Word: contralto
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...years ago, pretty Contralto Kathleen Ferrier had made a name for herself at Britain's Glyndebourne Opera Festival -and the name was Orfeo. Last week, after her first U.S. performance of Gluck's 187-year-old, seldom heard opera Orfeo ed Euridice, Manhattan operagoers understood...
...Town Hall, Contralto Ferrier had no topnotch Glyndebourne production behind her, although she did have a familiar Euridice opposite her: U.S. Soprano Ann Ayars, who had sung the role with her in England and on records.#&134; But Conductor Thomas K. Scherman's Little Orchestra (38 players) and 40 singers from the Westminster Choir got into the graceful spirit of Gluck's music with the overture, and stayed in it to the last gaily triumphant note. It was, however, the dramatically restrained passion of Kathleen Ferrier's singing, in a voice that is even and full through...
Dark-eyed Elena Nikolaidi, assured and lovely in a pale taffeta gown, stepped out on the stage of Manhattan's Town Hall, composed her hands and began to sing. Her voice, ranging from a mellow low contralto to a brilliant mezzo-soprano, glided through songs by Gluck, Haydn, Schubert, Rossini, Mahler, Ravel and De-Falla; the performance came to an end with the Sleep-Walking Scene from Verdi's Macbeth. The audience shuffled their programs to look at the name again. Thirtyish Elena Nikolaidi, making her U.S. debut and almost unknown outside Athens and Vienna, had achieved...
Wrote Herald Tribune Music Critic Jerome D. Bohm in next morning's paper: "In 20 years of music reviewing and in twice that number spent in listening to most of the world's best singers, I have encountered no greater voice or vocalist ... a true contralto of enormous range . . . Where have the Metropolitan's talent scouts been that they have neglected to engage [Elena Nikolaidi]?" Said the Times: ". . . Rare brilliance . . . eminent musicality . . . velvety smoothness." By 10 a.m., phone calls were buzzing in from Impresario S. Hurok, Chicago, San Francisco-and the Met itself...
Mahler: Songs of a Wayfarer (Eugenia Zareska, contralto, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Eduard van Beinum conducting; English Decca, 4 sides). A good place to start piercing some of the more heavily veiled mysteries of Mahler. The London Philharmonic is led by Amsterdam's highly capable Conductor van Beinum. Recording: good...