Word: contraltos
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Perhaps the production's chief flaw was the lack of training in the soloists. Although Soprano Irma Cooper had a beautiful tone, she lost control when singing either loudly or high. Less noticeable in Eilen Repp, contralto, and Harold Haugh, tenor, the lack of control again appeared in Bass John Metcalf. His usual clarity deserted him almost completely during the intricate chromatics of the aria, "Why do the nations so furiously rage together...
...have suffered war losses"). Then, running down the First Lady's social list, she announced that Mrs. Truman would attend a tea on Oct. 12 given by the Daughters of the American Revolution. In 1939 Mrs. Roosevelt had quit the D.A.R. because it refused to let Negro Contralto Marian Anderson sing in the Society's Constitution Hall; now the D.A.R. was embroiled in a similar controversy with publicity-seeking Negro Pianist Hazel Scott. But the girls tactfully asked no questions about Mrs. Truman's racial opinions...
...Africaine) have always been sung by whites. The staid Met says that its board welcomes "all operatically competent singers." By the Met's definition, those who would not make the grade include: Tenor Roland Hayes, Baritones Paul Robeson and Todd Duncan, Soprano Dorothy Maynor and Contralto Marian Anderson-five of the best voices in the U.S. or any country...
...life rather than cause her political embarrassment in Berlin; a scene in a raw Western U.S. town, in which Anna Maria calms the beavered natives by executing, as Salome, the hootchy-kootchy; a scene in which she reforms the quondam Confederate, turned local bandit, by her snarling contralto rendition of Der Tannenbaum (Maryland! My Maryland!); San Francisco in its heyday, which includes 1) an infatuated Russian multimillionaire (Walter Slezak), 2) the attempted pirating of a Chinese junk, 3) its sagacious proprietor, who speaks Oriental proverbs in Edinburr dialect, 4) a duel with rapiers on a blood-red floor...
Heroine of the second night-for specially invited G.I.s of the Allied nations-was Marlene Dietrich, who came from the front, sang in her sultry contralto, danced with a delirious private, and was virtually torn to pieces trying to get to her dressing room...