Word: birgit
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...opera as roughly equivalent to a gargle with sulphuric acid. Modern composers, singers say, don't know how to write. They ruin voices by demanding odd and un-vocal sounds. Though this attitude is widespread, there is evidence that it is less a matter of fact than fashion. Birgit Nilsson, though she sings no contemporary opera at all, points out that composers are usually ahead of performers. Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, she observes, was abandoned as un-performable, "yet nowadays no dramatic soprano can be considered accomplished if she is incapable of singing an Isolde." Beverly Sills...
VERONA (through Aug. 17). Italy's oldest summer opera, now in its 47th year, offers Turandot, Aida and Don Carlo in an acoustically perfect Roman amphitheater. Tenors Carlo Bergonzi and Placido Domingo, Sopranos Birgit Nilsson and Montserrat Caballé highlight the excellent casts...
Sweden's Birgit Nilsson is the world's reigning Wagnerian soprano. Austria's Herbert von Karajan has no superior as a conductor of the Ring cycle. Alas, two great melodies do not always pro duce a single pleasing harmony. Ever since she began singing under his demanding baton, Miss Nilsson's relation ship with the Salzburg-born maestro has become increasingly sour. Among other things, she has been irked by his insistence on unusually time-consuming rehearsals and is not too keen about his dark, brooding lighting effects, which often keep the singers in the shadows...
...their voice. But careers move so fast now adays that few singers can afford to interrupt them. The result, says Melchior, is that "the breed has practically vanished." Most of the tenors who attempt these heroic roles are a bit jugendlich (youthful-sounding). Meantime, great dramatic sopranos like Birgit Nilsson are Isoldes in search of Tristans, and some of Wagner's finest music is scant ed in the repertory...
...winsome, fat slut, but the virtuosity of her singing and acting for the rest of the opera made it easy to believe every man in sight found her irresistible. Her sensuous voice moved with perfect flexibility from the dark richness of a Leontyne Price to the brilliance of a Birgit Nilsson. The weight of her low register in the Tarot Scene was miraculous, and the delicacy of her flirtation dance before Jose no less so. Her characterization omitted no details, from the Third Act baiting of Jose to the seductively hoarse suggestion of "L'amour...