Word: alda
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...wintry January afternoon in 1916, the Metropolitan Opera's Enrico Caruso, Frances Alda, Antonio Scotti and Andres de Segurola bundled into a train for one of their weekly performances in Philadelphia. For the top performers in the Met's golden age it was a routine trip, but one they always made the most of. This time, the party sipped champagne...
...four-even Soprano Alda-aped Basso Segurola by wearing monocles.When Segurola put on his top hat, he was showered with white dust: Caruso had thoughtfully poured flour into it. Baritone Scotti squirted seltzer water in Alda's face. Instead of nibbling at stage fare in the cafe scene of Act II, they sat down with relish to a chicken dinner-and more champagne -ordered in from an Italian restaurant...
...Madame Alda (now 66) recalls it, Caruso said, "Non fa niènte. You just stand still and move your lips and I'll sing it for you." With his back to the audience, he did just that. Says Alda: "I felt like sitting up in my bed and joining in the applause...
...want to spoil the bass business." But one of the prints had been preserved by Dr. Mario Marafioti, onetime Met physician and friend of Caruso, and Narrator Wally (Voices That Live) Butterworth had persuaded him to let a new master be cut from his copy. He also persuaded Madame Alda to tell her story on the other side...
Victor, with an eye to the big spenders, brought out a "Heritage Series" of wheezing reissues from opera's so-called "Golden Age" at $3.50 a disc (with gold labels). Pressed from musty masters are Soprano Frances Alda's gracefully sung Willow Song and Ave Maria from Otello (recorded in 1910) and Baritone Mario Ancona's Eri tu from The Masked Ball (1907). Even scratchier is Luisa Tetrazzini's carelessly sung Voi che sapete from The Marriage of Figaro (1908). Enrico Caruso's faltering Rachel, quand du seigneur, from La Juive, was recorded...