Word: sopranoes
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...Mary Garden, and as debuts go, her magical performance at Paris' Opéra Comique that night might have been staged by her fairy godmother. The year was 1900, and Mary, Scotland-born and Chicago-reared, was an impoverished young soprano who haunted rehearsals at the Comique. Her moment came when, during a performance of Gustave Charpentier's Louise, the lead soprano suddenly collapsed after the second act. Panic-stricken, the director asked Mary if she could fill in. Though she had never sung on a stage before, much less with an orchestra, she pluckily replied: "Have...
Evelyne sings in a pure, unaffected soprano voice accompanied by the shimmering, harplike refrains of Beers's psaltery (an ancestor of the harpsichord...
...Stern like the dark, virile tone of the Guarneri; Zino Francescatti, Yehudi Menuhin and David Oistrakh prefer the lighter, silvery tone of the Stradivari. The Guarneri has the breadth and projection of a contralto, says one camp. Ah, yes, but the Strad has the clarity and finesse of a soprano, counters the other. That Stradivari enjoys a more illustrious reputation, says Heifetz, is because "he had a better pressagent." Actually, claims Jascha, "the Guarneri is a joyous woman, richly experienced in life; the Stradivari is a young, unsophisticated girl...
...Girl. They don't make them that way in show business much any more, and Americans seem to sense it. Her perfect-pitch soprano has a crystal clarity and superb diction, and yet it can be as warm and soft as a purr. She does not radiate sensuality, nor is she the pulp of publicity campaigns. She is everybody's tomboy tennis partner and their daughter, their sister, their mum. To grown men, she is a lady; to housewives, the gal next door; to little children, the most huggable aunt of all. She is Christmas carols...
...virtually stripped clean of scenery. Choristers stood in rigid rows like drill teams awaiting inspection; principal singers stirred hardly at all, and when they did, it was with the slow, deliberate movements of dream figures. The audience loved it, loudly bravoed Conductor Karl Böhm and Mezzo-Soprano Christa Ludwig. But the real star of the evening was not there: Richard Wagner's grandson Wieland...