Word: stader
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...interpret. But Karl Richter, an organist and harpsichordist as well as conductor, creates a performance that combines operatic grandeur in the Dies Irae with the religious awe attending death that is heralded by the sepulchral drumbeats at the close of the Agnus Dei. The four first-class soloists (Maria Stader, soprano; Hertha Töpper, alto; John van Kesteren, tenor; Karl-Christian Kohn, bass) enter into the spirit of their conductor's classical conception: they never struggle to achieve Wagnerian eminence of tone but modestly blend into the musical architecture. The vocal texture of the Munich Bach Choir...
Beethoven: Christ on the Mount of Olives (Jan Peerce, Maria Stader and Otto Wiener, soloists; the Vienna Academy Chorus and State Opera Orchestra conducted by Hermann Scherchen; Westminster). Put a few dozen voices anywhere under a choral director and they're apt to belt out the rousing final chorus of this oratorio; but its starkly eloquent arias are seldom heard. Singing Beethoven's Jesus, Tenor Peerce builds to a marvelous anguish, which unfortunately tends to increase when he is coping with high notes...
...surefire laughs in The Best Man, an election-year play about good buys and bad guys in presidential politics, went over bigger than usual one night last week at Manhattan's Morosco Thea ter. Like the moment in the first act when Trumanesque "ex-President Hock-stader" assured a prospective presidential nominee: "And for another thing, you're a millionaire. People trust you rich boys. They figure you've got so much money of your own you won't go stealin' theirs." Or when fat "Senator Carlin" cracked...
...Simoneau's silver-hued voice seems less moving in the role of the suffering Orpheus than the lyric baritone of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, imaginatively cast by Decca in its German-language version. The supporting casts in both albums are excellent: Sopranos Suzanne Danco and Pierette Alarie (Epic), Maria Stader and Rita Streich (Decca). Despite the good singing, the recordings suffer from the opera's basic structural fault. Groundbreaker though he was in his own day, Composer Gluck stuck too closely to wearisome, undramatic alternation of choral passages and recitatives, thus kept his often lovely work from stirring into...
Mozart: The Magic Flute (RIAS Symphony Orchestra, chorus and soloists conducted by Ferenc Fricsay; Decca, 3 LPs). Despite its slightly studied style and rather tubby sound, this is the finest recording yet to appear of the 165-year-old masterpiece. Soprano Maria Stader makes Pamina a joy to the ear; Rita Streich is awesomely secure in the Queen of the Night's sky-high aerobatics, while the two leading men, Tenor Ernst Häfliger and Baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, use their handsome voices with distinction...