Word: munsell
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...opera. As Conductor Tibor Kozma says: "Operagoers no longer will stand for three-ton tanks in the roles of innocent 15-year-old girls, or singers who stand in front of the prompter's box and do their daily dozen. They want acting. They want dramatic realism. Munsel and some others are representatives of a young generation of singers who are really singing actors." Patrice's manager, Sol Hurok, says with box-office candor: "You can listen with your eyes open...
Impresario Hurok, whose eyes are seldom shut, has a more-than-esthetic interest in Miss Munsel. Eight years ago, listening at his radio one afternoon to the Met Auditions of the Air, he heard 17-year-old Patrice singing coloratura arpeggios in a voice as full of rills as a country brook, and lustily topping off high Fs. It was not the greatest voice he had ever heard, but coloraturas were scarce, particularly with Lily Pons, the Met's coloratura queen, making herself scarcer on wartime tours. Hurok went to see Patrice, and liked what he saw-a confident...
Whistling Is an Art. Patrice Munsel is almost, but not quite, her real name. Patricia Beverly Munsil was the only child of a successful Spokane dentist and an accomplished pianist who wanted Pat to be musical too. "Up until the time I was five," says Patrice, "I suppose I led a perfectly normal life. But then I started to study whistling." Why? "I had a good pucker, I guess...
ROBERTA PETERS, who comes from The Bronx, and, like Patrice Munsel, studies with William Herman. A chirrupy young (21) soprano and a born actress, she made a surprise hit as Zerlina in Don Giovanni last year. Sopranos Peters and Munsel are mutual admirers: Roberta keeps a scrapbook on Patrice, and Patrice, who often sits through Roberta's lessons, admiringly pronounces Roberta "great...
...Patrice herself, the future could hardly look brighter. Says Boss Bing: "If Munsel accepts the fact that she has a specific role to fill at the Metropolitan, and fills it as brilliantly as I have every belief she will, I would think about reviving operas that have good roles for her." And Europe still presents a challenge. Four years ago she went on a concert tour of Scandinavia, but she has yet to sing opera abroad. Europe will not think her a beauty. One European musician describes her thus: "Fairly tall, slender, and has a pleasant horse face, like...