Word: paur
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...Ivor O. Paur, Coordinator
...performance was led adroitly by the veteran conductor Leonard de Paur, who first gained fame in the 1940s as leader of the De Paur Infantry Chorus. The women-Dramatic Soprano Juanita Waller (Aurore) of Pittsburgh, Pa., and Mezzo Barbara Conrad (Clothilde) of Pittsburg, Texas-provided most of the vocal excitement. Waller has a pearl-luscious voice, and her time along the European operatic trail (Bremen, Düsseldorf, Naples) has obviously been well spent. Conrad, that rare operatic find, a truly sexy mezzo, scored her biggest success to date last spring singing Carmen at the Houston Spring Opera Festival...
...down to 35 members, dressed in smart gabardine battle-jacket uniforms (they call them "costumes" now), de Paur's Infantry Chorus whisked expertly through a diverse program from 16th Century Palestrina to U.S. contemporary Composer Paul Creston, who has arranged works especially for them. Critics gave them good marks for diction, blending of voices and clarity of line, and for a welcome versatility of material which the Don Cossack choruses lack. Wrote the New York Herald Tribune's Virgil Thomson: "[This choir] could, without half trying, raise the whole level of our current taste in semi-popular music...
Their leader, Leonard de Paur, 34, is a stocky, scholarly looking Negro who, at 18, toured Loew's circuit clutching a battered straw hat and singing Ol' Man River. A friend introduced him to Hall Johnson, who had just scored his Green Pastures success. De Paur got most of his choral training as a singer and assistant conductor of the Hall Johnson Choir before...
Training his infantry chorus (whose average age is 28), de Paur strives first to get them in the mood of what the song is about. Says he: "When we sing a Cossack song, we're as near to being Cossacks as we can get; when we sing the Jewish chant Eli Eli, we're as close to being Jews with their whole history of oppression and religious faith as is possible for us." Sometimes the harmony gets too close, and de Paur admits it. "I may go overboard a bit. Lord knows I deplore that homogenized effect...