Word: alda
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Married. Mme. Frances Alda Gatti-Casazza, 55, oldtime opera singer, former wife of the Metropolitan Opera's late manager, Giulio Gatti-Casazza; and Ray Vir Den, 45, Manhattan advertising executive, and something of a singer himself; in Charleston, S.C. Chuckled the bridegroom, vice president of the famed Dutch Treat Club: "I hope I surprised the boys...
...even been newly staged. Last week a genuine revival finally did appear. Verdi's Otello, one of his last and greatest works, had not been seen & heard at the Opera House since the days when Toscanini conducted and principal roles were taken by dashing Leo Slezak, gossipy Frances Alda and drama-wise Antonio Scotti...
...memoirs of operatic divas go, one in which the author admits she is plump, is not too boastful about herself or too jealous of her peers, is on its face noteworthy. Such a volume (ghosted by Dorothy Giles) is Men, Women and Tenors* by Frances Alda. Long a capable Metropolitan Opera Soprano, first wife of Impresario Giulio Gatti-Casazza, Mme Alda launches her book with much of the triumphant, glassy-smiling air of a diva squaring off at a high C. Says her introduction: "For 50 years (everyone from the radio announcer to the Motor License Bureau knows...
Besides mentioning one of her four beaus by name (Lord Robin Innes-Ker), Mme Alda reveals that "my marriage to Gatti was frankly, on my part at least, a marriage after the European pattern; a sensible arrangement between a man and a woman who liked and respected each other. . . ." Her opinion of her successor, Dancer Rosina Galli: "Like me, she had a rather pretty face but too fat a figure." Alda declares that, when she made ready to divorce Gatti-Casazza, she was told that her contract at the Metropolitan would be allowed quietly to expire. Astute, she obtained from...
...Alda on her contemporaries: (Geraldine Farrar): "She and I were never friends." (Enrico Caruso): "His voice and mine blended so completely that they became one voice. The voice of humanity-male and female-joined into one." (Marion Talley): "If ever a child had a God-given voice, that girl had it. But intelligence about using it? That's something else again." (Maria Jeritza, who she says asked her for voice instruction): "No. You and I are friends now. But if I started to teach you we wouldn't be friends. Let's leave it at that." (Ganna...