Word: basso
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Many big musical names have deteriorated in value in the past two years. John McCormack and Amelita Galli-Curci, though still big drawing cards, have lost considerable ground. Basso Feodor Chaliapin no longer "sells." His last minimum fee of $3,500 was too high to permit managers making money. Other names which count for less in dollars and cents are the Singers Frieda Hempel, Anna Case, Sophie Braslau, Louise Homer, Dusolina Giannini, Mabel Garrison, Reinald Werrenrath, Louis Graveure, Pianist Josef Lhevinne, Violinist Mischa Elman. Violinist Jascha Heifetz had also started to slip. The public found him cold, expressionless. But since...
...book (which is by Harry B. Smith) does not come up to the same level. In between the musical numbers the pace lags. Of the airs the most familiar is "Gypsy Love Song", and it is sung by Philip Conyers, but unfortunately the part calls for a basso of extraordinary profundity and Mr. Conyers attempted to master it in a key so low that his voice lacked the power to bring out the full effect. If pitched a trifle higher the results would be considerably better. In this number the accompaniment by the chorus was skillfully managed...
...Goossens, the text by Novelist Enoch Arnold Bennett, had its world première at London's Covent Garden (TIME, July 8). Last week Judith was given its first U. S. performance by the enterprising Philadelphia Grand Opera Company. Soprano Bianca Saroya was satisfactorily bloodthirsty as Judith. Russian Basso Ivan Steschenko sang sonorously as Holofernes but failed to make intelligible the pompous passages done by Novelist Bennett in the Biblical idiom. British Composer Goossens conducted his music which, if lacking in originality, at least proved him a skilled and energetic workman...
...Even in Ernst Krenek's Jonny Spielt Auf, presented last year at the Metropolitan Opera House (TIME, Jan. 28) and before that in many a European capital, there was much discussion because Hero Jonny is supposed to be a black-face comedian. The Metropolitan authorities worried about letting Basso Michael Bohnen wear full, realistic black-face makeup, thought perhaps his neck should show white to reassure prejudiced observers. At the dress rehearsal the neck was white. It looked so absurd that at the performance it was blackened like the face...
...Basso Feodor Chaliapin boomed a Russian folksong at her with an arm around her so that she could feel his "vibrations...