Word: vocalism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...utmost efficiency consistent with impeccable elegance characterized the entire program--conducting, music, and performance. Mlle. Boulanger stood on her home ground: early and modern vocal and instrumental music. The selection of music avoided the Romantic period, and the blank from the death of Bach to the birth of Poulenc--1750 to 1899--accented the intellectualized, the carefully wrought, the finely spun. Inevitably, Mlle. Bouanger conceived and reaized the program in the image of her own precise character...
...conducts so parsimoniously that it would be easy to forget she is there: a little old lady in grey quietly paying out time on the tips of her fingers. When one hand tires, the other begins. Only at the ends of phrases and the entrances of the vocal ensemble does the underlying, steeled precision rise to the surface. She tapers and snubs the end of each phrase, each musical sentence. When one of the inner voices in the small vocal ensemble enters, she clears the air for it as if doing the breast-stroke. Like a fuse, she acts immediately...
...actor has little voice left. Long ago it developed a natural quaver that he has adroitly learned to use for theatri cal effect. But he more than makes up for his vocal defects by embellishing each role with small dramatic touches of his own-a twitch here, a little shuffle of surprise there-that bring character to life. Son of a well-to-do Roman family, De Paolis made his debut as the Duke in Rigoletto at Bologna in 1919, later sang tenor leads at virtually every major house in Europe. But, he says, "I never had a large voice...
...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 his name as he endorsed his Met check for each performance...
...debut at Covent Garden, likes to shout down the opposition, and that he is often tight and rasping in the middle and lower registers. But his top register can be glorious, and he often makes up in sheer strength and virility for what he lacks in sensuous sound or vocal finesse. He is at his best in such stentorian roles as Manrico in // Trovatore and the title role of Ernani, and his brilliant Otello is one of the great interpretations of present-day opera...