Word: offing
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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In the midst of all this. Soprano Farrell proved only a partial blessing. In the middle range her voice is still gloriously warm, rich and powerful, as moving as any voice heard in opera today. But in the upper registers it was strained and at times shrill. Once past the...
Richard Wagner: His Story and His Music (Vox). This is a handsome way for a musically receptive child to meet a master. The dissonances of Wagner's life are scanted, but the sonic sensuousness of his work is served boldly, briefly and well.
A Christmas Carol (Sir Ralph Richardson; Caedmon). Dickens conceivably wrote the first Christmas sermon against the commercial spirit. As Scrooge, the "man of worldly mind," Sir Ralph is delectably mean and deliciously remorseful. He almost banishes that spirit of Christmas past, Lionel Barrymore.
Peter and the Wolf (Beatrice Lillie; London Symphony Orchestra; London). The ineffable Bea seems to take Prokofiev's fable with what Max Beerbohm called "a stalactite of salt." Her impish spoofery is just what this staid and somewhat self-conscious classic now needs.
Hoorah for the Red, White and Blue! (Golden). A masculine. 14-song choral salute to flag and country (The Caissons Go Rolling Along, The Halls of Montezuma) that goes off with a rousing, old-fashioned Fourth of July bang.