Listen!; Cyril Peters interviews Betty Allen, mezzo-soprano

the the syracuse and my guest has an especially allan meltzer soprano was out on his own voice interface had seen a great deal around new york on the concert stages she's been with certainly all the leading orchestras here and sing a great deal in or tomorrow but not too much in the harbor which is the senate will get it to be a lathe but ms allen recently had a concert at their film on a call which turned out to be something nelson had been planned originally it was a weekend of the death of martin luther king jr and that turned into a very moving experience for the audience and liz allen and the whole point you will this is difficult today after the assassination on friday allison berea kentucky senior concert at berea college and i thought they called me to cancel the

concert i was in effect i was sure of it because of similar experience happened in sixty three i was supposed to sing it handel opera with a more ideas on the night of the president's assassination and they called me to say that the concert was postponed and i was so sure that they were into this victim i was all set to say yes it's all right to cancel concert and the people who had bought the tickets because it was a benefit for the association you are musicians i think would've felt well no we've given our money to a good cause and you know that's the end of it i was evidence are innocent though mccaul recital that instead they want to know when i turned it into a memorial it's difficult for me and i think i've been to several generals in my life my mother's my father's and other people had to attend and not to them he's at memorial services and nineties with death not many people are but it makes me very uncomfortable and that somebody have known i get quite i'm upset about it and i thought about it and when i said i would do it and i felt i had to do it and then the next thing was i felt the program canada my man and the first thing i thought it was a take over the border which

like so much and i thought i got to take them off the testers to frivolous the rest of the program could pass it was palm sunday and that was the day that was designated as national mourning dame so i thought well maybe put in the serious songs which are the missing in washington the constitution hall fire on i guess so i call paul and he seemed to think that was a good idea and i spoke with my manager who also thought it was a good idea so we put in the biblical psalms and i talk to them to formally call as homer and the manager the hall that said that they all thought nothing else to be change in the program really but i considered taking out two of the numbers just full length because i figured if if other figures public figures showed up and they were speeches it would lengthen the broken my mind program was reticent about our behalf a very meaty music just music period and it would've linked and interminably if if you know there were speeches so i took that to pursue a number of sympathies and but it was difficult the only time

i got really kind of upset inside was in the middle of old pope we do the one about death and i got rather upset the middle of the marvel for him strangely enough i don't quite know why something that vehemently him our votes and the way the legal pastor was arranged that i'd had just found amazing that you're able to sing for sore this marian anderson was there because that makes it changing of the guard and i did not know that became so well i've made him that my husband went to school with coretta they all coretta and learned the pars wife agrees and my husband it all london a private high school in marion alabama and they're very close and so i knew coretta because of attention and she would she would call and you know in a busy was an outspoken are on the telephone when i sang in atlanta a quarter ounce because music was important o'hara

i that was my way of doing something i thought i thought i had to do it but he did it is as they get mixed in a little bit difficult to keep the state in certain portions of it and that's why it was a very destructive concert from my point of eleven my concentration was not able to concentrate fully to it my name is alan as i mentioned in the introduction heavy everyone has seen you heard you usually in or two hours in their data recordings to us one would think why aren't you an opera what's it's very funny and it was the year of my tenth and plenty of my debut in nineteen fifty it was my debut and when i first started to sing my teacher would let me sing opera arias because she thought i'd really in the voice it had to know what i was doing and she probably was right but i was also detained by the fact that people kept telling me at number one my voice was big enough them into my personality and have a i was authentic olive grove were temperament with the fact that of amusing than the last year is so i have been told by several people

that i am the kind of sing and that is what they call a personality thing is to be offended if as the bristol is a fair and that no i well i didn't believe it something happened i think perhaps it was a matter of the time was not quite right and also that we're not do with me frankly you know it's a very easy you do take some it was a distinct operatic heroin and place them in an isolated instance but at a mets a surprise to become a complete mario or you say mothers and when his mother that's right lord made something one or two words there really is very little rattle using the great big rolls i didn't really know them and it's very sad that in this country there are very few places where people will take you aside from something like the studio next studio and really teach you you know i've had this experience and other countries in south america and in germany are ravenous for contracts for five times our mr lieberman

