Word: divas
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Rosa Ponselle Sings Today (Victor). Sixteen songs recently recorded by the famed Metropolitan Opera soprano who retired while she was on top in 1937. The bloom is gone from her voice, but it has moments of velvety smoothness, and its tone quality is even from bottom to top. Diva Ponselle still has a masterly command of expression that warms up even the oldest chestnuts. Among her selections: Schubert's Erlkönig, Brahms's Von ewiger Liebe, Sadero's Amuri, amuri...
...urgency it has not known in decades. The orchestra, trained and brilliantly conducted by New York's young (37) Nicola Rescigno, gave every note the vividness of Technicolor. Chicago's top-hatted, diamond-sprinkled audience enveloped Soprano Callas in a hailstorm of applause. To land such a diva was a major operatic coup for Chicago. Maria had left her native Manhattan to live in Greece when she was 13, by 1948 was engaged by La Scala. Married to an Italian millionaire (building materials), she has unabashedly let it be known that she would not sing in a company...
...first number was the opera's famed Casta Diva (Stainless Goddess), which, while not Norma's most difficult number, is hardly a piece to warm up on. She threaded her way carefully but spiritedly through the opera's complicated cadenzas with a generous use of her pearly pianissimo, came dramatically and vocally into her own in the second and third acts and at the end, despite signs of weariness (she began to sing sharp), won a personal ovation. Most thrilling moments: her soaring duets with Mezzo-Soprano Fedora Barbieri...
When it was all over, Diva Milanov retired to her dressing room to munch an apple and then greet 100 or so admirers in relays of five. By 1 a.m. she was exhausted, but happily planning four more Normas in what is left of the season...
...September) is literally late Composer Strauss's last work. All are sung with melting beauty and ease by Vienna State Opera Diva Delia Casa, who this season made her Metropolitan debut...