Word: dictions
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...ovatorio is a small work of Handel, but exceptionally lovely, especially in its word-coloration effects. That it did come through to the audience was a tribute to the finesse vocally and in diction of the combined choruses, the solid if unexciting virtues of bass soloist Paul Tibbetts, and the brilliant singing of Soprano Adele Addison...
...were uniformly good, with a few of their performances among the best of this season. Faith Brook, in the part of Gloria, the strong-willed daughter whose scientifically developed resistance to the opposite sex bends alarmingly under pressure, displayed astonishing maturity of style, resonance of voice, and sharpness of diction. Style was her real perfection: she resembled in that department Miss Pamela Brown of last year's "Importance of Being Ernest," only with more real finish and sublety to her characterization than the latter...
...members, dressed in smart gabardine battle-jacket uniforms (they call them "costumes" now), de Paur's Infantry Chorus whisked expertly through a diverse program from 16th Century Palestrina to U.S. contemporary Composer Paul Creston, who has arranged works especially for them. Critics gave them good marks for diction, blending of voices and clarity of line, and for a welcome versatility of material which the Don Cossack choruses lack. Wrote the New York Herald Tribune's Virgil Thomson: "[This choir] could, without half trying, raise the whole level of our current taste in semi-popular music. It is that...
...opera broadcast of the year. He had hand-picked his singers, rehearsed them relentlessly in his dressing room, accompanying them on the piano himself. There were few big bright names in his cast-he preferred to use singers he could mold in his own way: stressing first expressiveness, then diction, and lastly voice. He had heard the Philadelphia La Scala Soprano Herva Nelli sing last summer, and announced, "This is Desdemona." She told him she had never sung the role. Toscanini snapped: "Good. I'll teach you myself." He drilled the Metropolitan's brilliant new baritone, Giuseppe Valdengo...
Less successful was "On The Plains, Fairy Trains," which suffered from almost non-existent diction, and Schubert's "Valses Nobles," where sloppy entrances spoiled an otherwise well-sung piece. Bach's "Happy Lovers," victim of an uninspired performance in Sanders, again suffered from a lack of spirit until the final bars. The last selection, a medley of 'Cliffe songs, proved the comedy fare of the evening, as several hitherto unsung gems brought down the house...