Word: leona
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...Soprano Leona Mitchell's career goes boom...
...gold curtain rises on Verdi's La Forza del Destino at the Metropolitan Opera this season, it does more than unveil the first act set: it also reveals a bright new star in rapid ascent. As Leonora, Soprano Leona Mitchell, 34, sings with smoldering intensity. Each performance mingles sweet lyricism with raw-edged emotion that brings audiences to their feet, shouting bravas and tossing bouquets. From a dutiful but passionate daughter to the pathetic, penitent recluse at the end of the opera, Mitchell recalls Leontyne Price in the quality and dramatic power of her performance...
...town 65 miles northwest that of Oklahoma City whose residents are usually more intent on dealing in wheat, poultry and oil than nurturing opera singers. Her father, a Pentecostal minister, played a number of instruments by ear, and her mother, a nurse, was also a pianist. Leona inherited their musical gifts, singing in the church choir and dabbling with the violin. As a senior in high school, she once learned an aria from Aida by rote, since she could not read music. To please a teacher, she auditioned for the music department at Oklahoma City University; to her astonishment...
...Merola victory in 1971 gave Mitchell a niche in the San Francisco Opera's summer apprentice program and, more important, a place in the heart of the company's then general director, Kurt Herbert Adler. Two years later, Leona sang her first Micaela in Bizet's Carmen at the San Francisco Spring Opera Theater. In 1974 she also won a $10,000 Opera America grant, and used it to move to Los Angeles to begin studies with Voice Teacher Ernest St. John Metz, still her coach and mentor...
Literal-minded brutes that they are, computers do exactly what they are told. No more and no less. But youngsters of even the most tender age are surprising educators by showing they can master the beasts with startling ease. Computer Software Expert Leona Schauble of the Children's Television Workshop (producers of Sesame Street) recalls getting an eight-year-old boy at Manhattan's Little Red School House started on a simple computer game. The game generated an image of a frog that would leap up and catch a butterfly, provided the right buttons were hit. After...