Word: mezzos
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Sure as the winter solstice, every music season brings to U.S. concert halls a U.S.-born singer who has already made it big in Europe. This season's entry is Mezzo-Soprano Grace Bumbry, 25, who made her Manhattan concert debut last week in Carnegie Hall. Her performance of Duparc songs, Italian songs, Schubert, Brahms, Liszt and Strauss lieder and Negro spirituals was eloquent exposition of a native talent that has been too long coming home...
...large woman with an erect carriage, Mezzo Bumbry stood a trifle self-consciously with hands clasped and head thrown back. But when she nodded to her accompanist and opened her mouth, her rich, bronzelike voice seemed to flood the hall. Her singing was brilliant and ringing at the top; she impressed her audience with an absolute control that permitted her to fade from full voice to soft-spun pianissimi that hushed the hall to admiring silence. If her attitudes sometimes seemed stagy, she was completely natural and quietly moving in Deep River, Sweet Little Jesus Boy, Stand...
...vegetables began flying in Act II when Don José finished singing the Flower Song. Mezzo-Soprano Resnik, unable to make her voice heard, regally glared at the howlers in Paradise and cried: "Silence!'' The swells in the orchestra shouted "Bravo, Carmen!" while the locals in Paradise shouted "Behead her!" After four minutes Mezzo-Soprano Resnik managed to quiet the gallery and proceed. Although the rest of the performance was a triumph for both Resnik and Martell, the hecklers obstinately showered the stage with leeks after the final curtain...
Stravinsky: "Les Noces," "Renard" and "Ragtime for Eleven Instruments" (Mildred Allen, soprano; Regina Sarfaty, mezzo; Loren Driscoll and George Shirley, tenors; William Murphy, baritone; Donald Gramm and Robert Oliver, basses; Igor Stravinsky conducting; Columbia). A brightly performed addition to the growing collection of Stravinsky's works conducted by the composer himself. At Stravinsky's own request, Composers Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss and Roger Sessions play the piano parts in Les Noces, and in this and the other works Stravinsky shapes performances of water clarity and rhythmic fire. Ragtime is the album's special treat...
Berlioz: Romeo and Juliet (Mezzo-Soprano Rosalind Elias, Tenor Cesare Va-letti, Bass Giorgio Tozzi; the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Munch; RCA Victor, 2 LPs). Berlioz' "symphony with chorus" is given a soaring, beautifully proportioned reading by Munch, and all three soloists contribute performances that are almost without flaw. As satisfactory a performance as the work is likely to find...