Word: coloraturas
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Down with Melodrama. Ironically, the real reason for Cenerentola's long neglect has been another quality of Rossini's score: it demands the coloratura style throughout. The men as well as the women are called upon for whirlwind runs, tumbling arpeggios and fluttering trills. Today's singers (except for a few sopranos with eccentric larynxes) consider coloratura about as easy as tightrope walking, and few bother to take the necessary strenuous training...
...curtain parted on Rossini's frisky operatic romp, An Italian Lady in Algiers, and the crowd saw Coloratura Dobbs, cast as the dusky charmer Elvira, in stage center, surrounded by sumptuously costumed Algerian nobles. Her part had no arias, but her bright, sure voice led sweetly and gracefully a series of swiftly paced quartets, quintets and sextets. When it was all over, she got a round of warmhearted applause that was echoed next day by the press...
...Then came a first prize in Geneva's 1951 International Music Competition (other noted winners: the Metropolitan's Nell Rankin and Victoria de los Angeles). Finally, in Holland, she sang the lead in Stravinsky's Nightingale, and the British magazine Opera flatly called her "the outstanding coloratura of her generation...
With her sure voice and mounting experience, Soprano Dobbs is ready for almost any coloratura role that may come her way. Most of the eight she already knows (e.g., Gilda in Rigoletto; Olympia in Tales of Hoffmann) call for light-skinned singers, but she has no objection to wearing light makeup. "If white singers make up to play Aida or Otello," she says, "why shouldn't Negroes be able to make up for roles like Lucia di Lammermoor...
...never believe anything until it happens," says Mattiwilda Dobbs. But she is already scheduled to sing the big coloratura role in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos at the Glyndebourne Festival next summer. Her records of Mozart's Zaide (Poly-music) and Bizet's Pearl Fishers (Renaissance) are winning top notices. Impresario Sol Hurok, who is bringing her back to the U.S. next season, has his eye fixed on the Metropolitan for Mattiwilda...