is awfully something be done by the men with that and offer me something people we came here and they can visualize just by hearing you do something else they hear the quality of the voice they hear the texture the voice they see you and your personality and they think now that bear would make either someone suffered some of his favourite you would make it a not bad her roden yes somebody with a relative minor the line that somebody told me that i was kneeling in terms of the wild and that is that have it has invested more than once i'm afraid i rather lean to counsel yes yes yes aside from the obvious typecasting of all rica and as the chamber as a chain that i have done and an heiress and riggi and now their it gets you see what has been offered me has been what i thought was beyond me i'm into one's destiny bunsen a contract my german manager in which he suggested for roles that ice think out of season as it's a memorable rican carmen a bully and i was something else either what'd they do what i do with mccartney off

who's going to be making momma by reconstruction because when you're singing they like that when i had nothing in a pretty rough and b did vocally physically and emotionally you know and just be cast aside like an orange be oh it was a great deal you see and what happens now as i said is that temperamentally and vocally people will see me then for things that maps i think a b and b and they are things in that and i'm not quite ready for yet and i can sing enroll for the sound on those reports that you made you think that because of recent things that people have observed about saying is that this is now the age for the intelligent singing who'll say well what exactly what usa what about the time when they caught me off to leave the hospital i hope so my first voice teacher who died in nineteen sixty one at the age of eighty eight used to tell me with great enjoy about the time it took her two weeks to go to europe and i you know like

almost to have a week to go to the west coast and the rest in between and you didn't do all these goodies now i take the plane and when i get off the plane at a gaza fly very often i met at the airport and however an interview and then i'm carter raft orchestra rehearsal and then they have another artist ursula and then there's a performance and then you get on the plane to go somewhere else again in a given what she's losing her voice is isn't say it all the time but when people do say that's really what's the matter with them you know and in between you take all kinds of things we usually manages and press agents arrested david sitting there would be and who you on the people and trying to get your roles when you finally get them you know this horrible thing you can say no enough to take things that you know i'm not right for you or you take things that your friends you know because of that else will you know and that's why people are so subtle ground up and used up ahead of that and i think that they get to the point where they have got to say no i'm sorry i

think there is now an my body once standard is the only instrument we have the cape and in england and those words of wisdom as we should take a break at his own music and hear a sunday i think which will give the listener an example of what we can hope to come is ms allen as an heiress german but in the two years that has pressured ms sally could tell us how this came about oh oh yo says yeah i'm bob hey off

our day date rape is seeing its status oh oh our

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who cares he's a liar he's been at the city eight states it is are

state owned air who needs oh yes it is

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methane that's always nice hsbc eight million person that was it then than there is in germany and now the iaea on that recording was hildegard help rectify echols was bennie allen as an heiress and that was recorded in nineteen sixty one it was in his sixtieth be the funny thing was that you know i learned that was a commitment was at least as i

have no one monitored of shop with an ad and bottled frick was a memphis it was a very strange experience is that a jury we got into this because they have done so is the in our man for four for german rca his master's voice out was re recording a great many things in german and i mean to but would you like to do and i say well what about to do it and they said it deny civil rights division one but that's enough about the link with it then that's a funny because injury there a lot of records that never make it all be here as this without to record everything record everything i sing it was a mother and hoffman injury and in german and at the thing is that of course up until last year up almost all german operas that everything in german now there'd been many things in a reasoned i heard the first time armed and they were doing a blame in italian in berlin

and i was a name the response has been easy but to me it was the first time they were attending and half the audience was annoyed half the audience was delighted in the chorus and some of the principles were still doing in germany while they were doing an inattentive has got like the old mixed thomas' of the two languages or three going at once but they knew they were accustomed to hearing this you know and it's like the classic stories about but a flat know about the first family was the butterfly remember i was in the climate plan a freshman liggett calling in their lives meant lincoln town and other whatever that led linkedin like that isn't a lisp it's think at ten am and my friends that have a bit of christ of us paying you know what didn't kill me through in german ends with an indelicate going to think of the navajo and emily give up profile the audience a dozen

