Word: guarrera
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Verdi: Otello (excerpts) (Ramon Vinay, tenor; Eleanor Steber, soprano; Frank Guarrera, baritone; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Fausto Cleva conducting; Columbia, 2 sides LP). This anthology includes the best duets and arias of Verdi's best opera. Vinay defends his title as the finest Moor of the day, and Steber makes a pure-voiced Desdemona; Guarrera is not malignant enough to do Iago full justice. Recording: excellent...
...triumph of his own. Singing his first Don José, he proved again that his is probably the finest tenor to be heard today. No actor, he made a brave try to be one, and in the blazing fourth act succeeded. The rest of the cast, notably Frank Guarrera as Escamillo and Nadine Conner as Micaela, rallied to the cause. The orchestra, under Conductor Fritz Reiner, turned in a subtle and glowing performance...
Thereafter, Mozart and a first-rate cast took over. There were no stars: Così is strictly an ensemble opera. But all hands -Eleanor Steber, Blanche Thebom, Patrice Munsel, Frank Guarrera, Richard Tucker, John Brownlee-somehow seemed to sing and look better than ever. They sang in understandable English, and carried themselves with the flawlessly sophisticated artificiality which Così, and Director Lunt, demanded...
...until they were ready to drop, illustrating passages by pushing his,hoarse old voice up into squeaky soprano register and down into roaring baritone range as well. At drill's end each day he dismissed a thoroughly exhausted cast -including Metropolitan Opera Baritones Giuseppe Valdengo (Falstaff) and Frank Guarrera (Ford), Contralto Cloe Elmo (Dame Quickly), Mezzo-Soprano Nan Merriman (Mistress Page) and Soprano Herva Nelli (Mistress Ford). But as they dragged themselves home, the inexhaustible maestro, 40 years the senior of the eldest of them, tramped out with a fresh and fearsome eye to rehearse his weekly NBC Symphony...
...down from the podium, the whole house was on its feet screaming "viva il maestro;" cried one voice, "Non c'e che lui" (he's in a class by himself). For 19 minutes the bedlam continued; the soloists (two of whom, Soprano Herva Nelli and Baritone Frank Guarrera, Metropolitan audition winner, had been brought from the U.S. by Toscanini) took 32 curtain calls. The maestro himself took twelve, at first grinning shyly, then broadly...