Word: coloraturas
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...1950s, among other roles, she almost singlehanded revived the ornate bel canto repertory of Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini. (Bel canto, literally "beautiful singing," more properly applies to the whole vocal art of making the fiendishly difficult sound easy.) It is this repertory that Beverly and her chief coloratura rival, Joan Sutherland (see box, page 81), have since then mastered. Beverly comes by the bel canto tradition not only through her admiration for Callas, but through years of study with the late Estelle Liebling. Miss Liebling was, professionally speaking, a direct descendant of the 19th century's Mathilde Marchesi, the influential...
BESIDES Beverly Sills, the other leading heiress to Maria Callas' artistic legacy is the Australian coloratura soprano Joan Sutherland. Sutherland, 45, sings many of the same roles as Sills and, like Sills, was a late bloomer-she burst onto the international scene with a Lucia di Lammermoor at Covent Garden in 1959. Otherwise the two are a study in contrasts: separate conjugations of greatness. Each has her passionate following. Ask a Sutherland admirer about Sills' voice and he might say, "Pretty, but thin." Ask a Sillsian about Sutherland and he might retort, "Beautiful, but boring." Still, all would...
Sutherland began by thinking of herself as a dramatic soprano. She feared high notes until her husband, Conductor Richard Bonynge, tricked her into extending her upper voice by playing her music in higher keys. Originally bright and youthful-sounding, her voice darkened as she transformed herself into a coloratura. There is a suggestion of Callas' famous middle register in Sutherland's vocal center-a tone that sounds as if the singer were singing into the neck of a resonant bottle...
...Sills by the company's director, Julius Rudel. He conducted it adoringly and surrounded his prima diva with an all-star cast headed by Mezzo Beverly Wolff, Baritone Louis Quilico and, of course, Domingo. Amply returning the favor, Sills proved again that she is unsurpassed as a coloratura. With gestures ranging from near-hysteric twitching to imperious slaps, she brought the Virgin Queen's tragedy to dramatic life. More important, she turned Donizetti's ornate vocal scrolls into ear-ravishing laments of the utmost sadness...
Fourth Man. "Martina has never changed," remarks Met Coloratura Reri Grist, a longtime friend. "She is the same person whether she talks to royalty or the janitor." Perhaps that is because when she was a child in Harlem, her father sometimes had to eke out his income as a mechanical engineer by working as an apartment house superintendent. Her mother occasionally hired out as a domestic. Martina was bright enough to pass the entrance tests at a demanding but free special high school run by Manhattan's Hunter College. Later, she went through Hunter itself in three years, majoring...