Word: contraltos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...group's songsmith, and what his lyrics lack in depth his melodies make up in lilting appeal. Phillips' wife Michelle, a willowy ex-model, is the spiraling soprano; Denny Doherty, 24, sings a secure tenor. Anchor girl is rotund (200 lbs.) Cass Elliot, 23, whose ringing contralto gives the quartet its oomph. Together they build a buoyant vocal blend that floats easily through intricate harmonic shifts, toying with rhythms that are as fresh and bracing as ocean breezes. The quartet is now on a highly successful college tour, stands to make $1,000,000 this year...
...MAMAS AND THE PAPAS (Dunhill). The hottest new group of the past year consists of Contralto Cass Elliot, Tenor Denny Doherty, Soprano Michelle Phillips and her husband John Phillips, baritone and songwriter. Like their first album, If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears, this one has relatively sophisticated sliding harmonies and an adjustable beat that appeals not only to kids but also to other mamas and papas. The group even works over that song of middle age, My Heart Stood Still...
...York City Opera's opening production of Handel's Julius Caesar last week was just minutes old when Contralto Maureen Forrester fixed hand to forehead, shuddered "Woe unto me," and fainted dead away. Contralto roles are like that, full of weeping and despair, the tragic counterweights that support the romantic leads. Forrester, making her U.S. operatic debut, flawlessly performed the role of Cornelia, effortlessly pouring out great billows of plum-shaded singing that served as a lush backdrop for the vocal scrollwork of the other principal singers. Where they thrilled, she caressed. Predictably, the heaviest applause went...
Maureen Forrester didn't mind. She long ago resigned herself to the fact that, woe unto her, the contralto in opera is the unsung singer. Of the precious few roles available to the contralto, most are skimpy caricatures of degenerate kings-roles written in olden times for castrati-or "the other woman." "In opera," she says, "the high-frequency voice has it. A contralto has to sing the whole night before anyone is impressed." It is just as well. Forrester is 5 ft. 9 in. and weighs 180 Ibs.; there are not many male singers who could make...
...Song." The ash-blonde daughter of a Montreal cabinetmaker, Forrester has a temperament to match her warm contralto. She is a big bundle of Scotch-Irish joviality, relaxes before a performance almost to the point of limpness. "Nervousness is bad for the breathing," she explains. Besides, "I don't have to live my reviews. I have something else to go home to"-meaning a husband, Canadian Conductor-Violinist Eugene Kash, and five children, aged two to ten. While most female opera singers shun childbirth for fear that it will some how hurt their voices, Mama Maureen insists that...