Word: mezzo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Benjamin Britten: Spring Symphony (Soprano Sheila Armstrong, Mezzo Janet Baker, Tenor Robert Tear, St. Clement Danes School Boys' Choir, London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Andre Previn conductor, Angel). Berlin born and Hollywood bred, Previn continues to show a surprising flair for English music. Here he leads a zesty performance of a piece that, like so much English music, makes a strength of its provincialism: it has medieval and folk echoes, strikes a resolutely winsome and pastoral note, and is steeped in native literature (with settings of verses by poets from Herrick and Blake to Auden). Britten composed it when...
...Evening of Gershwin and Cole Porter-- Cynthia Weinrich, mezzo-soprano; and Joseph Diamond, piano; Quincy Dining Hall...
Trying to win prestige for his network, Paley even laid siege to the Metropolitan Opera, whose president and chairman, Financier Otto Kahn, was outraged that anyone would want to hear a mezzo-soprano through the static of the air waves. At last Paley persuaded him to come to his office and hear a performance he had piped in. "We heard the overture," he relates, "and several minutes of singing into the first act and still no one reacted. Then Kahn leaped to his feet and exclaimed: 'I can't believe it. It's simply marvelous . . . and just...
Richard Strauss: Salome (Soprano Hildegard Behrens, Mezzo Agnes Baltsa, Tenor Karl-Walter Bohm, Baritone Jose Van Dam, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan conductor, Angel; 2 LPs). With Karajan, the orchestral music comes first, even in opera. Here he conducts a vibrant, sensuous performance of Strauss's lurid opera. Behrens as Salome may lack the cruel edge of Birgit Nilsson's performance on London. But Behrens' pure voice contrasts chillingly with Salome's lust, while Van Dam's ringing Jochanaan is a saintly counterpoint in a savage world...
Prokofiev: Ivan the Terrible (Mezzo Irina Arkhipova, Baritone Anatoly Mokrenko, Narrator Boris Morgunov, Ambrosian Chorus and Philharmonia Orchestra, Riccardo Muti, conductor; Angel; 2 LPs). This oratorio, arranged from Prokofiev's score for Eisenstein's two-part Ivan the Terrible film, makes splendid melodrama. Muti conducts a dashing blend of ominous march rhythms, pagan-sounding brass flourishes and pealing Russian bells...