Word: mezzos
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Although Tristan posed difficulties in casting, the Metropolitan was able to find a brilliant Brangaene. This smaller role is a key one, long and taxing, which requires a strong mezzo soprano, especially for the difficult solos in the second act. When the Isolde is as good as Nilsson, though, the first act passages of Isolde's companion become a test as well. It was here, perhaps, that Irene Dalis, the American mezzo, was most impressive. Dalis matched Nilsson's dramatic singing with a dazzling virtuosity and eloquence of her own; I cannot remember when I have heard such uniformly brilliant...
...Conductor Erich Leinsdorf, a Mozart specialist, led the orchestra correctly, but without paprika. Apart from Mezzo Regina Resnik, fine as an old fortuneteller, the only really convincing member of the cast was Walter Slezak, making his Met debut as the pig farmer, Szupán. The son of famed Tenor Leo Slezak, 57-year-old Actor Slezak had wanted to stand on the stage of the Met for as long as he could remember, was delighted when he got his father's old dressing room...
...been enough time to become sure about catching the end of the solo runs, with the result that the last movement sounded grim and dogged and too tense. With regard to the difficult dynamic problems of the slow movement, it is often the case that a relaxed, controlled mezzo-piano will actually sound quieter than the strained tone the full orchestra produced when trying to match the soloist's softest passages. The orchestra fared better in the opening movement, where it could display its brilliant sound with less inhibition...
Trovatore will be remembered for the debut of Giulietta Simionato, the great Italian mezzo-soprano who sang Azucene. Simionato is known to record collectors for her superb Rossini performances. Yet, her extraordinary range enables her to perform parts as diverse as Azucena and Santuzza with equal ease and brilliance. Her Trovatore could not have been bettered. In these days when dramatic singers with reliable techniques are rare, a good Azucena, so difficult a part, is harder to find than the "great American opera...
...bring Strauss's vision to the theater, opera designers decked the cast in blazing costumes, filled the stage with striking Daliesque sets. Standouts of a superb cast were California-born Mezzo-Soprano Irene Dalis as a malevolent nurse and German Soprano Marianne Schech as the dyer's wife. Conductor Leopold Ludwig whipped his orchestra through the complex, luxuriant score with a fine sense of surging lyricism, a deft feel for the opera's shadow-flittery moods. "No matter what may happen to the Giants," glowed the Chronicle's Alfred Frankenstein, "San Francisco won the pennant Friday...