Word: vocalisms
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These musical failures were doubly unfortunate because this troupe of singers contains some very fine voices. Of particular note were Daniel Pantano's Papageno, a chubby, winning baritone with plenty of playfulness: Barbara Morash's Queen of the Night, who traversed her role's Alpine vocal peaks of near-yodelling with good control and plenty of voice to spare: and the Three Ladies of Anne Johnson, Penelope Bitzas, and Deborah Harrington, a trio of ethereally beautiful voices. Everyone in the cast was at least vocally adequate for this small-scale production, and it was a shame to watch them...
Glenda Jackson is a buzz saw of an actress and Rose is a toothpick of a play. This sense of imbalance sets the tone of the evening. Jackson possesses a feral magnetism; the play is nerveless, somnolent, inert. She is direct; the play is diffuse. In vocal inflection and delivery, she is a wicked font of wit and irony; the play is parched for either...
...Mannish Boy"--merely transferred from the Love You Live collections--and the other, a driving re-make of "When the Whip Comes Down," open the second side. On the former, Jagger tries for a vague Muddy Waters imitation and comes up a bit short, but he receives enthusiastic vocal backing from occasional Stones keyboardist Billy Preston. "When the Whip Comes Down" benefits from a propulsive rhythm guitar and bass line, but whoever played the lead barely distinguishes himself from the tenative style of a high school amateur. Other cuts include "Crazy Mama," a gritty "I-want-to-sleep-with...
...executives refused to look beyond his slightly spastic exterior--"Good manners and bad breath will get you nowhere." The world sullied Elvis's new lace sleeves a long time ago and he still hasn't gotten over it: the song is like a river of tears, and Elvis's vocal is the most expressive of his career, choked yet fluent, cynical yet deeply innocent. It's a beautiful, intimate, cards-on-the-table number, with Pete Thomas's snare lightly searing your cranium. Trust contains, however, two clunkers: "Different Finger," another of Elvis's dreary, patronizing, untranscendent country numbers...
...Audiences felt that they were seeing Norma or Violetta. Hers was not a conventionally "beautiful" voice, like that of her great rival Renata Tebaldi. It could be volatile and reedy. Her wanderings impaired her health and her voice. She enjoyed only about ten years of international fame before serious vocal trouble began...