Word: coloraturas
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Musetta in La Bohème, she was gay in her waltz song, movingly sympathetic with the dying Mimi in the last act. Last week she sang her first Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro. Her tone, as ever, was as pure and clear as a mountain stream; her coloratura was as neat as needlepoint. A singing actress who loves "to play on the stage"-and has found that she can at the Met-she made Susanna a maid any Figaro would fall...
Impresario Hurok, whose eyes are seldom shut, has a more-than-esthetic interest in Miss Munsel. Eight years ago, listening at his radio one afternoon to the Met Auditions of the Air, he heard 17-year-old Patrice singing coloratura arpeggios in a voice as full of rills as a country brook, and lustily topping off high Fs. It was not the greatest voice he had ever heard, but coloraturas were scarce, particularly with Lily Pons, the Met's coloratura queen, making herself scarcer on wartime tours. Hurok went to see Patrice, and liked what he saw-a confident...
...audience was her true love, and it began to look as if this too-young bridesmaid of the Met was never to be a bride. The next two seasons, she sang Juliette in a voice that glittered in the coloratura passages but was thin and forced in the big dramatic moments. Her first Lakmé, the classic role for coloraturas, was capable but uninspired, and left most listeners wishing for Lily Pons...
...Martin left the show, but turned it down because she would have had to sing it for a year. She also turned down a lead in Broadway's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, "because I didn't want to scrub floors for a year." * Nonmusicians define a coloratura voice as one that plays musical chairs among all the right notes without ever sitting down. * Marion Talley was five months younger when she made her debut as Gilda...
...Toscanini training with the Salmaggi and San Carlo opera companies gained her much experience but little fame, success in San Francisco meant a step closer to her dream of the Met, plus new confidence. Said she: "Lily Pons came back to my room and congratulated me. When one coloratura says something nice to another, you can be sure they mean...