Word: melba
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...minor disappointment. Bevin had asked for snails (which he learned to like during the Paris Conference last summer), but had not given the Embassy chef enough notice. At dessert, fruit had to be substituted for strawberry melba, be cause, at the last moment, the iceman (striking for five francs more an hour) did not come...
Died. Louise Homer, 76, onetime (1898-1932) contralto in the Metropolitan's Golden Era of Caruso, Melba, Farrar, Scotti, Tetrazzini; of a heart ailment; in Winter Park, Fla. Daughter of a Pennsylvania minister, she launched her career at 14 by singing Ruth in a church production of Ruth and Naomi (when the lad assigned the basso-profundo role of Boaz failed to show up, Louise sang that role, too). Dependable and even-tempered in an atmosphere that earned "prima donna" its popular meaning, Presbyterian-born Mrs. Homer once balked at a role: in Faust the Met wanted...
Soprano Dame Nellie Melba said she met Oscar Wilde in the streets of Paris in 1898, shabbily dressed, with a "hunted look in his eyes." Lord Carson, his old schoolmate who cross-examined Wilde at his first trial, is reported to have seen him lying "haggard" and "painted" in a Paris gutter. Pearson laughs such stories off. Oscar, he declares, never painted his face except to edify American audiences during his U.S. lecture tour (1882). As for being shabby, he was "invariably well-dressed, well-shaved, self-assured...
Once during that period, the Food Minister murmured: "We haven't done too badly by Gladstone-we've named a useful piece of luggage for him. Nellie Melba gets her eternity in a pleasant peach concoction." Then he added: "But me-they will remember me, if at all, for a pie made of the humblest vegetables...
...once in a generation. The nearest thing to such a voice that this generation of U.S. operagoers is familiar with is the neat, flutelike warbling of Lily Pons. She is the capable but hardly startling descendant of a great line beginning with Jenny Lind and including Adelina Patti, Nellie Melba, Luisa Tetrazzini, Amelita Galli-Curci. Measuring Korjus against the yardstick of their memories, old-timers placed her somewhere near the Pons mark, admired the warmth, vibrancy and agility of her voice, which reminded them slightly of Melba...