Word: sembrich
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...anniversary made 67-year-old John Totten reminiscent. He could say one thing of all the musical greats he had known: "Every one of them was a showman." Polish Soprano Marcella Sembrich always meticulously arranged her own bouquets of flowers before concert time, then, when they were presented to her at intermission, gathered them to her ample bosom with expressions of pleased surprise. No performer likes listeners to walk out early, but Pianist Ignace Jan Paderewski once set something of a Carnegie Hall record for displeasure. Spotting a woman leaving while he was playing, he left the piano in midphrase...
...Eames, 86, last of the great divas* of the "golden age of opera"; in Manhattan. Famed for the technical excellence of her voice and her "Botticellian" beauty, Soprano Eames sang in French, German and Italian opera at the Metropolitan from 1891 to 1909 with such glamorous colleagues as Caruso, Sembrich, Schumann-Heink and Melba...
...Back in Vienna, she had heard that the Metropolitan was a harsh house, so big that a singer could not move around onstage without sacrificing her voice. The hallowed ghosts of the Met were all around her. How would she measure up to the great Gildas of the past-Sembrich, Melba, Galli-Curci...
...Except for Them . . ." Among the chief assets inherited by Rudolf Bing is the glamorous tradition. Still lurking in the shadows of the old gilt and plush house are the ghosts of the Met's hallowed past, when Sembrich, Lilli Lehmann, the De Reszkes, Melba, Caruso, Farrar and Chaliapin graced the stage, and Gustav Mahler and Arturo Toscanini ruled...
Paris was happy to be invaded. The arrival of Milan's famed La Scala opera company set critics to reminiscing fondly of the days when Arturo Toscanini was in the pit, and Caruso, Scotti and Sembrich were on the stage. Nothing about Paris' own two forlorn companies, at the Opera and the Opéra-Comique, was of the sort to bring up such memories...