Word: quaver
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...actor has little voice left. Long ago it developed a natural quaver that he has adroitly learned to use for theatri cal effect. But he more than makes up for his vocal defects by embellishing each role with small dramatic touches of his own-a twitch here, a little shuffle of surprise there-that bring character to life. Son of a well-to-do Roman family, De Paolis made his debut as the Duke in Rigoletto at Bologna in 1919, later sang tenor leads at virtually every major house in Europe. But, he says, "I never had a large voice...
LIVE IT UP! (Johnny Mathis; Columbia). Crooner Mathis, who seems to have laundered much of the teary quaver out of his voice, gives expert and exuberant treatment to some smart and fairly fresh patter-Ace in the Hole, On a Cold and Rainy...
Strange Shriek. As a trained singer himself (even when he was 93 he used to quaver through the scores of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov or Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos), Shaw saved some of his sharpest shafts for vocalists. Of the famed Italian Tenor Enrico Tamberlik, appearing in Rossini's Otello, he wrote: "He sings in a doubtful falsetto and his movements are unmeaning, and frequently absurd. For the C sharp in the celebrated duet L'ira d'avverso fato, he substituted a strange description of shriek at about that pitch. The audience, ever appreciative...
Miss Rand's philosophy encompasses much more than economics, but the fallacies evident in her economic dabblings are probably representative of the weakness plaguing her philosophy as a whole. Miss Rand is, ironically enough, over-idealistic. Her book reasons its way from assumption to answer, without a quaver. But the assumptions do not match up with reality, and the answers are easier to discuss than to execute. Woman's place is in the home
...broken and falling voice of the sea itself. The lines follow the natural intonations of the human voice as closely as possible, breaking only at rare intervals into a supple and more melodic arietta. The orchestration, furthermore, is designed only to emphasize the emotions of the speakers (the violins quaver in apprehension, the oboe sonorously heightens the women's grief...