Word: fiamma
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...newcomer was Gina Cigna, who has been singing roles at La Scala since Toscanini recommended her there six years ago. The late great Respighi chose her to take the lead in his La Fiamma. Mme Cigna made her Metropolitan debut last month as Aïda. Her singing was so warm and rich, her dramatic sense so keen, that the audience called her before the curtain time after time. Later she sang Ponchielli's La Gioconda, Bellini's Norma, Leonora in Verdi's Il Trovatore. Though Cigna has a frail lower voice and occasionally forces notes...
...Giovanni Martinelli surpassed himself as the bearded old Jew while that plump, dependable songstress, Elisabeth Rethberg, took the part of the heroine who is finally plopped into a caldron, boiled in oil. In Chicago, Soprano Rosa Raisa was condemned to sizzle at the stake in Respighi's La Fiamma, proved her popularity by getting loud applause when neither her singing nor acting was more than mediocre...
Last Saturday night the curtain at the Chicago Opera House fell on what was undoubtedly the worst season of opera that a resident Chicago company has ever presented. For a pageant finale there was Respighi's new La Fiamma, with massive choruses, lavish orchestration, an impassioned, queer-grained heroine who is burned at the stake for indulging in witchcraft. The heroine was Soprano Rosa Raisa, bluff in acting, uneven in voice. But Raisa, a relic of Samuel Insull's opera days, was an ace compared with the majority of the singers who have appeared in Chicago this season...
...taste, as they did again when he permitted a Buick sedan to be exhibited in the opera house foyer. When Conductor Gennaro Papi resigned (TIME, Dec. 2), more than Longone's taste was questioned. Longone claimed that Papi was either unable or unwilling to conduct La Fiamma, that he was prejudiced against U. S. singers. Papi retaliated with the blazing charge that Longone permitted singers of indifferent merit to buy their way into his opera...
...felt obliged to economize on rehearsals. He has let his ensembles suffer for the sake of hiring a few big names. Backstage sensation occurred last week when Conductor Gennaro Papi resigned a week before he was to have conducted the U. S. premiere of Respighi's La Fiamma. Manager Longone issued a blazing statement to the effect that Papi had found it impossible to memorize the relatively difficult score. Papi railed against artistic conditions in general, implied that it was all too easy for mediocre performers to buy their way into Longone's opera...