Word: herva
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Richard Tucker had never before tried the big, dramatic tenor role of Radames; Toscanini's favorite soprano, red-haired Herva Nelli, who had had to hold herself in as Desdemona in his 1947 broadcast of Otello, was getting a chance to open up as Aida. He had picked three newcomers: slim Norwegian Contralto Eva Gustavson (Amneris), who arrived in the U.S. last October, young Canadian Bass-Baritone Dennis Harbour (the King of Egypt), who a fortnight ago won the Met's radio auditions, and Soprano Teresa Randall (the Priestess), a finalist in the same contest. Baritone Giuseppe Valdengo...
...Symphony (Sat. 6:30 p.m., NBC and NBC-TV). Toscanini presents Acts I & II of Aïda, with Herva Nelli and Richard Tucker...
...Conductor Toscanini hopped spryly down from the podium, the whole house was on its feet screaming "viva il maestro;" cried one voice, "Non c'e che lui" (he's in a class by himself). For 19 minutes the bedlam continued; the soloists (two of whom, Soprano Herva Nelli and Baritone Frank Guarrera, Metropolitan audition winner, had been brought from the U.S. by Toscanini) took 32 curtain calls. The maestro himself took twelve, at first grinning shyly, then broadly...
...Verdi above all other composers. For the past two months he has been teaching Verdi's score to his soloists. In his long, low-ceiling dressing room on the eighth floor of the RCA Building, he has sat at the piano, croaking and gesticulating at red-haired Soprano Herva Nelli, while a picture of Verdi stared at her from the piano's littered top. "Nelli," he pleaded, "please do use the expression on your face that you feel in the music. That will bring out the words and the music too." It was an old insistence...
...them relentlessly in his dressing room, accompanying them on the piano himself. There were few big bright names in his cast-he preferred to use singers he could mold in his own way: stressing first expressiveness, then diction, and lastly voice. He had heard the Philadelphia La Scala Soprano Herva Nelli sing last summer, and announced, "This is Desdemona." She told him she had never sung the role. Toscanini snapped: "Good. I'll teach you myself." He drilled the Metropolitan's brilliant new baritone, Giuseppe Valdengo (a graduate of the New York City Opera Co.), for two hours...