Word: alda
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...mystery for the mystics to explain, and hurried home to fasten her dominion on New York City. In a short time the young singer was surrounded by famous admirers (T.R. himself, she says, called her voice "Deelight-ful!"), won the patronage of the famed operatic soprano, Mme. Frances Alda, and married bestselling Novelist Owen (Stover at Yale) Johnson...
There are two leading guys. One, Nathan Detroit (Sam Levene), manages floating crap games and has been affianced for 14 years to a nightclub singer (Vivian Elaine) who longs for "a home with wall paper and bookends." The other guy, Sky Masterson (Robert Alda), will bet on any thing - even that he can persuade a "Save-A-Soul Mission" lassie (Isabel Bigley) to go with him to Havana. While the law is missing out on dice games in sewers and Salvationist missions, love gets Sky firmly into its clutches, and leaves him out to make converts rather than points...
...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...