Word: sopranos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...real opera lover, they are abundantly punished by having to sit through hours of music they don't really enjoy. Some come as cultists: just as bullfight aficionados find macabre joy in waiting for the matador to be gored, operagoers can wait in horrible human fascination for the soprano to go flat at the end of Vissi d'arte or to fall downstairs in the mad scene of Lucia. In its own way, by the nearly impossible demands it makes on singers, opera, like the corrida, pits man against nature...
...vehicle, Prokofiev's libretto is so outlandish as to be curiously fascinating and, at times, good fun. Based on a Gothic tale by the Russian symbolist writer Valery Bryusov, Angel is set in 16th century Germany and revolves, or rather, rolls around a fetching young damsel named Renata (Soprano Eileen Schauler). Unfortunately, she has an advanced case of the screaming meemies. In the first act she bares her problem in a long aria while writhing around the stage on her stomach...
Prokofiev's score, ably conducted by Julius Rudel, is appropriately dissonant and heavily percussive. Soprano Schauler, whose surmounting of Prokofiev's vocal obstacle course was achievement enough, proved a splendid actress as well. But then, as one who admits to powers of ESP, she was a natural for the role. As for seeing flaming angels, she says she took lessons from her five-year-old son, Jeffrey, who had an invisible playmate named Timothy...
...much, aren't you mate?" At that, Joan and husband stormed out, followed by the frantic restaurant manager. He had spent most of the day whipping up a special fish sauce for Joan that he said was "comparable to the peach Melba, the tribute to that other Australian soprano, Dame Nellie Melba." The manager fell to his knees on the sidewalk, kissed Joan's hand and begged her to return. She went back after some hesitation, then tried to laugh away the incident by mimicking orangutans shelling peanuts at the zoo. Richard was still sullen...
RICHARD STRAUSS LIEDER (London). While Strauss's songs unquestionably sound better when sung by a soprano, Hermann Prey does all that a young rich baritone possibly can. While he cannot claim Fischer-Dieskau's crown as a lieder singer, his open, direct approach gives this record considerable charm...