Word: vocal
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...male cast, headed by Tenor Andrea Velis as the madwoman, masterfully performed Britten's difficult, often eerie sing-speech style of vocal writing. The score was as delicate and intricate as a spider web, interlaced with the chatter of small untuned drums and plunking strings reminiscent of Oriental music. The most impressive achievement was that, in mixing such disparate elements as modern dissonances, a morality play and No drama, there was no clash of styles but rather a smooth melding into what is a new and wholly engaging musical form...
Bresler and Duddy, both in their early 40s, begin by psychoanalyzing a performer "to find what she stands for," then work as long as six months polishing her delivery. With Jane Morgan, they played up her sex appeal and styled her vocal treatments after Lillian Russell; with Teresa Brewer, they provided "lots of saloon songs arranged as if they were done 30 years ago." They teach their singers how and where to walk (glide, but never too close to the tables lest someone see sweat or telltale wrinkles), give them mildly risque parodies of such standards...
...Northumberland (Stephen Pearlman) comes on looking like Basil Rathbone, but our hopes are dashed when that hoarse, ugly voice begins to speak, And so it goes with the rest, whom I shall not bother to name. The sole exception is David Little's Lancaster, which has youth, vigor and vocal clarity; he brings much-needed life to the scenes...
...items that it has sought from the City (for example, the closing of two streets, one to allow for the construction of a $2.8 million car underpass and the other to facilitate the constructions of Peabody Terrace), Harvard has been consistently successful. Some times the University has encountered some vocal opposition and delay but when the roll call has come the votes have always been there. This was not always the case. "Back in the thirties," recalls one politician "the University just didn't have the votes...
...tragicomic opera Serse, or Xerxes, which begins with the famous aria Ombra mai fu, generally called Handel's Largo, a song of praise to a plane tree. The deep, dark, mellifluous voice of Alto Maureen Forrester as the Persian king is set off by the light, bright vocal acrobatics of Lucia Popp, a rising young Czech soprano. Brian Priestman is the conductor, using the Vienna Radio Orchestra and Chorus and an excellent harpsichord accompanist...