Word: tenors
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Unlike Gluck's Orfeo, which is sung by a contralto, Haydn's hero is a tenor. Like Gluck, Haydn saves his most compelling music for Orfeo to sing in Hades, but neither of the lovers is allowed to return to earth. Altogether, Haydn's Orfeo is closer in style to Don Giovanni than to Gluck. It has some of the Don's power and beauty, if not its delightful variety. Performance and recording: good...
Bizet: Carmen (Raoul Jobin, tenor; Solange Michel, soprano; Michel Dens, baritone; Marthe Angelici, soprano, and others; chorus and orchestra of the Paris Opéra-Comique, with André Cluytens conducting; Columbia, 6 sides LP). Soprano Michel lacks the fire to make the title role burn as it should, but the performance as a whole is excellent and so is the recording...
Foss: The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (Burton Trimble, tenor; Ruth Biller, soprano; Paul Ukena, bass-baritone, and others; Frederic Kurzweil, pianist; Lyrichord, 2 sides LP). Brilliant young (28) Lukas Foss's adaptation of Mark Twain makes Foss look like one of the brightest hopes of American opera. Well done by the enterprising After Dinner Opera Co. cast which gave the work its Manhattan premiere (TIME, June 19), The Frog even jumps smartly on records. Recording: good...
Puccini: The Girl of the Golden West (Carla Gavazzi, soprano; Ugo Savarese, baritone; Vasco Campagnano, tenor, and others; chorus and orchestra of Radio Italiana, Arturo Basile conducting; Cetra-Soria, 6 sides LP). Puccini's "western" may have been rip-roaring stuff at its premiere at the Met in 1910, with Caruso singing and Toscanini conducting, but it sounds pretty flat now. Performance and recording: good...
Even the singing is occasionally marred by poor dubbing-a surprising lapse in MGM's usual technical proficiency-and by pointless attempts to make Tenor Lanza look effortless while performing arias that ordinarily require opera singers to flex every muscle. But Lanza is in fine voice, and with such artists as the Met's Soprano Dorothy Kirsten and Mezzo-Soprano Blanche Thebom, he sings varied favorites by 13 composers from Verdi to Victor Herbert. On the program: La Donna E Mobile and the Quartet from Rigoletto; Vesti la Giubba from I Pagliacci; the Sextette from Lucia De Lammermoor...