Word: melba
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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...
...gave ?5,500 ($27,500), the income from which is used to invite "eminent clergymen from other parts of the world" to preach at Scots. Preacher Poling allowed Scots to pay only his traveling expenses. Scots Church was built by David Mitchell, father of the late great soprano Nellie Melba, who used to sing in the choir...
Beethoven's Flame. Famous exponents of Chaminade's music included Nellie Melba and John Philip Sousa, who liked to play the tiny piano pieces in full brass-band arrangements. At the height of Chaminade's vogue, in the early 1900s, her U.S. feminine admirers had formed more than 200 "Chaminade Clubs." Her Scarf Dance ended by selling over five million copies...