Word: primae
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...know more about me," said the world's top prima donna at the close of this last interview, "than my own family does...
Once upon a time a prima donna was opera's indispensable lady, an unearthly creature who fed on acclaim, dressed in kudos and walked a path strewn with money, jewels and lovers. For her the real world was only an extension of the unlikely world of opera, a world of passionate hate, tempestuous love and outrageous gesture. The prima donna was larger than life, and a law only to her own towering talent. One composer did not dream of objecting when Maria Malibran (1808-36) regally replaced one whole act he had written with music by another composer. Adelina...
...house teamwork is the cry. Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera even forbids solo curtain calls. At home the opera star is often no more glamorous than a suburban housewife. In an age of small-scale talent and matching egos, the one diva who truly deserves the proud title of prima donna, with all its overtones of good and evil, is Maria Meneghini Callas...
...Peak. Last week, like a stormy throwback to another century. Maria Callas swept into New York. She arrived, as is proper for prima donnas, in triumph. Raised in Manhattan's upper west side, Maria Callas had left it as a fat, unhappy child of 14. She returned svelte, successful, the wife of an Italian millionaire, a diva more widely hated by her colleagues and more wildly acclaimed by her public than any other living singer. She returned to open the season next week in Bellini's Norma at the Metropolitan-which only eleven years ago just could...
...stiffly on a divan, Callas staggers from it, sags to her knees, drags herself up, crawls towards her lover's room, collapses again before she finally rolls down and dies. In Norma she has cried real tears. Operagoers. long reconciled to the classic, three-gesture range of other prima donnas, are astounded and delighted...