Word: primae
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Helen Traubel at 43 is a prima donna in technique but not in temperament. A hearty, buxom woman with auburn hair and green eyes, she is as relaxed as a double-jointed shortstop. According to her husband, she is so chronically good-natured that "no one is ever quite sure whether she is stupid or lethargic." She was born above her father's drugstore in the old German section of South St. Louis, and brought up in so deeply Germanic an environment that she still punctuates her conversations with...
...change of prima donnas changed the Met's backstage atmosphere. When she wasn't on stage, Flagstad had knitted quietly in the wings, avoided visitors. Traubel opened the door of her dingy little dressing room to anyone who could crowd inside. Her laughter boomed so lustily that stage managers feared it could be heard in the auditorium. In the old horse-&-buggy era, Wagnerian divas like Johanna Gadski and Lillian Nordica had expected even the stagehands to wait on them. Traubel insists on putting on her own makeup, wig and costumes, because "being dependent is a luxury...
...experiment was a qualified success and the City Opera stuck. Each season its troupe has been improved and its repertory expanded. Last week the young company opened its new season with a first-class production of Puccini's Madame Butterfly. The star was Camilla Williams, the first Negro prima donna with a steady job in a major opera company...
When it was over, the audience chattered excitedly. This part of the show was prima; that part schlecht. The whole was like a nightmare to them. The tragedy of Naziism was still too close for laughter-and so was the time when Germans had cheered the Great Dictator. In a poll taken by the Army they voted against further showing of the film in Germany now. Wrote the Tagesspiegel next day: "It seems as if reality had only to be copied and satire was readymade...
Grace Moore, bubbly blonde operatic soprano, was back from a European tour. Laryngitis had forced her to skip a concert at London's Albert Hall, and she had a fine prima-donna tribute for the audience. "The audience was simply marvelous," she said, "accepting my apologies and listening instead to Marjorie Lawrence...