Word: vocalization
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Performances employed more acting mannerisms than acting, and even Daniel Seltzer as Georges used more vocal and physical tricks than this excellent and accomplished actor has ever displayed. Susan Lyke plays Irma at a fever pitch, unmodulated and quickly uninteresting, as was Janet Bowes as a listless Carmen. Michael McKean did the Envoy with excellent comic precision, although by playing it gay he threw the production over the edge, as far as this reviewer was concerned. Only Lisa Kelley successfully conveyed something of the balances and conflicts in Genet's many strange worlds. But as Chantal the revolutionary she comes...
...result is that in most productions, Tristan and Isolde are lovers who seem to forget that they have bodies. Sometimes the audience wishes it could forget too, in view of the age and bulk of most singers who are up to the demands of the vocal score. Not even the composer's innovation-minded grandson, Wieland Wagner, could change this. His productions introduced heavy hints of Freudian psychology, but the lovers' bond remained shrouded in symbolism. It all seemed to bear out Wagner's advice to Nietzsche that to get the most out of the opera...
Bearing Witness. Aretha's vocal technique is simple enough: a direct, natural style of delivery that ranges over a full four octaves, and the breath control to spin out long phrases that curl sinuously around the beat and dangle tantalizingly from blue notes. But what really accounts for her impact goes beyond technique: it is her fierce, gritty conviction. She flexes her rich, cutting voice like a whip; she lashes her listeners ?in her words?"to the bone, for deepness." "Aretha's music makes you sweaty, gives you a chill, makes you want to stomp your feet," says Bobby...
Cutting Loose. Two years later, she was a featured performer with her father's gospel caravan, an evangelist show that crisscrossed the country by car (except for Franklin, who preferred to travel by plane). Though it ripened her vocal and professional skills, the experience of touring was in other ways a harsh initiation for Aretha. Says Cecil dryly: "Driving eight or ten hours trying to make a gig, and being hungry and passing restaurants all along the road, and having to go off the highway into some little city to find a place to eat because you're black?that...
...only other breaks in her routine are visits to her father, her brother Cecil ?now assistant pastor of the New Bethel Church?or sister Carolyn, 23, who leads Aretha's accompanying vocal trio and writes songs for her. Another sister, Erma, 29, is a pop singer living in New York City. Sometimes, with her family, she opens up enough to put on her W. C. Fields voice or do her imitation of Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula ("Goodt eeeeeevnink, Mr. Renfieldt; I've been expectink you!"). But Cecil says: "For the last few years Aretha is simply not Aretha...