Word: coventionalism
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...London's Covent Garden Royal Opera House, Swedish Soprano Birgit Nilsson wowed almost everyone-critics and public alike-with her passionate singing of Brünnhilde in Wagner's Die Walküre. But one listener was unimpressed-Critic Peter Branscombe of London's Financial Times, which takes a passing interest in music. Pronounced Branscombe: "She is not yet the perfect Brünnhilde, but her sense of the stage is deepening." That one sour note was enough for Birgit to conclude that London is a town with rocks in its head. Cried she caustically: "I will...
...from his 1929 operatic debut in his native Sweden to his recent re cording of Turandot, displayed a continually improving, distinctive and beautiful voice; of a heart attack; in Siar, Sweden. The heart seizure was at least his fourth since 1959, including one in March at London's Covent Garden while singing Rodolfo in La Boheme. With the Queen Mother in the audience, Bjoerling insisted on completing the performance after only a 30-minute break...
...Rodgers and Hammerstein, it sometimes came as a surprise that Hammerstein had an earlier, equally prodigious career in the operettas of the '20s. Son of Variety House Manager William Hammerstein and grandson of Oscar Hammerstein I, the Johnny Appleseed of grand opera who roamed the world founding new Covent Gardens, Manhattan-born Oscar II contributed to varsity shows at Columbia University (class of '17), was barely in his 30s when he had written the lyrics of Rose Marie, The Desert Song, New Moon and Show Boat. Introducing himself to Broadway immortality with such songs as Indian Love Call...
...Soprano Sutherland started out in an entirely different style, hoping to be a Wagnerian singer. The daughter of a Sydney tailor, she took her first voice lessons from her mother, a "nonprofessional mezzo-soprano," won a number of local competitions and with the prize money decamped for London. At Covent Garden auditions, she learned that the Wagner repertory was not for her: "My voice really isn't heavy enough for that, and I soon understood that I'd been forcing it along a road that was wrong...
...Pennsylvanians, packaged and produced TV shows, even played a season of semi-pro football. But all the time he yearned to "go legit" as a singer, briefly studied voice in New York. An agent advised him to get live dramatic experience, and he took off for England, where Covent Garden promptly offered the role of Radames in A'ida after a single audition. Since then, in London and Amsterdam, he has never sung anything but lead roles, already has offers from Vienna, Hamburg, Tel Aviv. Worries Del Ferro: "A tenor can be ruined vocally and psychologically by going...