...of Seville, I mean. A Met Opera performance broadcast in December of 1950, and newly released (or soon to be released) on Sony Classical.  I was interested initially for opera geek reasons. The cast included Lily Pons (the Met's leading coloratura of those days) as Rosina, and Giuseppe Di Stefano as the Count. Pons has always struck me on commercial recordings as rather feeble, and while I've known that Di Stefano began his career singing light, lyric tenor roles, I'd never heard him in anything this light. Instead I've known him from … [Read more...]

A worthy question -- did Geraldine Farrar have screaming girl fans only because of her opera success, or because she was also a silent movie star? I don't have any information that would help me answer that. But other divas had followings of excited women -- for instance, Amelita Galli-Curci, the early 20th century coloratura, and (according to a 1940s piece in Time magazine) also Lily Pons, the glamorous coloratura of the mid-20th century. (See my sidebar on the age of the audience for documentation.)Pons made films, too, in the 1930s, … [Read more...]