Word: contraltos
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...Golden Horseshoe, the place usually reserved for visiting statesmen and royalty, sat a small, aged lady who had once been a washerwoman in Philadelphia. Her name was Anna Anderson. As a girl, her daughter dreamed of singing in this great gilt and plush house. Now, at 52, Contralto Marian Anderson was realizing the dream. The first Negro singer to appear at the Metropolitan, she was making her debut in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera...
...appears for 27 ominous minutes in order to bring the hero together with another man's wife and to predict his murder. When the curtain rose, Marian Anderson was discovered in a shadowy set, stirring a green-steaming cauldron flanked by a pair of skulls. The great contralto was clearly nervous. Her first notes were parched and shaky, and it was only later, when she reached her smooth upper register, that she began to produce those emotionally charged tones that have moved listeners around the world...
Overanxious. Although one of the Met's most imposing casts surrounded Contralto Anderson, the performance was full of flaws. Tenor Richard Tucker growled out notes that were too low for him, Soprano Zinka Milanov let her voice swoop and squawk through Act II, and when she flipped a disguising shawl over her face, she looked so much like an animated teacozy that the audience snickered. Only Roberta Peters' pearly coloratura and pert presence were thoroughly pleasant. But for Marian Anderson the evening was a soaring personal triumph. There were eight curtain calls. "Anderson! Anderson!" chanted the standees...
...sounds of Archie Bleyer slapping his knees. Sample Mr. Sandman lyric: "Give him a lonely heart like Pagliacci, and lots of wavy hair like Liberace." No. 4 bestseller: Teach Me Tonight (Abbott), with the DeCastro Sisters in a twangy, eagerly enunciated request for seduction. The melody is in the contralto, while the other girls warble country-alto above. No. 11 but climbing fast: The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane (Victor), in which the Ames Brothers croon their kind of bumdadabum, bumbum, bum in a shuffle rhythm, sing the praises of their heroine ("Me-o, myo what a girl") tongue...
...spite of an operation five years ago for removal of a cyst on her esophagus that endangered her voice. Today Contralto Anderson can almost equal the vocal glory of her best years...