Word: diva
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Opera's most flamboyant diva and one of the cinema's hottest box-office blondes were on the outs with their employers. At the Edinburgh Festival, tempestuous Soprano Maria Callas waved a note from her doctor, walked out on Milan's La Piccola Scala (her second such disappearance this summer), said she was going back to Italy, explained: "I'm tired." In Hollywood, irked by a long-term contract with Columbia Pictures that calls for a humiliating $1,250 a week, straw-haired Kim Novak refused to show up for a film, was suspended...
...sharing a first-class booking with Maria. Her retinue also included her husband, Millionaire Italian Industrialist Giovanni Meneghini, ticketed modestly as a tourist-class passenger, but described in a lawsuit earlier in the week by Maria as the man "who owns me as a husband." At the airport, Diva Callas bumped into another tourist-class passenger, none other than fur-collared Baritone Enzo Sordello, fired from the Met fortnight ago because, claimed Sordello, he had outsung Maria in an unaffectionate duet of Lucia di Lammermoor. In jolly holiday spirits, Sordello proffered a bygones-be-bygones handshake. Maria spurned his mitt...
Callas agrees that Sordello did indeed hold the high note, and that during intermission she told him "it wasn't a nice thing to do." To which, said Diva Callas, he replied: " I am going to kill you'-meaning vocally, of course." She did not even mention the matter to Manager Bing, and canceled her performance because of a throat irritation. Harassed Manager Bing, firmly siding with Diva Callas, said Sordello had been fired solely because he had added extra embellishments and showy high notes to his part in Lucia, and, when reprimanded, had been "impertinent" to Conductor...
...lavished its most expensive talents on Ernani. It got Spanish-born Artist Esteban Frances to design sets and costumes, surrounded Diva Milanov with Tenor Mario Del Monaco, Baritone Leonard Warren and Basso Cesare Siepi. To little avail. Of the four stars, nobody sang well in Act I, and Milanov appeared to be suffering from dizziness, staggering and finally getting herself planted before starting to sing. Vocally, she was plagued by an excruciatingly bad sense of pitch, although she had sung her role commendably in the dress rehearsal. Her loyal supporters wore lapel buttons reading "Viva Zinka...
...dress rehearsal for the Metropolitan Opera's opening performance, Marlene Dietrich appeared with a present for the diva: a thermos full of hot beef broth. Marlene had decided that her new friend, Soprano Maria Meneghini Callas (TIME, Oct. 29), needed strength. She did indeed. Her native city was not going to bow down to Callas without a struggle...