Word: mezzos
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...this very stage in year past, Fred Gwynne '51 was unforgettable at the Stage Manager in Our Term and Big The Ref. and also managed a couple of Shakespeare's eccentrics. But the major serious role of King Claudius is beyond him. Above the level of mezzo-piano his voice takes on an unpleasant ring. And he falls to imbuse the King with sufficient intelligence and efficiency. It is strange, too, that a man who has murdered his way to the throne and is hanging onto it for dear life never once appears with a crown on his head...
...Alice Ford, Soprano Katia Ricciarelli sang with a lustrous tone that matched her resplendent blond beauty and sparkling stage presence. Hers is a voice that can both beguile with gentle lyricism and blaze with the incandescence of a high-spirited diva. Other noteworthy performances came from American Mezzo Brenda Boozer, who made a lively Meg Page, and Soprano Barbara Hendricks and Tenor Dalmacio Gonzalez, who sang touchingly as the young lovers. British Director Ronald Eyre kept the action crisp; he was correctly content to execute the composer's wishes, rather than impose a fashionably idiosyncratic view...
...opera probably should have been called Verdi's Radames instead of Aida. Never mind that more important roles are assigned to the eponymous soprano heroine and her mezzo nemesis, Amneris. In San Francisco last week, the attention and the money (up to $750 for scalpers' tickets) was on the tenor. Of course, the man who was singing Verdi's Egyptian captain for the first time in his career was no ordinary performer: it was the portly mink-coat model, frequent guest on the Tonight show, American Express-card pitchman, would-be movie star and, these days, part...
...called for in the score. Elsewhere, Pavarotti's eyes clung to the safety of the prompter's box and the conductor's baton, leaving most of the acting to Soprano Margaret Price (battling a bronchial infection but singing well nonetheless) and Stefania Toczyska, a sultry Polish mezzo and a star of the future, whose Amneris blazed with passionate fury...
Franz Liszt Birthday Bash--Jane Struss, mezzo-soprano, David Witten and Hung-Kuan Chen, plano, and the New England Woodwind Quintet; music of Chopin, Liszt and Beethoven; New School of Music, 25 Lowell...