Word: sopranos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Welitch. The occasion was a new production of the Strauss opera at Spoleto, Italy, the musical festival that draws some 120,-ooo tourists each summer. Singing the role of "that girl"-described in Oscar Wilde's play as having "veins filled with fire"-was a fine new Negro soprano: Virginia-born Margaret Tynes...
...with its violent, passionate score and its scenes of perverted eroticism, first burst on the public consciousness in 1905, it scared the censors out of their frock coats and orchestras half out of their pits. The one-act opera was banned in Berlin, Vienna, London and New York. Even Soprano Marie Wittich, who appeared in the title role at the world premiere in Dresden, threatened for a time to withdraw because "I am a decent woman...
...sounds of two orchestras and a choir were heard. Although there were occasional moments of sustained melody, Jacob's Ladder was for the most part a deliberately unmelodic complex of unexpected sounds, unsustained notes, a text rhythmically spoken rather than sung. The most moving moment occurred during the soprano's heavenly ascent, in which the soul and a choir of angels seemed to wheel and glide about the hall as tapes were fed to the widely spaced speakers...
...most popular works during Cesti's lifetime, and last week's La Piccola Scala performance suggested why. From start to finish, it was a singer's opera. The orchestration for the most part was slender, graceful, beautifully designed to give space to the principals (Mezzo-Soprano Teresa Berganza, Tenor Alvino Misciano), who sang aria after aria in serene, long-breathing lines. Bright with sentimentally colored melodies, Orontea scored a hit even with the critic of the Communist L'Unita, who conceded that "it really is beautiful music." The audience did not quite hail the composer...
Brass Bugle. Shaw's background for criticism was his family of amateur musicians: a trombone-playing father, a harp-playing aunt, a mother with a mezzo-soprano voice of "remarkable purity of tone," and an uncle who played the ophicleide, a giant brass bugle. Shaw himself started training to become an operatic baritone, changed his mind, and at 20 began ghosting musical criticism for a London weekly, The Hornet, in conspiracy with his mother's voice teacher named Vandeleur Lee. While Lee posed as the magazine's critic, young Bernard wrote the notices. After a year...