Word: tenoritis
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...rather tubby sound, this is the finest recording yet to appear of the 165-year-old masterpiece. Soprano Maria Stader makes Pamina a joy to the ear; Rita Streich is awesomely secure in the Queen of the Night's sky-high aerobatics, while the two leading men, Tenor Ernst Häfliger and Baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, use their handsome voices with distinction...
...Hypochondria. Because of the delicacy of his vocal organ, the tenor is forced to baby his voice. Many carry this to extremes, even denying themselves sex for 48 hours before a performance because it may coarsen their tone. (One contemporary tenor has refined this after learning by a process of trial and error that his voice is at its peak exactly three days after sexual intercourse.) Despite all his precautions, the tenor tends to feel himself hoarse as a wolf at curtain time, and often decides he has a cold. If he can be forced onto the stage, his natural...
...Gambler at the Met. Common as it is, tenoritis has rarely infected U.S. tenor Richard Tucker, who pined and paraded about the stage of Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House one night last week as Don José in Carmen near the end of his finest season yet. A onetime cantor in a New York synagogue, he is one of the top tenors, and some think the best, in the world today. "Caruso, Caruso, that's all you hear!" Met General Manager Rudolf Bing once said. "I have an idea we're going to be proud some...
Brooklyn-born Richard Tucker, 41, is gifted with vocal equipment capable of a lyrical, sensuous legato and a ringing, exciting fortissimo. Beyond that he gives credit for his eminence to 1) the late Tenor Paul Althouse for teaching him, 2) former Met Manager (and former tenor) Edward Johnson for bringing him into the Met, and 3) Rudolf Bing for elevating him in roles and income. "I was making $6,000 as a cantor when Mr. Johnson offered me $95 a week to join the Met," says Tucker. "When Mr. Bing came here, I was singing for $350 a week. When...
...heavy-set man (180 Ibs.), Tucker leads as dedicated a life as any tenor. On performance days, he rises at 10, has coffee, juice, perhaps cereal, for breakfast. Around 4 p.m., he has eggs, toast and coffee and then nothing until after the performance, when he eats a sandwich. "The day I sing, I'm a stranger in the house. Talking is hard on the voice, so I don't talk." His three sons know better than to talk to him very much on those days...