Word: vocalizings
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While Police fans know that Sting's vocal vocabulary is extensive; ranging from smooth soulful falsettos and calypso lilts to yelps and fierce warning tones; the dominant Sting style on this album is a plaintive ethereal, no doubt sincere, chant-singing. It becomes a trifle tiresome, especially on the preachy first side. Here, he casts himself as a minister/sage, eager to dispense his wisdom. But Sting's poetry is most often second-hand or simplistic...
...brash, confident Wotan of Das Rheingold and Die Walkure, the splendid American bass James Morris served notice that he will be a Teutonic god of vocal power and majesty for years to come. Proud, haughty and resolutely amoral, Morris dominated the drama as he must to give depth to the tragedy that is, ultimately, Wotan's doing. Equally impressive was the Hungarian-born soprano Eva Marton, a legitimate contender for the mantle of Birgit Nilsson with impassioned performances of Brunnhilde in Siegfried and Gotterdammerung. Awakened by Siegfried on the Valkyrie rock, Marton sang Brunnhilde's Heil dir, Sonne greeting...
...Vocal quality was high throughout: Tenor Rene Kollo's sturdy Siegfried, Bass- Baritone Walter Berry's crafty Alberich, the ripe Fricka of Mezzo-Soprano Hanna Schwarz in Das Rheingold. A delightful bonus was the Walkure Fricka and Gotterdammerung Waltraute of Vienna-born Mezzo Helga Dernesch, who some years ago was an important Isolde and Brunnhilde. Combining her still considerable power with a riveting dramatic presence, Dernesch gave a lesson in Wagnerian artistry. Conductor Edo de Waart was too often cautious when he should have been impetuous, but he roused himself in Gotterdammerung to deliver a reading of surge and sweep...
Ishmael Jaffree had had enough. Throughout the 1981-82 school year, three of his children had been confronted with vocal prayer sessions at their grade schools in Mobile. Jaffree, an agnostic and a lawyer, had objected to the prayers, but got nowhere. Finally he sued, and won rulings that suspended not only spoken prayers but also a state law authorizing a daily moment of silence "for meditation or voluntary prayer." Jaffree's victory on the first issue was not surprising. Spoken prayers, okayed by the Alabama legislature in 1982, were in open defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court, which...
...states that have moment-of-silence statutes; if they move to eliminate any endorsement of prayer, the practice can apparently win approval from the current court. Massachusetts started the machinery to do that the day after the Jaffree decision. Many backers of school prayer, however, want vocal affirmation, not silent opportunity. They hope last week's ruling has roiled enough anger to energize the flagging effort to pass a constitutional amendment formally authorizing voluntary school prayer. "We're going to turn the heat up on Congress," vows conservative Fund Raiser Richard Viguerie. For all the turmoil and upset generated...