Word: donnas
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...DONNA L. PREBLE...
...that this straitjacket is so confining that some pop vocalists such as Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra, whose jazz improvisations are a direct counterpart of bel canto, are "technically better than most opera singers." The voice of Ella Fitzgerald, whom he regards as the prima donna of pop, "is so naturally placed that she can sing more in a week than most opera singers can in a month." The falsetto wailings of the Beach Boys and Beatle Paul McCartney all echo the early 19th century bel canto singers, he adds. Beyond their interpretive freedom, the major link between pop singers...
Bernhardt was 15 when the Duc de Morny, one of her mother's lovers, arranged for her to study at the French Conservatoire. Two years later, she was in the Comedie Franchise, and was acquiring a reputation as a tempestuous prima donna. By the time she was 20, she had taken a lover and given birth to an illegitimate son. Then began the long parade: short runs with a vast assortment of lovers, longer runs and growing fame on the stage. She was the queen in Victor Hugo's Ruy Bias, Phèdre in Racine...
Following her success abroad, Mary Garden returned to the U.S. in 1907, and eventually implanted herself as the prima donna of the Chicago Grand Opera Co. Her reign was absolute, and in 1921, when she was appointed director of the company, the local newspapers happily crowned her "Mary the First." But, single-minded hellion that she often was, her shakeup of the existing order resulted in several squabbles with other singers, two lawsuits, a loss of $1,000,000 and an assassination threat. After one season, she decided that "my place is with the artists, not over them...
Died. Mary Garden, 92, prima donna of the opera from the 1900s to the 1930s; of pneumonia; in Aberdeen, Scotland (see MUSIC...