Word: prima
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Slurs & Shakes. The history of bel canto and the reasons for its revival are chronicled in a lively new book by Musicologist Henry Pleasants, The Great Singers (Simon & Schuster; $7.50). The first prima donnas of bel canto were not donnas at all but male sopranos and contraltos. These castrati, who commanded the center stage of opera for more than 100 years, until the end of the 18th century, constituted about 70% of all male singers. They postured and strutted on the stage like peacocks improvising elaborate vocal filigrees, inserting grace notes or unaccompanied passages, some of which lasted as long...
Following her success abroad, Mary Garden returned to the U.S. in 1907, and eventually implanted herself as the prima donna of the Chicago Grand Opera Co. Her reign was absolute, and in 1921, when she was appointed director of the company, the local newspapers happily crowned her "Mary the First." But, single-minded hellion that she often was, her shakeup of the existing order resulted in several squabbles with other singers, two lawsuits, a loss of $1,000,000 and an assassination threat. After one season, she decided that "my place is with the artists, not over them...
Died. Mary Garden, 92, prima donna of the opera from the 1900s to the 1930s; of pneumonia; in Aberdeen, Scotland (see MUSIC...
...Oppernockety. From all indications, Cerf runs a happy shop as well as a contented stable. "They're all prima donnas," he chortles. "We're a firm of prima donnas!" When he tells a visitor that Jason Epstein is "the cross I have to bear," Epstein retorts, "and Bennett is the bear I have to cross." Corporation Secretary Charles A. Wimpfheimer, 38, gets in on the fun now and then. He once installed a parking meter in Cerf's private washroom, probably because Cerf himself started the local bathroom jokes by placing two copies of Lindbergh...
...performing arts," the study unsurprisingly concludes, "financial crisis is a way of life." This crisis, contrary to most notions, is not caused by bungling management, featherbedding stage unions, overpriced prima donnas or "ice" (boxoffice funds sluiced away to scalpers); such factors are only "peripheral," according to William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen, the Princeton economists who wrote the report. The root problem is the built-in technological liability of the live performing arts...