Word: melba
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...just after the turn of the century, in the golden age of U.S. opera. On the stage of the Metropolitan the great Australian-born Soprano Nellie Melba was singing Marguerite's spinning-wheel aria in Gounod's Faust. In midphrase Nellie was interrupted by the clatter of half a dozen wax cylinders which smashed down one after the other from the fly floor high above the stage. There, in brown suit and wing collar, crouched a spidery little man over an Edison cylinder gramophone with a horn almost as big as he was. Although he lost the Melba...
...Albert Saléza and Georg Anthes, and such better-preserved stars as Lillian Nordica, Emma Eames, Johanna Gadski, Marcella Sembrich and Antonio Scotti. Every so often, the patient listener is suddenly rewarded by hearing the great voices shine through the surface fog-Scotti in Act II of Pagliacci, Melba in the Lucia di Lammermoor Mad Scene-with a beauty and authority that no failings of Mapleson's recording technique can mask...
...Comercio, La Prensa (usually pro-Prado) and a lot of Peruvian businessmen, the President's freehandedness seemed dangerously inflationary. In a Lima restaurant, a Peruvian economist quipped: "If President Prado's budget is austerity, then this"-he held up a piece of Melba toast-"is a Nesselrode...
Soprano Callas has yet to face the ordeal of her Metropolitan debut next week. It is an ordeal that has yielded severe criticisms for such famed prima donnas as Melba. Sembrich, Nordica and Farrar, and conceivably could be a bitter experience for her as well. But Callas has faced bitter experiences before and triumphantly survived them. "People would like to see me flop, just once," she admits. "Well, I can't and I won't. I will never give any satisfaction to my enemies...
Next morning Ike was up early, peering from his window for glimpses of the flood damage. An Air Force steward put an enormous breakfast tray in front of him (orange juice, cantaloupe, filet mignon, mashed potatoes, Melba toast and coffee), but Ike, preoccupied with the tragedy below, merely toyed with his meal. As the Columbine cruised slowly over Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, low cloud formations closed in, and Ike got only occasional views of the flooded areas. Allentown, Pa. floated underneath, between cloud drifts, looking untouched by the flood. Over Connecticut, the clouds opened up long enough...