On Fri, 3 Jan 2003, Lloyd W. Hanson wrote:
> It is also true that some of the famous contraltos of that time sang > roles such as "Norma" and "Lucia" after some retraining for these > parts. This would not likely happen today.
On the other hand, the following all started their careers as mezzos before switching to soprano (and not just from dramatic mezzo to dramatic soprano, which is a more common "crossover")
Joan Sutherland (trained and worked as a mezzo until Bonynge) Kiri Te Kanawa (trained and worked as a mezzo until Bonynge helped her discover her true voice, as he had with Mrs. Bonynge) Carol Vaness (trained as a mezzo) Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (trained as a contralto!) Amy Johnson (trained as a mezzo; now sings Tosca, Marguerite, and Aida)
The real question is whether those old contraltos who retrained - and there have been some as recent as the early 20th century, such as Olive Fremstad and Margarete Matzenauer ever were, truly, contraltos, or whether they were always sopranos, and simply "covered" a lot - which was an acceptable technique back then - to darken their sound, thus *appearing* to be contraltos even though they really were not.
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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