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From:  dorisopran@a...
dorisopran@a...
Date:  Tue Jan 30, 2001  1:53 am
Subject:  What's in a name?


Karen, you mentioned but two contemporary contraltos, Ewa Podles and Nathalie
Stutzmann. Has the moniker "Contralto" hurt their careers? Just what was
your teacher driving at ... that you should, perhaps, call yourself a
contralto? How much did you discuss it with her, and did you present her
with the same thoughts as you have the list? Back to the past: who besides
Kathleen Ferrier was a true contralto? (I'm sure there were others; I'm just
cognitively incoherent right now.) Were they barred from "mezzo" roles?
What were their tops like?

Your teacher is right! Marilyn Horne is a contralto. I remember an
interview with both her and Henry Lewis many years ago where she said he had
thought she was a tenor on hearing her in a rehearsal before he looked up at
the stage to see where the lovely tenor sound was coming from.

Doris Long Thurber
one of the New Jersey Sopranos



  Replies Name/Email Yahoo! ID Date Size
8899 Re: What's in a name? Kate Reid   Tue  1/30/2001   2 KB
8912 Re: What's in a name? SMSchneider   Tue  1/30/2001   2 KB
8916 Re: What's in a name? dorisopran@a...   Tue  1/30/2001   2 KB
8923 Re: What's in a name? Karen Mercedes   Tue  1/30/2001   3 KB
8927 Re: What's in a name? Shuff@c...   Tue  1/30/2001   2 KB
8955 Re: What's in a name? Margaret Harrison   Thu  2/1/2001   2 KB
8960 Re: What's in a name? Jeffrey Snider   Thu  2/1/2001   3 KB
8961 contralto/mezzo, was Re: What's in a name? John Alexander Blyth   Thu  2/1/2001   2 KB
8992 Re: What's in a name? Lloyd W. Hanson   Fri  2/2/2001   3 KB

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