Word: adua
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Such moments of depression are rare, but they are an occupational hazard. Feasting or dieting, fussed over or not, a barnstorming opera singer spends long hours of isolation in hotels, studying, resting (Pavarotti sleeps ten to twelve hours before a performance) or simply killing time. Pavarotti's wife Adua joins him on tour for a few weeks each year, and friends consider her spirited, sensible ministrations a tremendous boost for him. Says one of them: "At least she doesn't stand in the wings with holy water like the wives of some Italian tenors." But Pavarotti manages only a handful...
...settling into the routine of instructing eight-year-olds in public school, music began to look like a vocation after all. He and his father accompanied the local chorus to an international music festival in Llangollen, Wales, where?to their delirious amazement ?they won first prize. Encouraged by Adua, whom he had met and become engaged to during teacher training, Luciano decided to give singing a try. (Another Modena youngster, a childhood friend of Pavarotti's, had already made the same decision: Soprano Mirella Freni...
...expect a Bismarck in every generation.... It was taken for granted that the world was marked out by Providence for exploitation by the European white man and that the principle of every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost was natural law.... The rise of Japan, the Adua disaster, the Boxer rising, none of these epoch-making events really opened the eyes of Europe...
...have decided on the struggle and we will carry it to the end! Remember, Italians have always defeated the black races. The only such battle that turned against us was Adua [Ethiopian victory of 1896]. That was an exception. There we were overwhelmed by superiority of numbers. There 14,000 Italians fought 100,000 Ethiopians. The reason for this heroic and unfortunate exception was that Italy had at that time a government less concerned for its soldiers than for Parliamentary chicanery. Today all Italy is behind its sons! Today all Italy prefers a heroic to a useless life...