Word: stupidity
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Arturo Toscanini firmly believed that "the vibrations of high notes beating frequently on a singer's brain make him stupid...
...notion held secretly or sheepishly by a number of music's leaders, supported by a body of folklore and some medical opinion. According to the theory, the higher the voice, the more stupid the singer - particularly tenors, whose resonant upper register causes more acute brain-beating frequencies...
...Italy, a man would much rather be called a cuckold than be accused of having a faccia di tenore-the face of a tenor. In France, the proverb goes: "Stupid as a tenor, amorous as a baritone, drunk as a bass." Some doctors who specialize in treating singers' throats and nasal passages at least half-believe the theory. Says a well-known Manhattan doctor who probably caters to more of the city's vocal elite than anyone else: "I have always jokingly said that tenors are so dense because they are living with chronic brain concussion. They have...
Among themselves, singers are naturally divided. Soprano Birgit Nilsson has referred to a tenor partner as "having a resonance chamber where his brain used to be." Metropolitan Opera Soprano Teresa Stratas takes a feminine view: "Stupidity, no. Egomania, yes. Tenors seem stupid because they are so fully absorbed in themselves. Sopranos -they all have to be pretty smart cookies to have gotten where they are." Tenor Richard Tucker, in a cheerily frivolous reaction that goes far to refute the thesis, comments: "Since tenors usually carry their fat elsewhere, you can be sure they are not fatheads. And besides, the mere...
...national security machinery," and Sorensen adds that it brought about "basic changes in personnel, policy and procedures." But Sorensen also quotes Kennedy as lamenting long after the event: "All my life I've known better than to depend on the experts. How could I have been so stupid, to let them go ahead...