Word: flicka
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...these days for the speaker -a radiantly pretty mezzo-soprano from New Jersey who did not attend her first opera until she was 16, could not read music until 20 and probably would never have entered music school if a friend had not dared her. Her pals call her "Flicka," but to the world of music, she is Frederica von Stade of the Metropolitan Opera and a clamoring chorus of other companies in the U.S. and Europe...
Laser Beam. Her voice is only part of her appeal. At 31, Flicka is a trim size 8, with a modest but becoming bosom, rich brown tresses and a stage presence that somehow combines innocence and the poise of a pro. Says she, with disarming modesty: "I find solace in the fact that because of the ephemeral nature of the art, my performance, no matter how bad, cannot do permanent damage to Rossini...
...Flicka loves applause, yet takes the shortest curtain calls possible. She is perhaps the least career-hungry diva in opera, yet few singers have gone so far so fast. It was Rudolf Bing who plucked her out of the Met opera studio when she was 24 and gave her a contract. Three years later she surprised everybody by taking a season off to broaden her experience in Europe. There, in the spring of 1973, she scored a smashing success as Mozart's Cherubino in a new production of The Marriage of Figaro at the Paris Opera, with Sir Georg...
...Flicka's current range of roles is in some ways limited. Her voice carries like a laser beam into the farthest reaches of an opera house, but because it is not large she shies away from the heavy Verdi and Puccini, not to mention Wagner. She may be ready for some of that music in five to ten years, although she herself doubts it. For now it is enough that she sings Mozart (Cherubino in Figaro, Dorabella in Cost fan Tutte) with exquisite taste, control and sheen. Or that she can blend the impetuous and the spiritual so deftly...
That she does. Growing up in Somerville, N.J., Flicka was a tomboy. Horses were a special passion, and her nickname came from her fondness for the popular novel about a horse, My Friend Flicka. Her father, who was killed in action in World War II, came from a family of polo players. Her mother traces her ancestry back to Jonathan Trumbull, an early governor of Connecticut. At one point after she was widowed, her mother ran a combination restaurant and catering service with the help of Flicka and her brother. Flicka now easily throws together an impromptu meal for dozens...