Word: tenore
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Perhaps. But as Composer Hector Berlioz himself acknowledged in another passage of his Evenings with the Orchestra, the all-powerful tenor is anything but a hardy breed. Tenor voices are comparatively rare: in one study, made in Germany, more than three-quarters of the male voices were naturally baritone or bass. And the tenor must sing much of the time toward the top of his range and volume, subjecting his vocal cords to cruel and unusual punishment. Small wonder that tenors are almost always in short supply and often have king-sized egos ("Good," "Marvelous," Caruso used to write below...
...today's short supply, the best tenor singing is an American. Richard Tucker-stocky (5 ft. 8 in., 185 Ibs.), barrel-chested and plainly middle-aged (47)-was this week commanding the stage of the Metropolitan Opera (in Tosca, with Leontyne Price). Merely scheduling, his appearance promised one of the Met's truly distinguished evenings. The promise lies in Tucker's consistency: other tenors may match him on a given night, but no other tenor maintains his steadily high average of performance (a fact that prompts Tucker to say, with some exaggeration: "I've never given...
That early training, Tucker feels, helped him to catch on at the Met, mastering 25 major roles as he developed from a lyric tenor to a lirico spinto (midway between lyric and dramatic). He is not identified with any single role, but ranging between the romantic bel canto flights of Lucia di Lammermoor and the more declamatory style of Turandot or La Fanciulla del West, he has created some memorable characterizations: Don Jose in Carmen, Rodolfo in La Boheme, the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto...
...done so with no real flair for acting, for it is truer of Tucker than of al most any other tenor that, in the Italian phrase, "the opera is in the throat." What emerges from Tucker's throat is a warm and sensuous voice, vibrant with emo tional fervor, capable of a lyrical legato or a ringing fortissimo. Tucker uses that voice with precise intelligence, lightening and darkening his tone to convey a whole range of feeling. Among the roles that he has not yet sung at the Met are two that contributed to Caruso's fame: Canio...
NICOLAI GEDDA, 36, is as much admired for his dramatic ability as he is for his crisply controlled lyric tenor. Although he was born in Sweden, his clear enunciation of English has delighted Metropolitan audiences unaccustomed to understanding a word from the stage. It was partly...