Word: rigoletto
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Metropolitan Opera (Sat. 1:45 p.m., ABC). Rigoletto...
...Metropolitan Opera has a dazzling new coloratura soprano. She is Atlanta-born Mattiwilda Dobbs, 31, pert, appealing to the eye, solacing to the most opera-worn ear. She made her debut as Gilda in Rigoletto last week, and the event was doubly important, for she is the first Negro to sing a romantic lead...
...Rigoletto, despite some of the most grippingly grisly melodrama in grand opera, is distinctly dated. Whenever Gilda has a spare moment, the orchestra lapses into a kind of soft-shoe accompaniment, leaving wide-open spaces for her graceful vocal glides and glitters. Soprano Dobbs sounded smooth as cashmere beside the tweedy textures of Tenor Jan Peerce and Baritone Leonard Warren. Her phrasing was always neat and true; in lyrical passages her voice floated with never an edge. In Verdi's showy old coloratura bits, e.g., Caro Nome, it glittered clear and bright as a glockenspiel in a football band...
Metropolitan Opera (Sat. 2 p.m., ABC). Rigoletto, with Warren, Conley, Peters, Tozzi...
...kiddy broadcast called Uncle Bob's Children's Hour, and even today is not above singing the tune she sang then (The Wedding of Jack and Jill). At seven she was performing such coloratura arias as the Bell Song from Lakmé and Caro Nome from Rigoletto, and singing them with skill; at twelve she retired for further study, but three years later she was back in harness, ready for the long road ahead...