Word: vocalism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Listeners who went to the monster concert with purely musical expectations may have found it too much of a not good enough thing. But perhaps they missed the point. The evening, with its interlude of vocal selections and its entr'acte speech by Gottschalk Scholar Robert Offergeld, was intended as a nostalgic entertainment, a good-humored throwback to a more innocent age when the concert hall had to mediate between the salon and the circus. If Gottschalk's significance did not always come through clearly, his flamboyant spirit certainly...
...play is didactic and padded with anemic subplots. It lives through Conti. Quite apart from his resonant vocal range, he has wondrously expressive eyes, incendiary in rage, impish in mischief, grave in contemplation and stinging in pain. Few Broadway debuts are so auspiciously marked on the dateless calendar of brilliance. It is a measure of Conti "s achievement that we cheer his victory unto death and mourn the loss of the man in the same instant...
...Tannhauser, April 26. Beyond the superb production--including a shadowy, carnal Venusberg and rear projections of woods--this Tannhauser features the legend of Leonie Rysanek's exuberant Elisabeth, a vocal titan of a heroine. Richard Cassilly in the title role acts and sings much more reliably than the man he replaced, James McCracken, whose croaking was the chief liability of this opera as presented in New York last year...
...failure of this Romeo and Juliet must lie at the feet of Hughes and Shannon Gaughan as Juliet. Neither goes beyond the broad label of 'youth' to find some more specific trait in their characters to highlight; neither is terribly graceful on stage; and both annoyingly exploit some vocal and some non-verbal mannerisms...
Gaughan is little better, though she has moments of more composure on stage. She seems to be trying to act out a genuinely 13-year-old Juliet, but like Hughes she lacks essential vocal control. She tries to press her small voice to impassioned heights, and the result is an embarrassing sound somewhere between a whine and a scream. And at heated moments, she has a habit of trying to spout an entire line of pentameter verse in one breath...