Metropolitan Opera Archives

A certain poet of antiquity once remarked that to achieve success while young was the brightest gift of the gods. Miss Rose Bampton, who last night reached, upon her twenty-third birthday, that Mecca of the American operatic singer, the stage of the Metropolitan, may well feel that the deities presiding over these things have watched her lovingly. Their attendance, one hastens to add, was well merited. Miss Bampton brought to her first act appearance at the Metropolitan as Laura in "La Gioconda" most of the qualities desirable for operatic work - a charming unaffected presence admirably sustained throughout the nerve-racking ordeal of a debut; the uncommon contralto virtues of slender, good looks and a voice of operatic dimensions and beauty. To those who knew her in recital (wherein she usually confined herself to strictly contralto registers), the extent of her upper range, and the brilliance it often displayed, notably in the duets with Enzo and Gioconda, came as a surprise.

Miss Bampton's big, flexible voice, however, is truly contralto in quality, carrying throughout its wide range the contralto's depth, its round and velvety richness. If these qualities were not always as fully displayed last night as they were last Spring in a performance of Schonberg's difficult "Gurrelieder" which she made so memorable - if the middle register was occasionally more reedy and less opulent than that which she can command, the fact may be put down to the nervousness naturally attending a debut. She received an enthusiastic welcome from the audience at the close of the second act and was wanted again after the dramatically effective scene with Alvise (Tancredi Pasero) in Act 3.

Search by season: 1932-33

Search by title: La Gioconda,

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