On a small scale

Oscar Thompson in Musical America:

Another sold-out house applauded Marion Talley’s second operatic adventure at the Metropolitan, when the young soprano impersonated the unhappy heroine of Donizetti’s Italianization of Walter Scott’s “Bride of Lammermoor” at a special matinee on Washington’s Birthday. . . .

The Lucia of the afternoon was as excitedly acclaimed as the Gilda of the preceding Wednesday. A considerable number of the Kansas City delegation remained in New York for Miss Talley’s second appearance, and it was the expressed opinion of several of these that the youthful artist was more fully herself than she was at her debut. There were ten recalls after the “Mad Scene,” and the progress of the opera was interrupted by applause each time the music afforded opportunity for florid singing or for a particularly altitudinous note. Demonstration followed demonstration in each of the three scenes in which the heroine appears.

“Lucia” makes heavier demands on its soprano than “Rigoletto.” Aside from the ever-taxing “Mad Scene,” the first act Cavatina and the several duets afford a sharper test of coloratura capacities than do the placid embellishments of “Caro Nome.”

Miss Talley’s success was proportionately more pronounced. Her sharply defined staccato, her excellent trill, her fluency in runs and scale passages, all counted for more, and though everything was again on a small scale, there was something less of immaturity, and of a tentative and transitional suggestion, in her delivery. Middle and lower tones were often of a hauntingly lovely quality, if seldom of more volume than the mezza-voce of her fellow artists, and higher notes had less of an occasional tendency toward the metallic than was noted in the “Rigoletto” performance. This reviewer derived more personal pleasure from her achievement of the “Mad Scene” than from any other projection of it in recent seasons at the Metropolitan.

On this day in 1980 baritone Leo Nucci made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Renato.

Birthday anniversaries of baritone Robert Weede (1903), tenor José Soler (1904), bass Hervey Alan (1910), soprano and Hollywood “ghost” singer Marni Nixon (1930) and baritone Silvano Carroli (1939).