Word: birgit
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Superstar concert tour and the LP provided Mary Magdalene and Pilate. "There's a special kind of singer needed for rock opera," O'Horgan explains. "It's much more gut, more street. We have vocal ranges in this show that no one could produce without a mike, not even Birgit Nilsson...
...gongs. The whales were accompanied by whooping brass glissandi, glockenspiels, tam-tam and bass drum. When it was all over, the audience applauded enthusiastically, though it remained unclear whether their applause had been for Composer Hovhaness or the whales themselves. Backstage, the whale voices had already been nicknamed "Beverly," "Birgit" and "Cesare...
Once in a generation there appears an artist who by virtue of voice and temperament seems to symbolize an entire school of singing. Today, Birgit Nilsson is the archetypal Wagnerian Soprano, just as Jussi Bjoerling was the ultimate Italian Tenor during the 1940s and '50s. Both are Swedish, proving that national style has nothing to do with nationality. Since the death of Leonard Warren in 1960, no one man has been acknowledged by critics and conductors as the quintessential Italian Baritone. Now, though, there may be a legitimate claimant to the title. Like Warren and Lawrence Tibbett before...
...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...