Word: sopranos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Dark-eyed Elena Nikolaidi, assured and lovely in a pale taffeta gown, stepped out on the stage of Manhattan's Town Hall, composed her hands and began to sing. Her voice, ranging from a mellow low contralto to a brilliant mezzo-soprano, glided through songs by Gluck, Haydn, Schubert, Rossini, Mahler, Ravel and De-Falla; the performance came to an end with the Sleep-Walking Scene from Verdi's Macbeth. The audience shuffled their programs to look at the name again. Thirtyish Elena Nikolaidi, making her U.S. debut and almost unknown outside Athens and Vienna, had achieved...
...haired stage comic who convulsed theatergoers for half a century with his low-comedy antics (best known routine: his characterization of Professor Pierre Ginsberg, a French language teacher); of a liver ailment; in Manhattan. The son of a cantor, Vaudevillian Howard made his debut at twelve as a boy soprano, scored his big hits teamed with older brother Eugene in the Shuberts' Winter Garden revues and George White's Scandals...
...chance for variety, e.g., a broad, majestic theme in full brass when Judith opens the door looking out upon Bluebeard's rich manorial lands; harp arpeggios when Judith comes upon door No. 6 and the pool of water signifying the vale of tears. Hungarian Bass Desire Ligeti and Soprano Olga Forrai had few standout moments; Bluebeard, with its conversational style of recitative and declamation, reminded some, of Debussy's Pelleas and Melisande. But Bartok's music, less fiercely dissonant and rhythmic, but more melodic than some of his later works, was indeed something that people would remember...
Cries & Convictions. Last week, the wind was howling hard enough in Chicago to blow any man down, and from a somewhat unexpected quarter. Most fellow musicians had kept their opinions to themselves when Soprano Kirsten Flagstad hit the comeback trail, two years ago, after merely accepting life in occupied Norway (TIME, Dec. 27). But when word got around that Furtwangler would be coming too, they set up an angry cry that could be heard all the way to Vienna...
When plump little Italian Mezzo-Soprano Ebe Stignani walked onstage for her New York debut, she got an unexpected ovation. It overwhelmed her so much she could hardly get through her first group of Handel and Vivaldi songs. "I can't sing when I am emotional," she said. But when she got her own emotions under control, her listeners began to lose theirs. A singer in the great bel canto tradition, she was as golden at the top of her voice as at the bottom, and as velvety in her ringing forte as in her piano. And she could...