Word: mezzos
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Champagne & Coke. Tebaldi's eminence in the world of international opera is made the more striking by a shortage of competition. Only Callas, Milanov and Italy's great mezzo, Giulietta Simionato, rank with her in the grand tradition. Below the leaders there is a substantial reservoir of fine veteran singers, all of them capable of turning in consistently competent and often inspired performances. They include Victoria de los Angeles, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Antonietta Stella, Eleanor Steber, Sena Jurinac, Lisa Delia Casa, Irmgard Seefried, Leonie Rysanek, Risë Stevens. Backing them up is a promising and fast-rising crop...
Very Little Brine. The premiere glowed with the performances of Soprano Phyllis Curtin's surgingly passionate Cathy and Mezzo-Soprano Regina Sarfaty's portrayal of Nelly, the maid. The 36-ft.-wide stage often seemed too small to contain the action, and in his effort to achieve "immediacy," Floyd produced a libretto so cliché-ridden that it dissipated the briny sense of evil that hung over Novelist Brontë's book. But the sweeping, intricate score pulsed with moments of moving lyricism: Edgar's proposal to Cathy ("Make me whole again"), Cathy's "dream...
...from Albania lately landed from a balloon, lay siege to each other's sweethearts, and, to their own discomfiture, succeed-has seldom been more merrily staged. Under the direction of Peter Herman Adler, Mozart's music was kept feather-light and crystal-clean. Soprano Phyllis Curtin and Mezzo Frances Bible were as pretty a brace of slim beauties as ever taunted a gallant; Tenor John Alexander and Baritone Mac Morgan sang warmly as the two gentlemen, who conclude: "Women cannot be faithful . . . You have to take them as they are." The production-light, stylized, and done...
...Mezzo-Soprano Hoffman held on to her Manhattan bar job while she took singing lessons. In 1951 she won a Fulbright scholarship to study opera in Italy, became a member first of the Zurich Stadt-theater, later of the Stuttgart Staatsoper. In her seven years in Europe. Grace has appeared at La Scala, Covent Garden. Florence. Bayreuth. With her 2½-octave range she has sung 20-odd roles, including Carmen. Gluck's Orpheus, Dora-bella in Mozart's Cosí fan Tutte, Ulrica in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera, plus mezzo and contralto parts...
...debut last week Mezzo Hoffman displayed a veteran's easy stage presence and a wide-ranging voice that floated purely though somewhat colorlessly in its upper register, darkened richly in its lower one. The haunting warning Einsam wachend in der Nacht in Act II had a texture soft as velvet, but with resonant carrying power. Her characterization in one of opera's most thankless roles was skillfully subdued, came as a welcome relief from the histrionics with which other Brangänes sometimes worry the Met's stage. All in all, it was a welcome and memorable...