Suzy Frelinghuysen (May 7, 1911-March 19, 1988) was an American abstract painter, and also an opera singer under the name Suzy Morris. Biography on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzy_Frelinghuysen
Composition: The Ring by Suzy Frelinghuysen 1943 / Oil and collage on masonite / 23-3/4″x19-7/8″ / Private collection
Leontyne Price received many honorary degrees as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1965), the Kennedy Center Honors (1980), and the National Medal of Arts (1985). Her many recordings earned nineteen Grammy Awards, and she received a special Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989. For her performance on Live From Lincoln Center, Leontyne Price, Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic, Price received the 1982 Emmy award for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program.
Price has been described as a “lirico-spinto” soprano with a 3-1/2 octave range. Her rock-solid vocal technique and purity and her dramatic flair have been combined to create a mix suitable both for the opera and concert stage.
Maria made her first professional appearance in von Suppe’s Boccacio in 1939 and sang the leading part in Tosca in 1942. After a series of disappointments and resenting envy by her colleagues, she returned to the American land of her birth. She lived there for two years (1945-1947), met the bass Nicola Rossi – Lemeni and through him came to know the tenor Giovanni Zenatello, artistic director of the Arena of Verona. Maria Kalogeropoulos left for Italy, met the industrialist Giovanni Batista Meneghini, married him, became Maria Callas and experienced her artistic life’s curtain raiser without suspecting that she was about to emerge as the lyric theatre’s most brilliant personality. FROM http://www.hri.org/MFA/thesis/autumn97/callas.html
Callas’ ability to sing such a wide range of roles was one of the things that led to her meteoric rise. But critic Conrad Osborne says it also contained the seeds of her vocal decline. Callas’ voice was already starting to fail her by the time she was in her 40s — quite young for an opera singer. A number of factors, including a rapid loss of weight, may explain why…But for Callas fans like James Jorden, the diva more than made up for her vocal flaws with her talent for bringing the music to life. FROM http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123612228
By the time of her retirement, she had performed more than 40 different roles and had recorded more than 20 complete operas. Callas’s personality and philosophy of performance are powerfully depicted in Terrence McNally’s play Master Class (first performed and published 1995), based on her classes at Juilliard. FROM http://www.britannica.com/biography/Maria-Callas
Few opera stars have led such an impressive career. For over a quarter of a century, her coloratura voice captured the stages of Paris, London, Buenos Aires, Mexico, and the United States. Like Mario Lanza and Luciano Pavarotti, she acted in second-rate films about opera stars, which were surprisingly well-attended.
Her sweet soprano voice had an extremely high tessitura. It was said she could hold a high D for about a minute. The Metropolitan Opera revived roles especially for her, like Delibes’ Lakmé, Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Le Coq d’or. FROMhttp://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/s/sny60655a.php
In 1932, the tiny Frederick County post office of Lilypons opened for business. “It was a dot on a map, because nobody has ever been quite sure what to call it. Lilypons, Md., was never a city, town or even a hamlet,” said The Evening Sun in 1986. “It is now what it has always been: one frame building surrounded by a small cluster of ponds nestled into a peaceful crook of the Monocacy River eight miles south of Frederick.” In 1963, during a period of cost cutting, the Postal Service discontinued the Lilypons postmark and combined its functions with the nearby Buckeystown post office. A plaque commemorating the tiny post office was mounted on the building in 1986. ~Fred Rasmussen FROMhttps://www.baltimoresun.com/
Marian Anderson, contralto, was denied the right to perform at Constitution Hall by the DAR because of her color. Instead, and at the urging of Eleanor Roosevelt, Harold Ickes permitted her to perform at the Lincoln Memorial on April 9, 1939.
March 11, 1867 – Theatre Imperial de l’Opera, France DON CARLO started out life as a five-act opera that ran for approximately four hours. Based on Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Spiller, this lengthy piece saw Verdi put the music to a French libretto by Camille du Lode and Joseph Mery. After the opera had been written, it was found to still be too long during the rehearsal period. Since the audience would need to leave before midnight, further cuts were made during this time in order to make sure that the opera finished before this deadline. FROM http://www.italymagazine.com/featured-story/homage-verdi-don-carlo
March 11, 1851 – La Fenice Opera House, Italy One of the most acclaimed Verdi operas, RIGOLETTO at one point, was very much a case of “touch and go”. The three-act opera, based on Victor Hugo’s play “Le roi s’amuse”, came under close scrutiny of the Austrian censors. …However, by January 1851, a breakthrough was reached, albeit with a number of amendments to the original work. The original setting of the royal court of France was to be changed either to a duchy of France or Italy, while many of the characters were to be renamed, notably the jester, who went from Triboulet to Rigoletto. With the deadline for the premiere looming, Verdi managed to complete the work by early February, leaving a month to spare. FROM http://www.italymagazine.com/featured-story/homage-verdi-rigoletto
A dramatic soprano with a voice of mammoth proportions, Eva Turner, though scarcely neglected in her native country, enjoyed many of her greatest successes abroad. Most closely identified with the title role in Turandot (which she first sang in Brescia only a month after its premiere), she brought to all of her roles a voice of both enormous size and great cutting power, topped with an unflagging ease in the highest register. While not always an illuminating actress, she approached all of her work with seriousness of purpose, thorough integrity and no small measure of excitement. Biography and interview here~http://www.bruceduffie.com/evaturner.html
The Misty Miss Christy 