Word: dictional
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...Melisande (Suzanne Danco, Pierre Mollet, Heinz Rehfuss; L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande conducted by Ernest Ansermet; London, eight sides LP). Maeterlinck's fairy tale floating along the stream of Debussy's consciousness. The voices of the principals are all excellent and so is their French diction; Ansermet's subtle direction could scarcely be bettered...
Anne English, from the New England Conservatory, brought stature to the title role. Her big, well-disciplined voice and perfect diction made her the outstanding soloist of the evening. She sang the "Endless Pleasure," aria about the joys she expects to find in heaven as Jupiter's mistress, with Iyric fluency. The poorly danced, unimaginative ballet sequence that accompanied her, however, was distracting...
...farce set to thin musical fare, and it needs all the guffaws it can get. But most of the time, only the strenuous antipasto English of Basso Salvatore Baccaloni in the title role could be clearly understood. The English-speaking singers mumbled through their mother tongue as if their diction could be taken for granted...
...Stage Director José Ruben, veteran of both opera and Broadway (and once Sarah Bernhardt's leading man), made Manon move through all its five acts with proper sentiment and subtlety. In the pit, French Conductor Jean Morel kept the pace clean and precise. And the singing, French diction included, of City Opera's young Americans could hardly have been better...
...outstanding as the heroine, Oriane. She displayed a voice of gorgeous tone, rich and exciting, and used it with considerable dramatic skill; Adele Milhendler also deserves equally warm praise for her performance. Edward Zambara was as satisfactory looking a villain as one is likely to see, but his clear diction was somewhat spoiled by a thick American accent. It was evident that the pronunciation in general was carefully worked over, but even so the words were difficult to grasp. John Patterson, as the hero Amadis, was the only character who was often less that satisfactory; he was bothered throughout...