Word: contralto
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...husband off to work, her two children off to school, then sat down to glance through a New York newspaper before starting on the breakfast dishes. In the paper that day there was printed a unique notice: Wanted, a soprano to sing Ai'da. . . . Margaret Matzenauer, famed contralto, had been engaged to sing the role of Amneris (Egyptian princess) with an otherwise obscure troupe in Manhattan's gaudy Mecca Temple on May 9. But to get itself a soprano for the slave girl's part the management had decided to resort to an open contest, the winner...
...ghost of an old man with a sabre scar across his cheek hovered over Boston's Symphony Hall last week. In his honor Conductor Sergei Koussevitzky had prepared a six-day Bach festival and undertaken to give two complete performances of the great B Minor Mass. Contralto Margaret Matzenauer had come to do some of the soloing in her deep, vibrant voice. Singers from Harvard University and Radcliffe College had worked for weeks polishing the difficult choruses. Conductor Koussevitzky was keyed to a pitch where no amount of effort was too much to spend in the memory of Major Henry...
Canadian-born Mezzo-soprano Jeanne Gordon, formerly of the Metropolitan Opera, was added to the victims of intensive reducing. Contralto Gordon lost 30 lb. in three weeks, then collapsed and was taken to a sanatorium...
Deems Taylor was a successful professional writer long before his music began to sell. His libretto, free from operatic archaisms, is excellent. Yet (as in other English opera) there were bits that sounded funny and forced. Contralto Grace Divine sang: "What a lovely ball!'' Contralto Marion Telva sang back: "You think so? Thank you!" Longer passages adapted themselves more smoothly to the flow of music, as in Peter's first-act narrative. Excerpt...
...back-slapping way in which Roxy masters ceremonies. In his tense, high-pitched New-Yorkese he makes every skit seem a bargain. Typical Roxy introduction: "Hello Everybody! Now you're going to hear the greatest little girl. . . ." The "greatest little girl" in Roxy's present gang is Contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink, 69, who will perform twice daily throughout the tour...