Word: singings
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MUSIC: In opera, those who want to perform forever learn what not to sing...
Soprano Mirella Freni, 56, will not sing Madama Butterfly onstage. The part is so heavily emotional that she feels it could upset the vocal balance she has spent a lifetime achieving. Luciano Pavarotti has just won acclaim for his first Otello, and most musical experts think he was right to wait until age 55 to try the heroic role. The list of parts that tenor Alfredo Kraus, 63, will not touch reads almost like a chart of opera's greatest hits, including Cavaradossi in Tosca and Rodolfo in La Boheme. Kraus sticks strictly to lighter parts that do not strain...
...want a career." Says Pavarotti: "Go easy. One new role a year is plenty." Before his Otello, sung in a concert version with the Chicago Symphony, music fans speculated that he lacked the declamatory heft for the part. But Pavarotti not only had it; he was able to sing three out of four performances with a bad cough...
Many operagoers think that the jet plane has done more to ravel the thread of lovely sound than any other factor. A popular artist can sing in Brussels on Monday, Paris on Tuesday and Chicago on Thursday, and by the time Chicago rolls around, audiences often feel they are presented with a raspy voice and an unfocused characterization. Many veterans monitor their travel schedules as closely as their repertory. Rysanek arrives in a city two weeks before she is scheduled to sing. Kraus warns that if you sing in two cities on successive days, "your subconscious is working in both...
Even professional musicals do not always succeed in finding performers who can sing, dance and act with equal facility. So it is no surprise that West Side Story has a shortage of the trebly talented. Eggar seems to have cast the show with acting as his first priority. Consequently the dancing is occasionally sloppy. This problem is minimized by Van Kipnis' excellent choreography, particularly impressive in the large-scale dance numbers...