Word: zenatellos
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...provincial French opera of Mulhouse, Alsace. Her voice was heard in a few more second-string opera houses-Cannes, Vichy, La Baule-and, still unknown in France, pricked the ears of a couple of tourists. They were Maria Gay, an oldtime opera singer, and her husband Giovanni Zenatello. They took up the innocent Lily, promised her an audition at the Metropolitan. Within a few months Lily Pons was taking 16 Metropolitan curtain calls in Lucia, 30 a few nights later in Rigoletto. Later the Zenatellos sued for the right to manage her, take 15% of her earnings, lost their case...
...Contralto Maria Gay, an oldtime Carmen, had not been touring the Riviera with her husband, Tenor Giovanni Zenatello, two years ago, if they had not stopped off at the opera house in Montpellier and heard an unknown French girl sing Lucia in true coloratura fashion, U. S. audiences would not be paying fancy prices this season to hear Lily Pons. The Zenatellos brought Lily Pons to Manhattan, got her an audition at the Metropolitan Opera House. Three months after her sensational debut (TIME, Jan. 19, 1931), Lily Pons abruptly left the hotel suite which she and her oldish Dutch husband...
...When the Zenatellos brought suit against Lily Pons last spring, she defended herself on the grounds that they had been bad agents, had taken double commissions. She was grateful to Madame Zenatello, she said, for persuading her to come to the U. S. thus "advancing my career further and more rapidly than I could have done had I remained in Europe." But she continued, in the stilted phrases of her lawyers: "My gratitude does not in any way alter my conviction that she [Madame Zenatello] has been an untrustworthy and unfaithful agent." Husband August Mesritz gave details: "Not only...
...Lily Pons's first performances there were none so excited as a portly middle-aged couple well known to the opera public of 20 years ago. The woman was Maria Gay, once a famed Carmen with the Metropolitan and Boston Opera companies. The man was her husband, Tenor Giovanni Zenatello. Motoring along the Riviera last winter these two had stopped in at a little opera house in Montpellier to hear Lucia. After the small-town performance they rushed backstage to meet the soprano. "Will you come to America if I can get you an audition with the Metropolitan?" Madame...
...audience were 20,000 listeners-Austrians. Without imposing a defeat, the former scored a victory, orderly, harmonious. In this azione, were cast the finest singers of a honey-throated nation. Signora Poli-Randaccio was Aida, brought to the part of the Egyptian maid a southern warmth and temper; Giovanni Zenatello was heard as Rhadames, Maria Gay-Zenatello as Amneris. In the famed ballet-scene were 200 girls, "all beautiful...