitan Opera's current production of Electra, Birgit Nilsson's search for Agamemnon's ax is really a quest for a ginger ale stashed under a rock...
Courtly as he is, Bing never stands on ceremony. In his dealings with singers, he trades on intuition, whether it is in negotiating a $3,000 difference in salary with Richard Tucker by flipping a coin (Bing won) or in putting Birgit Nilsson at ease before a performance by bursting into her dressing room wearing a Beatle wig (Nilsson screeched). The unexpected, the outrageous are among his chief weapons. On a recent tour in Cleveland, Bing desperately wanted to persuade an exhausted Franco Corelli to substitute for an ailing tenor. He went to Corelli's hotel, got his room...
...federal and New York State taxes sound like anything but glowing arias, but they muddle through-rather brilliantly at times. "Singers will do anything to evade taxes," explains Bing, "so I have to cope with the names of their dogs listed as secretaries, and of their wives as managers." Birgit Nilsson once paid Bing a double-edged tribute by listing him on her income-tax report as a dependent. At all events, as Italian Soprano Mirella Freni says, "The Met is marvelous experience, a theater where one works with tranquillity in a warm, almost friendly atmosphere without nervousness. In Italy...