Word: scala
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...made soap and candles. She ground the bones into flour and made cookies for her other clients. In the same way she murdered a 53-year-old widow (3,000 lire), then a 60-year-old retired soprano, Virginia Cacioppo, said to have sung Butterfly once at La Scala. The diva yielded 50,000 lire and assorted diamonds and rubies, as well as soap and candles...
After Allied bombers got through with Milan's famed La Scala in August 1943, all that was left was the stage and four walls. Last week La Scala had been put back together again (at a cost of $350,000 that a lot of Italians felt could have been better spent on bread and shelter). To its reconstructed podium stepped little, white-haired Arturo Toscanini, 79, who had scored some of his greatest triumphs there...
When Toscanini entered rebuilt La Scala for the first time, he clapped his hands from the center of the stage, and an echo came loudly from the rebuilt dome. "Yes," the maestro said, "it is the same." The no-piece orchestra was not quite the same at first; Toscanini drilled them firmly, but with none of his usual wrathful outbursts. On opening night they played as they had not for years. Toscanini had chosen an all-Italian program (Rossini, Verdi, Puccini) of the kind of kettledrum-banging bravado that he likes. When he played Verdi's Te Deum...
Arturo Toscanini, about to rehearse Milan's La Scala orchestra for his concert this week, confessed he was "frightened," called it off till the next day. "I am not worried about the public, which leaves me quite indifferent," he explained. "It is the orchestra. . . . It is 16 years since I last saw them. . . ." Next day the maestro was back in shape, shouted, stamped, gave a workman holy Ned for whistling...
Thirty years ago Italian-born Gabriella Besanzoni was one of the world's topflight Carmens (La Scala). Then she married Brazil's millionaire banker and industrialist. Henrique Lage. In Rio, Madame Lage held sway at smart soirees, horsed her way into Brazilian society's front ranks...