Word: toscas
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...last year's opera season in Chicago was a stocky Livornese tenor named Galliano Masini. When he raised the roof in Tosca and La Gioconda (TIME, Dec. 20, 1937). General Manager Edward Johnson of the Metropolitan Opera House heard about it, signed him up. Last week Tenor Masini's Manhattan debut packed the Metropolitan with an expectant throng. Singing his favorite part, Edgardo in Lucia, Masini failed to make quite as high a mark as he had in Chicago. Critics found him no Caruso but a younger, fresher, less-seasoned Giovanni Martinelli...
...been prophesying a speedy decline for the sentimental operas of the late Giacomo Puccini. Sensible critics,*however, have often pointed out that, though they may be bathetic, Puccini's operas are masterpieces of musical stagecraft, shaped by one of the surest hands that ever penned an aria. Meanwhile Tosca, La Boheme, and Madame Butterfly have been played incessantly wherever opera is given. During his lifetime, Composer Puccini made a fortune from them-a rare feat for a composer of serious music-and today they are still tops on the list of operatic bestsellers...
Last week, during a performance of Tosca, pandemonium broke loose in Chicago's Civic Opera House. Excited operagoers pounded the floor, stood on their seats and yelled frantic approval. Conductor Moranzoni tried to get the perform-ance going again, was stopped by a gusty chorus of "boos." For more than five minutes the demonstration continued. Finally the cause of it, a broad-shouldered, lusty-looking Italian tenor, Galliano Masini, repeated "E lucevan le stelle." And the opera was allowed...
...Livornese macaroni maker, 34-year-old Masini worked once as a stevedore, then as a mechanic, was sent to Milan by admiring townsmen. He claims that he never took a singing lesson, that the Milanese taught him only repertory. He made a debut in Livorno (Tosca) in 1928 and has sung since at La Scala and other leading European opera-houses...
Chicago critics who had described Masini's U. S. debut in Lucia di Lammermoor last month, and subsequent appearances in La Gioconda and Tosca as "one long crescendo of excitement," now spoke of him unhesitatingly as "another Caruso." While Chicago music-lovers last week were congratulating each other on this sensation of the musical season, Tenor Masini was being watched by hawk-eyed impresarios from coast to coast...