Word: debutants
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Legions of operagoers agree. In Italy her appearances regularly touch off frenzies of acclaim the like of which the country has not seen in 30 years, since the heyday of Claudia Muzio. Since she made her U.S. debut (in San Francisco) eight years ago, every house she has sung to has been sold out, and her Bohème at the Metropolitan two seasons ago drew surging, partisan crowds that choked traffic around the house until 2 a.m. Some 30 cities in this country are bidding for her services at a top price of $5,000 per recital. Her American...
During the months just before and after the end of World War II, Tebaldi and her mother shuttled from one small town to another. During that period, Tebaldi made her operatic debut (as Helen of Troy in Boito's Mefistofele) in Rovigo; on the way there, fighter planes strafed her train. After Toscanini hired her for the Scala opening in 1946, she smoothly embarked on the international operatic circuit. In her rise to the top she has experienced only one real failure-a performance of Traviata at La Scala in 1951 in which her voice broke twice on high...
...great voices of a more leisurely age. Tebaldi will sing 22 performances at the Met this season (Tosca, Cio-Cio-San, Mimi, Desdemona and Manon Lescaut), will then take a swing about the country on a recital tour, move on to Havana, Rome, Naples, then make her Paris Opera debut, go on to the Vienna Opera. July will be given over mostly to new recordings in Rome. Tebaldi's pace would probably be even more furious if it were not for the fact that she finds it "a sufferance to get into a plane," and consequently travels almost exclusively...
Gerryflappers. For a seven-year period, inaugurated by Conductor Leopold Damrosch, not a word of anything but German was heard in the house. Wagner was performed in thunderous repetition, and the greatest soprano of the period, Lilli Lehmann, sang Carmen in German in her Met debut. But during the Met's "Golden Age of Song," at the turn of the century, Jean and Edouard de Reszke, Emma Eames, Lillian Nordica, Nellie Melba, et al. educated their audiences to hear Italian and French operas sung in their original languages. Still, educated or not, Guest Star Adelina Patti could stop...
...greatest singer, Enrico Caruso, made his debut in Rigoletto in 1903, sang 607 performances of 36 operas in the next 17 seasons, and transformed the Met into a genuinely popular house. Soprano Geraldine Farrar, trailed by a worshipful female fan club of self-styled "gerryflappers," reigned with him. But Arturo Toscanini, with Gustav Mahler, the greatest of the Met's conductors, deftly cut his singers to size, and in only seven seasons changed the house from a kind of glorified star club into a smooth-functioning repertory theater. During one rehearsal, temperamental Soprano Farrar turned...