Word: diva
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...reason for this lies not in the radio, and certainly not in the "talkie". It may be fund in the amazing excess poundage of the operators themselves. With a Bayreuth baritone dangerously near the three hundred pound mark in possession of the lead role and with an unlimited heavyweight diva to repel his amorous dalliance, the best Wagnerian opera must appear either pompous and slow or considerably absurd. At present, the majority of opera singers take it for granted that their art places no restriction on their appetites. Eighteen Day Diets are to them a vague rite connected with...
...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...
Within two hours after this prediction, Rosa Ponselle sang her "Casta Diva." The great house listened. The top galleries bulged with humble music-lovers. In the boxes were the Italian Ambassador, Mme. Melba, Prince & Princess Bismarck, Margot, Countess of Oxford & Asquith, Lady Cunard, Lords Leesdale, Colebrooke and Monteagle, and onetime King Manuel of Portugal and his consort. . . . From top to bottom Covent Garden yielded itself to the spell of a glorious voice, forgot all traditions, burst into riotous applause. The third act brought another demonstration...
...cook them all herself and turn a handspring when she has finished eating. She hates tobacco smoke and being interviewed. "Make the story yourself," she has told more than one reporter and the results have varied from pictures of a Christmas-tree angel to a proud and haughty diva. Those who meet her find her shy, eager to please...
...related delegations like the one which attended Marion Talley's debut. Marek Windheim was not in line for these honors : had he been a soprano even, he would still have been a Pole and the Poles are too remote for human interest stories. Aida Doninelli, a Central American diva, would be likewise unsatisfactory. Grace Divine and Pearl Besuner (a tobacconist's daughter), are, by a lamentable coincidence, citizens of the same city, Cincinnati. Both have recently won fellowships in Dresden and refused them for Metropolitan premieres whose sameness must in some measure darken whatever advertising glory they might...