Word: verdis
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...good farmer") and singing in the local Lutheran church choir. Then a neighboring choirmaster started giving her vocal lessons, persuaded her to enter the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm. Delayed by the war, she made her first real splash in 1947 with the Stockholm Opera singing Verdi's Lady Macbeth. Gradually she developed a repertory that now includes all the Wagnerian soprano parts, many of the great roles of Verdi, Puccini, Richard Strauss, plus an assortment of contemporary roles. Two and a half years ago (TIME, June 3, 1957), her Isolde at Florence's Maggio Musicale...
...best lyric-coloratura sopranos in the world. Last week a busload of teachers journeyed to Manhattan to cheer the school's most famous alumna in a new kind of starring role. Young (24), shapely (36-24-36) Soprano Anna Moffo was making her debut at the Met in Verdi's La Traviata...
...three years Soprano Moffo has been riding high on the European opera and concert circuit. To U.S. opera buffs, she is known as the star of several fine recordings, including Madame Butterfly (RCA Victor) and Capriccio (Angel). As Verdi's consumptive heroine, she demonstrated last week that her acting is almost as good as her voice. Strikingly handsome in a hoopskirted, bare-shouldered, pink ball gown, she made the Violetta of Act I into a moving figure of feverishly hectic gaiety. As the opera progressed, the coquettish attitudes gave way gradually, until by the final act Violetta emerged...
...muttering, "Let's skip that part of the question till later, please," and pretending to struggle for an answer that he had been handed, complete with acting script, a few hours before. Old Twenty One fans particularly remember one script, asking for the name of the character in Verdi's La Traviata who sings Sempre libera. "She sings it right at the end of a party given by . . ." whispered the sweating Van Doren at the time. "What's her name! Soprano. Her name is like . . . Violetta! Violetta...
Quasimodo's sudden celebrity: "I'm sure his works have been translated only into Swiss!" In Milan, where he teaches literature at the Giuseppe Verdi Music Conservatory, Quasimodo was quite pleased by the honor (value: $42,606) that shocked Italy's literary world. But even in his hour of triumph, he found a moment to demean the merit of Soviet Author Boris (Doctor Zhiuago) Pasternak, reluctant rejecter of last year's Nobel award. Huffed Nobelman Quasimodo: "Pasternak is as far from this generation as the moon is from us." Quasimodo is an expert of sorts...