Word: sopranoes
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...tight little world of opera there's only one place to be this weekend. Fans from at least 44 states and 13 foreign countries are planning to fly to Seattle to see two of the biggest young voices in the business, Canadian tenor Ben Heppner and English soprano Jane Eaglen, make their double debut in the Seattle Opera's new production of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. But the prospect of finding a fresh pair of singers capable of tackling Wagner's most vocally demanding roles is only part of what's drawing opera lovers to the Pacific Northwest. This...
...dialogue is spoken rather than sung, and a refreshingly colloquial English translation by Sheldon Harnick (Fiddler on the Roof). Updated it was, but dumbed down it wasn't. Assaf made her dramatic points with crisp simplicity and no pandering whatsoever. No less direct was the Carmen of mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzman, a fire-eating singing actress who played straight to the video cameras, giving a devastatingly sexy performance full of anger and pride. It all added up to a no-nonsense Carmen that anybody could believe...
...this isn't about accolades; this is about soul. This is about that glorious mezzo-soprano, the gospel growls, the throaty howls, the girlish vocal tickles, the swoops, the dives, the blue-sky high notes, the blue-sea low notes. Female vocalists don't get the credit as innovators that male instrumentalists do. They should. Franklin has mastered her instrument as surely as John Coltrane mastered his sax; her vocal technique has been studied and copied by those who came after her, including Chaka Khan in the '70s and Whitney Houston...
...fight to have it look that way. When he was still active, he vocalized every day. Singing with the Dorsey band in the early '40s, he kept on tap a voice teacher who was a former opera singer. Later on he would turn to Metropolitan Opera soprano Dorothy Kirsten and baritone Robert Merrill for pointers on technique. "He knew they knew...how to maintain the equipment," Sinatra's longtime conductor, Vincent Falcone, told writer Will Friedwald. That stuff in the whiskey tumbler he used onstage was often tea. Booze, he knew, could batter the throat...
...Secret Soprano. She ought to be in the Pitches, but somehow missed the auditions. Only her roommates have access to her early morning shower concerts and know that she knows all nine minutes of "American Pie" by heart...