puerto rican outrage with their identities he says somewhat of an idiot picking every just to pick one event led to something that we are was very much with those of the city center where things were done in english i mean there is a pro and con to this way you do get the us understands what's the euro the common man that they're trying to reach wes moore theatre enemies for a bigger audience today yes wait wait but also when you gotten when you've got a band now the libretto my dear there's nothing you can do i mean consider who wrote the mozart librettos and consider who wrote gonorrhea from god sake you know i mean and even even bo him eventually fly the first time i had been you know the awful records he's come out a chicago are on the air would come and chemical is as i was the voice of mike first bunny and they said goodbye goodbye goodbye goodbye

goodbye goodbye goodbye goodbye he's coming out we must all goods back that's ridiculous in animated make that into in a masterpiece of clear it i mean idea was was it why d'you as much more beautiful it sings better than you actually really icons in effect that is just ridiculous is a plain silly when you do understand it then some of it is ludicrous in summing up to the right girl from the golden west with that said it was good for people and the other guy was in a little bit depp that don't come out with big pieces of wisdom a lot of the things that you tend to favor when you do recycle now i'm always impressed by words i've had only three or four teachers i've had one coat just those pole alaska used to go to a long long time ago now we serve work more or less these bees absolutely wonderful because he's won the few people that never flat is you never says anything pleasantest to

be saying something pleasant analyst calls the shots with me but i think that my first choice to a jew hussein says died her name was more sarah moore and in between i suppose the full of fresh and i think i learned anything at all from frisch it was a great regard for poetry and for words she was so carried away with words just a prayer always complete texts and sometimes complete translations of texts with the recitals because she thought that they were as important as the music and of course they were they were there when they were what inspired the music and if it's a gift it's a piece of music where i have no respect for the words i cannot say very easy for this reason i can sing from the bin laden without getting deeply in the middle because by the time i get around to the forethought doing which is so sentimental and so scared because initially so poetry so god awful that i just break up you say and the music is beautiful but the rates actually just boredom is something tim adams shores called for a red state in rather controversial into jews in the program

only a model that she felt this was teaching poetry it is a test of the house rahm must say it's apropos of this i have had a number of pieces written for me and virgil the last big cycle the verge of that for me prison priors with virtuosity as virgil thompson was a ford foundation and before this he said some poems to me he wanted to do some love poem she said every time i do a piece for you in a list and that the religious let's give you some love music so he sent me these poems a huge barns brown absolutely philly i never thought they were not erotic really give a death when you call them kids and poet jacqueline farmyard poetry and he was actually no point in anybody who looked like me who acts like me standing up there bleeding about my husband coming home from the field athlete lau and mooning and anybody knowingly would know that i wouldn't move over anybody like that and the first thing that has to be believed is that you would actually see these ridges self dc and i just

on them so silly so there was a long silence and virgil wrote me back and said well i can tell that your extended sullivan show ever these farms i'm sending you back some religious poems you can find fault with the bible lamas allies going to be before make soon and forges so public and you can get a ticket at the film on the box office but that's only with leonard bernstein and me up for monica lewis the beethoven nine comments on may sixteen seventeen eighteen when you performed this as beethoven is down to a neighboring county it's a wonderful job because you get mama's they don't do very much i could serve to win forty five middle ways it's like hbo was lazing in a line of a hymn to and you know once mr steinberg many auditions for and by myself it was horrendous and i think actually asked me when he does that it was the ring as they listened to by yourself you know it's assassinated there's no real melody you that no looting

by yourself a minute the baritone that was beginning to wonder a large and surprising a beautiful bit at the end that everybody wants it on this episode of the call or one thousand in the ever remembered the alto is which you call a memorable bit of music from alto it's only that you can be heard at the venture only qualification alive but to magnificent reviews for the nine four euro per capita was in the days when he heard what i write let's end on something that does this in reverse it's a beautiful piece of music supposedly a religious book being rossini it can stand up or an operatic and here's something with the hair that's all the control of the things this week that it's being there ms allen has some glorious music to sing two recordings that i have used or on fourchon the us imports but you can get them in the military awarded today on that day because if tickets it's the european victory his members see it that is a ten inch lp ot on sixty

seven oh four and rossini start model s t o h o six or seven and that has up to a large garden they go up on tv in the beginning but let's listen to this allen before we do that i forget to say goodbye because our time is running out for pets i remember ms allen in this way your image again yeah i am

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