Word: sopranos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...bony-faced, roan-haired soprano who stepped onto the stage of Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera last week had already been honored in England as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In more colloquial Italy, she had been dubbed "La Stupenda." Roughly two hours after her appearance, the Commander sank to the stage singing the words: "Al giunger tuo soltanto fia bello il del per me!" (Though only when you join me can heaven be heaven to me)-and was rewarded with a special American accolade, a sustained roar that lasted for twelve minutes and through...
EILEEN FARRELL, 41, made her leisurely way to the Metropolitan last season, long after critics had conceded she was the best dramatic soprano in America. "It didn't give me any special satisfaction to sing at the Met," she said coolly after her debut in Gluck's Alcestis. "I never had any great drive to be a singer." The drive may not have been great, but almost from the start the singing was. A onetime successful radio singer, with her own show, Farrell soon branched into recitals and concert-form operas, where she displayed a warm, vibrant voice...
BIRGIT NILSSON, 43, is the big Wagnerian soprano the Met started searching for as soon as Kirsten Flagstad retired. Nilsson displayed her vibrant, flashing voice for the first time at the Met two years ago in a performance of Tristan und Isolde. She has triumphed in most of the Wagnerian repertory, impressing not only with her ringing power but with a precision of phrasing and general musicianship that is not always found in Wagnerian opera. Best of all, at 5 ft. 8 in. and 150 Ibs., Swedish Farm Girl Nilsson is capable of lending an air of physical credibility...
...Soprano Curtin began singing seriously only in her junior year in college. As a child back in Clarksburg, W. Va.. she studied violin, majored in political science at Wellesley, during the war got a job as an electrical engineer with the War Production Board ("I didn't know a wall plug from a telephone pole"). Married to a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin (she has since married Editor-Photographer Eugene Cook), she accompanied her husband on archaeological expeditions to Peru and Ecuador. But she kept on taking voice lessons once a week, gave several recitals...
...sing them because she believed that "no opera house should be a musty museum." Her conviction paid off: in a reversal of form, which usually finds U.S. directors hunting for stars in Europe, the Vienna Staatsoper heard her, shortly after gave her a contract. That merely proves, says Soprano Curtin, that singers with Made-in-U.S.A. voices "are perfectly exportable...