Word: tosca
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Hair on the Chest. Singing so that back-row listeners could actually heaf was another problem. But this season plenty of top-rankers were on hand to try. On the nights when the Metropolitan Opera's Ferruccio Tagliavini sang Tosca and Lucia di Lammermoor, there were few empty seats; fans gladly paid double prices to hear once-barred (for alleged collaboration) Tenor Beniamino Gigli sing the operatic twins "Cav" and "Pag" (Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci) with popular Soprano Maria Caniglia and Baritone Tito Gobbi. Even 60-year-old Tenor Tito Schipa was on hand...
...Ferro" and Pia have been singing and murmuring to each other ever since. Married in 1941, they delighted Italy and South America with their Tosca, La Boheme and Werther, but the U.S. had only heard them sing together in concert. They ended each concert with the Duet of the Cherries from the first opera they had sung together in Palermo...
Last week a capacity crowd sludged through the snow to hear Tagliavini as Cavaradossi and his wife in the title role of Tosca. It was opera, full-flavored Italian style. Pia, revealing dramatic skill, a tender middle voice, and disturbingly razorish top range, was roundly applauded even in arias where critics found her wanting. Tagliavini was in top form. Between them, husband & wife managed to carry off a production that was closer to first rate than the Met usually achieves these lackluster days...
Stranded Soprano. Revelers in the Met's Sherry bar hadn't missed much in Yugoslav Soprano Daniza Ilitsch's opening-night performance. Greek Soprano Elen Dosia's bow in Tosca was no better. But the surprise debut of Cloe Elmo, a first-rate Italian mezzo-soprano, was a different story...
...inherited a rococo hall, a shoe-string budget (seats are $2.40 top, one-third the Met's) and a free hand. Says he: "Where there is no money, there is no interference from pocketbooks. The only thing that can save us is ideas." At his first performance (Tosca), the guns of the firing squad failed to fire in the last act, and the hero had to drop dead without a bang. In Carmen, the audience was convulsed by a soldier trying to put his saber into its scabbard the wrong way. But by the time the curtain had gone...