Word: coloraturas
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...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...
...deny that, from a social point of view, Lakmé was practically ideal: it didn't matter too much if latecomers missed the first act, or spent the last act in the bar on the Grand Tier floor-the real attraction was the second-act "Bell Song," a coloratura showpiece and practically Pons's theme song. Lakmé itself is a kind of earlier Madama Butterfly-involving the love of an Indian priest's daughter for an officer in the British Army-but far inferior in libretto and music...
...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...