Word: cantos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...wrote the famed castrato soprano Pier Francesco Tosi in his book Observations on the Florid Song, which was the basic handbook for opera singers during the 18th century. In those days singers freely ornamented composers' scores with their own improvised embellishments in a style known as bel canto (literally, "beautiful singing") To today's purists, who worshipfully preach note-for-note fidelity to the composer the style is strictly bellow canto. Nevertheless, performances in opera houses and on recordings are now being laced with so many variations on old arias that Tosi would sing...
...alleys, mud-floored huts, hovels built from packing cases. Some 8,000 pushcarts roll through Tondo in search of trash and scrap paper, the collection of which is the district's principal occupation. Tondo's kids are a combination of the worst in American and Asian street gangs: the "Canto Boys," with their distinctive madre tattoos, would as soon knife a stranger as zip-gun a passing police...
...macabre, Gesualdo-like modulations (superbly sung in the production); Phedre's pathetic scena, "Cruella mere des amours": the Act IV Hippolyte-Aricie duet, "Ah! fautil e un jour," with its revealing major-minor key shifts, and Aricie's closing "Nightingale Aria," one of the first soprano vs. flute bel canto trials...
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...
...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...