Word: aria
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Parisians and their police were baffled last week by an offense little short of criminal but against which there is no Paris law. One evening at the opera, Tenor Franz was in the midst of a favorite aria when out upon the stage from her box climbed a young person later identified as one Sylvia Peres of Italy. Apparently overcome by an exhibitionist impulse, she threw herself into a vigorous and not inept display of fancy dance steps. Tenor Franz stood speechless. The orchestra stopped, gaping. Mlle. Peres danced on with abandon, coming to a climax with one heel...
Three singers made debuts during the Metropolitan's first week. Mezzo-soprano Eleanor La Mance of Jacksonville, Fla., a thin-legged, hollow-voiced girl, was "a musician" in the opening Manon Lescaut, sang her one aria nervously. Alfredo Gandolfi, who might have been any pot-bellied Italian tenor, was "a sergeant...
...friendly face of Dame Nellie Melba. Taking Ponselle's cold hands between her warm ones, the grand old prima donna delivered a warning: "Now, my dear Rosa, don't expect Covent Garden to be like your Metropolitan. Above all, don't expect applause for your great aria, 'Casta Diva.' A London audience wouldn't clap the Angel Gabriel himself until the curtain was down and the proper time for applause had arrived...
...story by Hugo von Hofmannstahl fits cunningly the music of Richard Strauss. Der Rosenkavalier has become for many one of the world's great operas, performed too infrequently in the U. S. The role of the Princess contains a most sad and beautiful aria on growing old which Frieda Hempel, Rosa Raisa and Florence Easton have often sung to notable effect. The role of Octavian is to be played by a woman, since the lover masquerades as a woman through much of the action, and is only 17 years old at best...
...arose but instead of singing, delivered a brief address on his life. "Sing, sing!" shouted the bad actors. Chaliapin drew a charcoal cartoon of himself which amused his audience but did not stop their demands for song. Chaliapin rose a third time, went through the motions of an aria, puffing his chest, swinging his arms, opening and shutting his mouth like a large Russian goldfish, without making a sound. After the performance was over, he said that he could not sing for nothing because of his contracts...