Hi, Karen! Thanks for "clearing the air"!! I nearly fell off my perch at Borders last nite! I collect Butt, Homer and Schumann-Heink and have communicated off and on with the direct descendants of the later two since the late 70s. I have yet to hear or teach a contralto, but hope that one day I'll be so lucky! On further reflection, I hope this slight was due to translation. Graves is a wonderful voice! She sang Elgar's "Sea Pictures" here recently with diction that would make Dame Clara Butt proud indeed! Thanks again! Ed Karen Mercedes <dalila@R...> wrote:Enricho Stinchelli is a stage director of opera in Italy. I suspect his use of the word "colored" was either translated from Italian, and thus the unfortunate choice was the fault of the translator, and not Sig. Stinchelli, or it was a result of an Italian's faulty use of English and possible lack of understanding of the "weight" that certain seemingly innocuous words have in the U.S. cultural context. In either case, I would not read racist intent into Sig. Stinchelli's use of the word "colored". It's quite likely that the Italians aren't completely au courant with the latest PC term for Americans of ancestrally African origins.
None of which explains his mislabeling of three great non-Italian contraltos. My only defence for Sig. Stinchelli on this one is the fact that today, at least, a heck of a lot of contraltos are calling themselves mezzos, mezzos are calling themselves contraltos and sopranos, and no-one really seems to want to be categorised in a way that could possibly keep them from singing all the roles they want to sing.
As for me, I'm a mezzo-contralto with dramatic soprano overtones. :)
Karen Mercedes http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html ________________________________ One must be something if one wishes to put on appearances. - Ludwig von Beethoven
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