Word: traviatas
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...Hoffman was asked to sing Amneris in Aïda, despite the fact that she had to sing in Italian while the rest of the cast sang in German. She wowed the crowd. In Amsterdam, U.S. Coloratura Soprano Marilyn Tyler accepted a rush call to sing Violetta in La Traviata, although she sang in unpopular German while the rest of the cast sang in Italian. After the first act, a year's contract was offered to her. In Munich, U.S. Tenor Howard Vandenburg arrived unannounced, auditioned and was hired on the spot. All over Europe, and especially in Germany...
First came a spell with a Gilbert & Sullivan road show. Then she starred in a coast-to-coast Merry Widow company, moved on to a grand opera touring company (63 Micaëlas in Carmen, 45 Violettas in Traviata), where, before long, she had to learn how to intercept passes from forward tenors without missing a note. For a while, she learned a role a month for TV's Opera Cameos, finally hit the big time two seasons ago when she sang Donna Elvira in the San Francisco Opera's Don Giovanni ("the most exquisitely sung aria...
...Hurok managed to keep Violinist Stern, who records for Columbia, and Soprano Tebaldi, who records for London, in the show. Hurok and RCA then faced an onslaught by the Metropolitan Opera's General Manager Rudolf Bing, who refused to allow Tebaldi to do a 15-minute version of Traviata for fear that it might take the edge off her performance of the opera at the Met next season. He also objected to Coloratura Peters singing anything too "strenuous" when two days later she was to sing her first Lucia at the Met. Bing got his way and made Festival...
Some of Pressagent Williamson's ideas were on the ribald side, e.g., "Dove sono?" ("Where have they gone?"), from The Marriage of Figaro, would show a girl who has dropped her falsies. Others were plain wacky, e.g., "Parigi, o cara" ("Paris, my dear"), from Traviata, would show one lady demonstrating a strange new garment to another. "Caro name" ("Dear name"), from Rigoletto, would show a sugar daddy signing a fat check for his girl friend. Pressagent Williamson (whose clients have included Gladys Swarthout, Ezio Pinza, Helen Traubel) persuaded Austrian-born Artist Susan Perl to put her ideas on paper...
...dark-hued old sounds partly hi-fizzed through electronic tinkering. The first series contains all of Tchaikovsky's six Symphonies performed by such fictitiously named orchestras as "Centennial," "Warwick," "Cromwell."* The second batch, called The Heart of the Opera, contains excerpts from eleven popular operas (Carmen, Faust, Figaro, Traviata, etc.), some of them excellently sung by voices that are familiar music-room words.† The sound is poor to moderately good, but the price ($1.98 per LP) is just fine. Furthermore, the disks provide a brand-new musical guessing game...