Word: vocalizings
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...major romantic-opera composers, along with enriching the repertory, each toughened the requirements for those who perform their music. In addition to the usual considerations of vocal agility and purity of tone, Wagner demanded endurance, a prodigious memory and a sound that could cut like hot steel through his dense orchestrations. Puccini required singers capable of searing dramatic flights, coupled with limpid lyricism. And Richard Strauss, envisioning his ideal Salome, was only partly joking when he asked for a 16-year-old with the voice of Isolde. No wonder then that outstanding interpreters of such operatic peaks as Briinnhilde, Turandot...
...world is currently waiting for a true Siegfried to climb the Valkyrie rock and rescue productions of Wagner's Ring cycle from the efforts of overstrained tenors, but the air is clearer at the higher vocal elevations. In Hildegard Behrens and Eva Marlon, both in their early 40s, there are two formidable sopranos who between them may rule the dramatic repertory for at least the next decade. Not since the heyday of Birgit Nilsson, now 67 and retired from the opera stage, has there been a singer who dominated the German roles and triumphed in dramatic Italian parts...
Significant premieres by two of today's leading composers might help to change that attitude, however. In Washington two weeks ago, Mstislav Rostropovich led the National Symphony Orchestra in the eight completed movements of Krzysztof Penderecki's Polish Requiem, a work in progress for vocal quartet and chorus that promises to be a major statement, both musically and politically, when it is finished some time next year. And last week in Paris, Seiji Ozawa presided over the world premiere of Olivier Messiaen's first opera, Saint François d'Assise, which is clearly intended...
...EFFECTIVE political life was over. But he didn't stop trying. He ran for governor of Pennsylvania in 1958 and mayor of Philadelphia in 1959. In 1960 he was a vocal opponent of Nixon and tried to oppose his nomination at the convention. Since his ousting from the Eisenhower administration he has practiced law, but he still remains convinced that he is the man to run the country. He ran against Nixon in 1968. Reagan in 1976 and 1980 and on September 9 of this year became the first Republican to announce his presidential candidacy...
...Indira Gandhi welcomed the participants, a majority of them began pushing for a resolution condemning the Oct. 25 U.S. invasion of Grenada. Leaders from five of the Eastern Caribbean states that had joined the U.S. forces refused to go along. In the course of an unusually acrimonious discussion, a vocal contingent from the African states of Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mauritius claimed that the U.S. action might encourage the South Africans to invade neighboring countries on the pretext of protecting its nationals abroad. In response, Dominica's Prime Minister Eugenia Charles, who had stood at President Reagan's side...