Word: heldentenor
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Isolde. The occasion: Florence's Maggio Musicale. In charge: eccentric, peripatetic Conductor Artur Rodzinski (born a Pole in Yugoslavia, he is a longtime U.S. citizen, now lives in Italy). Among leading singers: Swedish Soprano Birgit Nilsson as Isolde, Cleveland's Mezzo-Soprano Grace Hoffman as Brangane, German Heldentenor Wolfgang Windgassen as Tristan...
Paramount gave her a screen test, coldly classified her appearance as "unprepossessing but took a high shine to her etching voice. After a breaking-in period she was funneled into a script called The Mars Are Singing that had aging Heldentenor Lauritz Melchior, youthful Soprano Anna Maria Alberghetti (TIME, May 8, 1950) and a performing dog to recommend it, but little else. To Rosemary the director parceled out a couple of routine songs, Haven't Got a Worry and Lovely Weather for Ducks, and a reprise of Come On-a My House; it began to look...
Amidst loud cries of wounded pride and outrage, the new manager proceeded to drop 39 singers, including hitherto sacrosanct Heldentenor Lauritz Melchior, 60, whose wanderings from the score had been the bane of Met conductors for years. There were wild charges that Manager Bing, Vienna-born and German-trained, would try to force even more of the heavy dumpling of Wagner down the throats of audiences that are notably partial to lighter Italian and French fare. (Actually, Bing has little enthusiasm for Wagner.) When he signed famed Soprano Kirsten Flagstad to appear at the Met for the first time since...
...orchestra (under Joseph Rosenstock), scenery (by H. A. Condell) and singers. James Pease made the role of Sachs, the cobbler-poet, glow with gentle wisdom. The little second-act rage of the blonde Eva (Soprano Frances Yeend) was as charmingly impetuous as it should be. Her Walther (young German Heldentenor Hans Beirer) was impassioned, and in notable voice, in the Prize Song. And for once there was a Beckmesser (Baritone Emile Renan) who kept his comedy on the right side of slapstick. Altogether, it was a Meistersinger done with tender wit and the kind of freshness and spirit that brings...
Burly Tenor Ramon (Otello) Vinay was in a sweat. A Chilean trained for Italian and French opera, he had worked hard for over a year to huff himself into a German-style Heldentenor, and he was all set to sing his first Tristan, with Kirsten Flagstad as Isolde. San Franciscans (and Metropolitan Opera General Manager Rudolf Bing, who sorely needs a successor to Lauritz Melchior) were all set to hear him. But a fortnight ago, with debut day almost at hand, Tenor Vinay was bogged down in Chile. A stubborn Santiago impresario refused to let him leave the country until...