Word: mezzos
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...grand opera roles, has made a new hit singing delicate French songs. The great contralto Marian Anderson balances Schubert and Brahms with Negro spirituals. But Jennie Tourel sings exhaustive programs in seven languages (English, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese), and three vocal ranges (soprano, mezzo-soprano, contralto). Says she: "[The audiences] understand that it's not everyday's bread what...
...Mignons in seven years. When the Nazis took Paris, she fled to the U.S. For nearly two years New York considered her just another refugee. Then Toscanini signed her to sing Juliette in Berlioz's dramatic symphony Romeo et Juliette, and Stokowski chose her to sing the mezzo-soprano solo in the U.S. premiere of Prokofiev's cantata, Alexander Nevsky. Says Jennie: "All of a sudden everything came to me." After her Town Hall debut in 1943, the New York Herald Tribune's Virgil Thomson wrote: "Miss Tourel's conquest . . . was . . . without any local parallel since...
Jennie Tourel's phenomenal range, from low G to high C, is three notes wider than the average mezzo-soprano's. Says Jennie of herself: "The voice can be like a violin, it can be like a viola, it can be like a cello...
Metropolitan Opera (Sat. 2-5 p.m., ABC). Aïda, with Soprano Stella Roman, Tenor Set Svanholm, Mezzo-Soprano Blanche Thebom, Baritone Leonard Warren...
Rachmaninoff: Songs (Jennie Tourel, accompanied by Erich Itor Kahn; Columbia, 6 sides). Mezzo-Soprano Tourel's eerie interpretation of Pushkin, Alexis Tolstoy and Victor Hugo verses is outstanding in the current rash of Rachmaninoff. Performance: excellent...