Word: coloraturas
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Lily Pons fares no better: "The singing of a coloratura is a cross between cackle and a whistle, and performers on the vocal high wire and trapeze are utterly devoid of musical interest to me." O'Connell attacks Lily ("The Pons That Depresses") and husband André Kostelanetz with a waspish malice that a few, backhanded compliments fail to soften. He dislikes their "hand-decorated and chromium-plated" music, inveighs against their commercialism, even gossips that Lily's high heels are designed "to distract the eye from rather generous dimensions in the horizontal planes...
...Snaps. Her voice was squeaky at D, though Mrs. Strickler had touted her pupil's range as G over high C. Her middle range was rich and sensitive, but faded on outside registers, even though she was singing into a mike. In La Fauvette, she got in some coloratura fireworks...
Playwright White's aim is not a great deal better, partly because he does not know what he's aiming at. What seems designed as normal-voiced domestic drama all at once ascends to the shrillest coloratura. But though the plot becomes incredible only toward the end, the main characters are unconvincing almost from the start. Mr. White is too much tempted by the passing moment. Save for an occasional taut scene, the play scores only through its playing: Otto Kruger is excellent as Little A, Jessie Royce Landis forceful as his ten-twent-thirt mate...
...musical revue, The Fairy Queen. In 1692 Composer Henry Purcell and an anonymous playwright dashed off a travesty on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Its original seven hours now whittled down to three, The Fairy Queen was a lavish, confusing show full of dancers, coloratura arias, drunken comics and a Chinese grand finale. To put it on, Covent Garden had to call in its Sadler's Wells Co. and eight professional actors...
...fact was that seldom-performed Lakmé had been chosen this year to welcome 42-year-old Lily Pons back into the Met fold. She is still the most competent coloratura in the business, and the Met was ready to admit it, after trying to build up an unproved fledgling, 18-year-old Patrice Munsel while Lily flew off with her husband, Conductor Andre Kostelanetz, on U.S.O. tours...