Word: rigoletto
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Second newcomer was Italian-born Soprano Hilde Reggiani, hit of last year's Chicago opera season. Small, plump, 25, she cooed a coy Gilda to Lawrence Tibbett's towering Rigoletto, hit super-high Ds and Es with expert marksmanship, held onto them with the tenacity of garlic. When husky Baritone Tibbett vowed to avenge her worse-than-fatal fate, and threw her, pleading, to the ground, well-rounded Soprano Reggiani rolled like a well-aimed bowling ball, ended on her back, half way across the Metropolitan stage...
...While Tenor Ivan Kozlovsky and Basso V. Y. Droviannikov sang their lines in Rigoletto at Moscow's famed Bolshoi Theatre, Tenor Kozlovsky, noted for his freakishly large range, suddenly began to sing bass. Surprised, annoyed, but not to be outdone, Droviannikov lifted himself into a strangled tenor. Backstage, later, the two singers had to be separated by stagehands. The Soviet All-Union Committee on Art branded the ruckus as inexcusable "naughtiness," warned all singers to stay in their own range...
...Atlantic City, N. J., the Steel Pier Opera Company last week began its tenth season with an English production of Il Trovatore. Henri Elkan again conducted. Other operas listed: Verdi's Rigoletto, von Flotow's Martha, Debussy's L'Enfant prodigue, Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana...
...singers were less impressive. Vina Bovy sang carelessly, seldom felt any obligation to act (TIME, Jan. 18). When Gertrud Ruenger, originally a contralto at the Vienna Staatsoper, took the soprano role of Brünnhilde, she sounded shrill and lifeless. John Brownlee, a young Australian baritone, made an indifferent Rigoletto. But Kerstin Thorborg raised the recruits' average with a splendid Fricka...
...When Rigoletto was repeated last week. Soprano Bovy proved that she could sing truly if not more evenly, but she still seemed pathetically unequal to Tibbett. A German opera saved the week from mediocrity, when Wagner's Flying Dutchman was put on for the first time in five years. Save for Hans Clemens, who sang the Steersman in the last production, all the principals were new to the Metropolitan in their parts. Flagstad took the role of Senta for the first time in her career and made it unforgettable. Warmest praise went to Baritone Friedrich...