Word: scala
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Only a day and a half after leaving Milan and her last La Scala performance in The Devil's Daughter (TIME, April 5), Mezzo-Soprano Rise Stevens made a pretty transatlantic commuter's picture as she landed at New York's International Airport, that same afternoon was on stage at the Metropolitan Opera to sing the title role of Carmen...
...opera stars get invited to sing at Milan's La Scala, but last week Risë Stevens became the first ever to create a new role in the proud old house...
...blackening still more that of her evil mother Herodias. In the Mortari approach, Herodias is literally the devil incarnate, and the part demands a mezzo-soprano who can sing, act and dance for close to 50 minutes almost without pause, and-not least-look devilishly attractive. Mortari and La Scala thought it over, last November offered the part to Rise...
Soprano Stevens was delighteu. "I wanted to do something new," she says, "and I wanted to do it at La Scala." She found the music modern but not radical; it gave her a chance to move about the stage in the tigerish fashion that has made her the favorite Carmen at the Met. But mounting a world premiere is no picnic, even for the vaunted Scala. The first dress rehearsal was disastrous, and in the five days before opening night opera officials and the stage-wise Stevens staff toiled 20 hours at a stretch, revising everything from scenery to dramatic...
Puccini: Tosco (Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Tito Gobbi; Chorus and Orchestra of La Scala conducted by Victor de Sabata; Angel, 2 LPs). The seventh complete version of Puccini's old pulse-bumper, and one of the best. The name part is sung fervently and in high style by Brooklyn-born Soprano Callas...