Harold Schonberg in The New York Times:

Miss Horne has many of Miss Sutherland’s attributes, with several pluses and one minus. Her big, strong, securely produced voice does not have the sensuous sheen of Sutherland’s. But she is a better musician, has better diction, sings with better rhythm and clearer shape to the phrase, and has a wider compass. Miss Sutherland is not happy with low notes. Miss Horne, a mezzo?soprano, has the low, notes together with the top of a dramatic soprano. She is a potential Brünnhilde.

She comes to the Metropolitan Opera in her vocal prime, and she was in complete authority—even dramatic authority, though, like Miss Sutherland, she is an actress who uses old-fashioned gestures and movements. She made her entrance with a pianissimo that carried through the house, and as the opera progressed she was most careful to portray Adalgisa as a woman and not a singing machine.

Her low notes for this occasion were more in relation to her scale than they had been at her concert with the ‘New Jersey Symphony last month, and she saved the vocal fireworks for the appropriate moments. Miss Horne, too, inserted cadenzas here and there, but always with taste.

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