Word: sopranos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...know. After all, I persuaded you to sing roles like Lucia." She was speaking to a big, square-jawed Australian woman named Joan Sutherland, a former secretary who has won a sudden but solid reputation in the Bellini-Donizetti territory that Callas calls her own. Last week Soprano Sutherland, 33, was appearing at Britain's stylish Glyndebourne Festival in Bellini's I Puritani. On the lawn at intermission, as they were consuming their hamper-packed chicken-in-aspic suppers, members of the black-tied audience buzzed that Joan could already stand comparison with the incomparable Maria...
Puritani takes place in Cromwell's England, where the Cavalier hero daringly dupes the Roundheads, but in the process is forced to abandon his betrothed, Elvira, who goes insane. Soprano Sutherland's triumph last week was that she made her audience overlook the opera's gothic absurdities and focus on its moments of real beauty, including Elvira's pre-wedding aria, "Son vergin vezzosa," and her splendid "Qui la voce sua soave," which introduces a mad scene every bit as effective as the more famous one in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. Her voice...
...travels about Europe, figures Soprano Leontyne Price, she must have walked several dozen times through Milan's Piazza della Scala, past the ornate brown-brick theater with the triple-arched main entrance. She never went in. "I swore," says she, "that I would not enter even as a tourist until I sang there." Last week she entered, singing: at 33 she was making her La Scala debut in Aïda, and the demanding audience recognized almost at once that she would...
Handling her big, liquid soprano voice with faultless accuracy, Singer Price achieved an Aïda that was at once feline and tender, sweet and aggressive. She won bravas after her opening trio with Radames and Amneris (a place in the opera that has not drawn applause at La Scala in years), got many more ovations as she ranged effortlessly from finespun pianissimos to brilliantly ringing fortes. "Brava, Leonessa!" cried someone in the audience, while a second voice corrected: "She is more like a panther than a lioness." Said one critic: "Our great Verdi would have found her the ideal...
...first black Tosca that big audience had seen"), later made her European grand opera debut in Aïda at the Vienna Staatsoper, guided by Conductor Herbert von Karajan. Since then Leontyne has had an uninterrupted string of European successes, particularly in Italy. After La Scala, Soprano Price has one more giant step ahead of her in the U.S.: next season she will sing yet another Verdian role-Leonora in Il Trovatore-in her debut at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera...