Word: wagnerian
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...clear remove from the world of mortals, Britten wrote the part of Oberon for countertenor (Alfred Deller), a high-pitched, constricted voice never heard in modern opera, and Titania for high soprano (Jennifer Vyvyan). The music of the lovers, on the other hand, was mainly characterized by throbbing, Wagnerian chords while the music for the rustics was simple and zestful-as broadly comic as Shakespeare's own words...
Oddly enough, Soprano Sutherland started out in an entirely different style, hoping to be a Wagnerian singer. The daughter of a Sydney tailor, she took her first voice lessons from her mother, a "nonprofessional mezzo-soprano," won a number of local competitions and with the prize money decamped for London. At Covent Garden auditions, she learned that the Wagner repertory was not for her: "My voice really isn't heavy enough for that, and I soon understood that I'd been forcing it along a road that was wrong...
Between courses of a Wagnerian dinner, Danish-born Heldentenor Lauritz Melchior, 69, sounded off on the state of U.S. music: "Do you realize we are the only civilized nation without a ministry of the arts in the Government? Do you think we would have all this juvenile delinquency if our youth were introduced to the fineness of great music and art? Instead we give them criminal entertainment and savage music that builds up in them excitements that they are told they must not release." The Melchior prescription: "I suggest that each state levy a small tax on radio...
...fill the gigantic mold of a Wagnerian hero, a tenor should 1) have a voice big enough and resonant enough to soar over the timpani-tempered Wagnerian orchestra, 2) be robust enough to support swooning Wagnerian sopranos, and 3) preferably be named Lauritz Melchior. At the Metropolitan Opera last week, a topnotch revival of Wagner's Die Walkuere (conducted by Karl Boehm) offered the audience a dramatic tenor who ideally fulfilled the first two requirements and made the third one seem unimportant. The tenor: 33-year-old, Canadian-born Jon Vickers...
Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). The Metropolitan Opera's new Wagnerian star, Birgit Nilsson, appears in distinctly nonoperatic company: Comedienne Kay Ballard, Pop Singer Jaye P. Morgan and Dancer Carol Haney. Color...