Word: toscas
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...same breath with Caruso and Scotti, but Claudia Muzio (1892-1936) is one of them. The daughter of an Italian operatic stage manager, she grew up backstage in London's Covent Garden, Manhattan's Metropolitan. Caruso, with whom she made a stunning U.S. debut as Tosca in 1916, once said that Claudia "knew all of our stage tricks before she wore long skirts." She had a voice to match her acting: she could, and did, sing coloratura, lyric and dramatic soprano parts with equal ease. In Buenos Aires one time, when Giovanni Martinelli momentarily lost his voice...
With an Esoteric Records release, The Duse of Song (2 sides LP), out this month, younger opera lovers can hear the voice their elders have been talking about. Even though Esoteric has re-recorded its nine arias (including the Vissi d'Arte from Tosca) from 32-year-old cylinders, and Claudia Muzio's luscious voice is heard through a fog of needle scratch, her tones are full, even and velvety from top to bottom...
...when famed, onetime Vienna and Metropolitan Opera Soprano Maria Jeritza tried a comeback in Carnegie Hall at 58, Manhattan critics listened, then gave the sympathetic but firm verdict: no. Two years later in Newark, N.J., when she hired a cast to support her in her famous role of Tosca, critics sadly pronounced the same sorrowful judgment. But last week in Vienna, 62-year-old Maria Jeritza, still blonde, blooming and beauteous, was getting yesses that could be heard halfway to the Wiener Wald...
...years was not a comeback. She was donating the proceeds of the performance towards rebuilding Vienna's bomb-damaged State Opera House. Whatever the purpose, the Jeritza-loving Viennese queued for 22 hours before the shabby little Theater an der Wien to see her again as Tosca...
...that occasion, even though he admitted that Puccini's fellow composer Franco Alfano had done a good job of completing the score. Conductors since have not been so finicky; but even so, Turandot (roughly rhymes, with two afloat) has never been as popular as Puccini's Tosca, Madame Butterfly, La Boheme. Last week a New York City Opera audience heard some of the reasons...