Word: tenors
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...native Italy with hopes of a hero's welcome after the big success of his operas on Broadway (TIME, May 1). For the first Italian production of The Consul, La Scala was giving him everything he wanted: a hand-picked cast (including Contralto Marie Powers and Tenor Andrew McKinley from Broad way's Consul), new sets, plenty of rehearsals and free rein with the staging. But instead of garlands, he sniffed garlic. For one thing, some Italians resented the fact that he won his fame...
Another possible portent was the fate of the white doves that Tenor McKinley, as the magician, was supposed to release in the second act. When the doves were delivered to McKinley's apartment, the cook baked them for dinner. And there were a lot of other things cooking that Menotti did not learn about till the curtain went...
...days. He set up a small platform in the center of the huge main stage, kept the action confined to it. To the scandal of traditionalists, he even took away the tent that generations of Pagliaccis have clung to as they sobbed the clown's famous aria. Tenor Ramon Vinay did his sobbing in front of a dismal little curtain that was lowered behind him. As at the Lemonade Opera, perky choristers danced on from time to time with props and a snippet of scenery. All in all, what had been bright staging in Greenwich Village seemed pretty thin...
...some details. Sample: when cuckolded Alfio challenged swaggering Seducer Turiddu, Alfio stood well back, out of all possible harm's way, looking considerably more foolish than furious. But despite such incongruities, and the fussy set and cluttered stage that offended Critic Downes, the singing (notably by Tenor Richard Tucker and Soprano Zinka Milanov) almost turned Cavalleria into a triumph...
...been "firmness-sympathy but firmness." Says one singer: "Bing is the boss. He knows it and makes everyone else know it." But the Bing firmness is tempered with wit, and even touches of slapstick. One sample last fall: when he suspected that the "illness" of one of his tenors was chiefly laziness, he rushed two doctors and an ambulance to the tenor's door in burlesque solicitude. Says Bing in his caramel-soft Viennese-British accent: "He sang that night, and very well...