Word: coloraturas
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...soprano called La Bastardella sing an "unbelievable" C in altissimo, an octave above the C in alt (high C) which is the difficult top of many a soprano's reach. Later in his Magic Flute, Mozart wrote for the Queen of Night-one of the most difficult coloratura soprano roles sung today-nothing higher than F in alt, or three and one-half tones below C in altissimo. Less than a century after Mozart's death, Jenny Lind produced effortless C's above high C. Among high coloraturas of the past half century, Luisa Tetrazzini...
...thought she was a mezzo-soprano. So did her first teacher, although a subsequent teacher lightened her voice so that, when Conductor Bruno Walter heard it, he gave her small lyric soprano parts at the Charlottenburg Opera. After her accidental discovery of C in altissimo, Soprano Sack perfected her coloratura. When, as a member of the able Dresden Opera, she sang in the world première of Richard Strauss's Schweigsame Frau (The Silent Woman), and later in a revival of his Ariadne Auf Naxos, Composer Strauss wrote in extra fioriture for her nimble vocal chords...
Bess Marguerite de Varel Mensendieck, a sculptress and a coloratura soprano with an M. D. degree from the University of Zurich, set up a school for exercises at Potsdam. By-&-by she had similar schools all over Germany and in Austria, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, The Netherlands. She became the best known physical culturist south of Sweden. Eventually she returned to the U. S. and. though her vogue has been quieter here, her system of functional exercises is being used at eminently respectable schools like Finch (Manhattan J, Greenwich Academy, Stoneleigh-Prospect Hill (Greenfield. Mass.), Laurel (Cleveland), Ogontz (Ogontz...
Much of the complaint fell upon the pretty Belgian head of Vina Bovy, the coloratura soprano who stepped into the part of Gilda in Rigoletto 24 hours before the performance when Stella Andreva caught a cold. Critics had liked her better four days earlier when she made her Metropolitan debut singing Violetta in Verdi's La Traviata. Even then they felt a little uneasy about her pitch. In Rigoletto her colorless, inexact rendition of the great Caro Nome and her literal, lifeless acting convinced few that she was the outraged, unhappy daughter of a court fool. Lawrence Tibbett...
Other shifts: Jean de Reszke & Lauritz Melchior, from baritone to tenor. Dramatic Soprano Lilli Lehmann, like Galli-Curci, began as a coloratura...