Word: desdemonas
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...been scheduled for months to make her debut as the doomed Desdemona in the matinee of Verdi's Otello. When she told General Manager Rudolf Bing that she also would sing her new hit role of Fiordiligi in Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte the same night, Bing's eyebrows went up. "You must be crazy," he said...
Hammerlocks. At 12:30 p.m., after a lunch of poached eggs and toast, Soprano Steber turned up at her Met dressing room and began costuming herself as Desdemona. She added a waist-long switch to her blonde hair, got into a "long negligee sort of thing," and was ready to face the volatile Moor (burly Tenor Ramon Vinay) onstage by the 2 p.m. curtain...
...dressing room. She rested for half an hour, then downed a 1-lb. sirloin and a glass of champagne, while her hairdresser built up her pompadour for Cosi. After an hour's nap, she changed into hoop skirts, and adjusted her mind from the tragic 15th century Desdemona to the gaily artificial 18th century Fiordiligi. That done, she went to the piano, vocalized on scales for ten minutes, sang a few warm-up bars from Cosi. By curtain time at 8:15, she was ready...
...season opener, the San Francisco Opera picked Otello and cast Nelli in her old role of Desdemona. She tackled it without a qualm, despite the fact that, with diplomats overflowing the opera house for the Japanese Peace Treaty, early rehearsals had to be held in an old downtown theater. The only thing that gave her the slightest pause was a feeling that Conductor Fausto Cleva might not do things exactly Toscanini's way. But when the big moment came, Cleva did just fine ("He was perfect"), and Soprano Nelli covered herself with glory too, singing in a voice that...
Said one veteran operagoer: "I've heard Otello several dozen times, but Nelli is the first Desdemona I can recall who sang the Ave Maria as if it were a prayer and not an aria...