Word: nilsson
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Sweden's Birgit Nilsson is the world's reigning Wagnerian soprano. Austria's Herbert von Karajan has no superior as a conductor of the Ring cycle. Alas, two great melodies do not always pro duce a single pleasing harmony. Ever since she began singing under his demanding baton, Miss Nilsson's relation ship with the Salzburg-born maestro has become increasingly sour. Among other things, she has been irked by his insistence on unusually time-consuming rehearsals and is not too keen about his dark, brooding lighting effects, which often keep the singers in the shadows...
...their voice. But careers move so fast now adays that few singers can afford to interrupt them. The result, says Melchior, is that "the breed has practically vanished." Most of the tenors who attempt these heroic roles are a bit jugendlich (youthful-sounding). Meantime, great dramatic sopranos like Birgit Nilsson are Isoldes in search of Tristans, and some of Wagner's finest music is scant ed in the repertory...
...Heldentenor Foundation five years ago, and by this year had raised enough money to offer some deserving prospect a year of sub sidized study and practice. Last week, at Manhattan's Juilliard School, he auditioned nine candidates from among 50 applicants around the country. The judges included Singers Nilsson and Alexander Kipnis and Juilliard President Peter Mennin. They picked not one but two winners, each of whom proved in extreme ways Melchior's dictum that no two Heldentenors are alike...
AERIAL BALLET: NILSSON (RCA Victor). While most rock singers sound like so many caterwauling cats conjugating the verb "to be," Nilsson, 25, sings with clear honesty and lack of pretense. He has composed a highly creative rock-vaudeville show with all the acts: a tap number, a cowboy ballad, a torch song, and an acrobatic display of vocal jazz scatting. Altogether an excellent performance despite an overlying, oddly out-of-place air of melancholy that sometimes threatens to spoil...
...slut, but the virtuosity of her singing and acting for the rest of the opera made it easy to believe every man in sight found her irresistible. Her sensuous voice moved with perfect flexibility from the dark richness of a Leontyne Price to the brilliance of a Birgit Nilsson. The weight of her low register in the Tarot Scene was miraculous, and the delicacy of her flirtation dance before Jose no less so. Her characterization omitted no details, from the Third Act baiting of Jose to the seductively hoarse suggestion of "L'amour" at the end of the Toreador Song...