Word: mezzos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Mahler: Symphony No. 3 (Martha Lipton, mezzo-soprano; the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein conducting; Columbia, two LPs). A radiant reading by Bernstein of Mahler's mammoth, six-movement "musical poem...
Teresa Berganza, the young Spanish mezzo-soprano, carried on this tradition in particularly disheartening fashion last Thursday night, filling the entire second half of her recital with a remarkably undistinguished lot of songs by Granados, de Falla, Montsalvatge, and the Brazilian Villa-Lobos. There were cradle-songs and tormented Flamenco--like songs, and two or three varities of that hardy perennial of the concert platform, the "delightful" song about a timid or a talkative lover, which ends with an exasperated little yelp from the singer (and polite titters from the old ladies in the audience). On a balmy night...
...fairness to Miss Berganza, it must be said that she did her best work of the evening with these songs. She has a fresh and lovely Mezzo-soprano, bright in color and quite brilliant at the top, though without the excitingly "chesty" low notes that are the stock-in-trade of so many mezzos. Her singing of the Spanish group was of course expert--all done with lovely tone, the right moods struck and the vocal difficulties encompassed. Yet there was none of that real vibrance and passion which alone can make these songs engaging, none of the personal excitement...
...Mezzo Bumbry actually made her U.S. recital debut last winter-in Washington. Acting on the enthusiastic advice of friends who had heard the young singer in Europe, Jackie Kennedy invited Bumbry to sing at the White House after a state dinner (TIME. March 2). Daughter of a St. Louis railway clerk, Grace Bumbry became interested in music in a fashion familiar to many American Negroes -singing in a church choir. Scholarships took her to Boston University, Northwestern, and finally to Santa Barbara's Music Academy of the West to study with Lotte Lehmann, the great German-born soprano...
...Europe in 1959, was chosen after a single audition to sing the lead in the Paris Opera production of Carmen and the following summer became the first Negro ever to sing at the Bayreuth Festival. But she still does not consider herself a Wagner singer. "My style," says Mezzo Bumbry, "is really Verdi. This is my heart and soul...