Word: marcoes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Gianella de Marco of Pescara, Italy, is a leggy little eight-year-old with mouse-colored hair and smoky blue eyes. She may also be one of the most remarkable musical talents in a generation. Fortnight ago, with a doll or two packed in her luggage along with her batons, Gianella arrived in England to rehearse the famed London Philharmonic for performances in Manchester and London...
...Trance? Gianella's parents, Building Engineer Lido de Marco and his wife, an ex-opera singer, got their first clue to the youngster's phenomenal talent when she was four. They came home one night to find Gianella standing up in bed, her eyes shut, conducting an imaginary orchestra to the strains of Beethoven's Fifth on a neighbor's radio. Papa de Marco, shrugged the incident off as "some sort of trance...
...Mama de Marco took Gianella off to a musician, whose skepticism quickly turned to astonishment. At 4½, she made her Rome debut at the St. Cecilia Academy. A few months later, she appeared in Spain, South America and Paris, and was touted by such famed conductors as Wilhelm Furtwängler and Victor de Sabata (for whom she named her doll)-all before she could read a note of music. When she was seven, Gianella decided she wanted to conduct opera, buckled down for ten months of study. She made her debut with Traviata, in Ravenna, and now knows...
...critics, though inclined to deplore child prodigies in principle, tossed a few bouquets of their own. "Really good performances, a credit to conductress and players alike," said the News Chronicle. "Genuine, albeit immature, musicianship," said the Times. Self-critical Conductress de Marco decided it had been a "pretty good" performance...
Whether prodigious Gianella de Marco will really fulfill her promise as a musician is obviously a question for the future. But at week's end, with the London Philharmonic and the London public snugly in the palm of her hand, she was aiming at further acceptance. Gianella wrote a letter to "Cara Regina Elisabetta," inviting the Queen to attend her concert next week...