Word: lyric
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Pavarotti's voice is the "bel canto" voice par excellence: light, thin, with a pleasant floating quality: truly lyric. In contrast to tenors like Jon Vickers or James McCraken, who sing as if they had swallowed cooking knives, Pavarotti's sings effortlessly. Nothing is worse than a singer who strains. But unfortunately, Mr. Pavarotti, like too many other lyric tenors, suffers from the identity crisis of a vocal lightweight. Not satisfied with the lyric repertoire, he wants to conquer the dramatic roles; Manrico, Radames, Canio. He could make no greater mistake. Nothing destroys a lyric tenor more quickly or completely...
...even within his own specialty, of lyric singing, Pavarotti cannot match many of hs predecessors. For all its ease, the voice simply does not have the sheer beauty of a Gigli or a Caruso or a Tagliavini. These were "golden voices"; the sound was not light and thin, but light and full, with richness and texture to the sounds they produced; they soothed and caressed your ears. Pavarotti's voice is pretty, but not as startlingly beautiful...
...goes the legend of the most subtle, intellectual and prolific baritone of the past 25 years. If there is a Kunstlied (art song) Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau has not recorded in that mellifluous, burnished voice, it is not worth the vinyl. He has of late taken up conducting, and his lyric versions of Schubert's Symphonies Nos. 5 and 8 ("Unfinished") can be found on an Angel LP. Yet Fischer-Dieskau has found the time and talent for a new career: literature. Last year he produced Wagner and Nietzsche, a lively account of the celebrated battle of composer and philosopher...
...deja vu, especially since almost all the songs in the "Revue" were performed in An Evening with Comden and Green, which had two runs at the Loeb earlier this year. An Evening of Bernstein passes over the contributions of his two collaborators, putting an unjust emphasis on Bernstein's lyric-writing genius. On the whole, this Evening at the Agassiz suffers from the inevitable comparison with Comden and Green. The two professionals knew how to put songs and patter together in a continuum; they had the ability to make the most rehearsed gesture appear spontaneous. But the spoken interludes...
...anthology of lyric poetry including poems of WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, ROBERT FROST, EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON, T.S. ELIOT and RAINER MARIA RILKE...