Jussi wishes you a wonderful Holiday Season,as do I...to you wonderful people!!!!!

• I had posted on “learning a language through opera.” If all you know is what you know from opera, you surely can uses these phrases (and produce hilarity for the natives.):

  1. Lousy meal: “Eh cameriere…questo piato puzza di rifritto.”

  2. Nasty Hotel Clerk: “Va….fuggi”

  3.Very angry at someone “Cruda, funesta smania”

  4.Crying at a film in Paris: “Pleurez,pleurez,mes yeux”

  5. Trying to make out with someone: ” Du bist der Lenz”

  6. Homesick: “O Patria mia”

  7. During sex with “Cortesan”(I didn’t say “Putana”): ” Basta,Roberti” OR”Basta,Roberta.”

  8. Bad food: “Ohime, morir mi sento.”

  9. Fire in your hotel room “Di quella pira.”

  10. Hating a mean landlady: “Maledizione” OR “A terra…e piangi” OR
  ” Man tote dieses Weib”

  11. Kept up by orchestra on the plaza: “Nessun Dorma”

  12. Departure: “Addio,senza rancor.”

  13. They came into your hotel room and robbed some furniture:
  “Adieu,notre petite table.”

  14. I can’t sleep in this dump. “Ich habe nicht gute Nachte”

  15. Bad service at Easter GUESS!! (a te,la mala Pasqua.”

  Come on..nutcases like me..Let’s hear some of yours!!!!

Let us celebrate the birthday of Giacomo Puccini,born Dec.22, 1858 .We would need  5000 towels to catch all the tears he makes us shed in a lifetime. Diana Soviero sings the Suor Angelica Finale here.

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• Rita Gorr, at a Dallas I rehearsal, yells at Mario del Monaco for being out of costume.
• The famous "Dristan und Isolde" -- where Jon Vickers tells the audience (Dallas again..maybe it is the climate?) to "shut up with your damn coughing!"
• Franco Bonisolli, famous for his outbursts, calls for "Wasser" just before he takes the first high C in "Di Quella pira" in a Hamburg performance. I guess they brought it to him, because he then unleashes a mighty one! (after some booing)
• Montserrat Caballé faints halfway through a rendition of "Addio del passato" in 1972 at the Paris Opera. But give her credit at least for trying! Five years later, when she canceled the opening night of Turandot at La Scala, Maestro Zubin Mehta had to go out and announce the bad news to the audience.
• The funniest soprano in the world (yes, even funnier than Florence Foster Jenkins), Mari Lynn, of public access television fame, reads the letter from La Traviata..which sounds much closer to La TraviYENTA! I played this for Diana Soviero, telling her this was a "Violetta the likes of which she had never seen before" and she almost fell off the couch!
• More inimitable performances: Madame Lynn sings "Sempre libera"
• An insane lady in the City Opera audience lets out a blood-curdling "primal scream" just before tenor Henry Price begins act two Traviata aria.Worse than Klytaemnestra being murdered!
• And speaking of screams, here's a re-engineered version of the final scene from Tosca...

  GUESS THE SCREAMS and you get to bring a U-Haul to my house and take.please!!!!!!! all my lp's that are never played....ORRRRORE!!!!

In the old Met we stood all the way down near the orchestra..Boxes hardly were overhanging. One night when Renata hit the high A on "amore,addio" (and you cannot tell from the video) my friend standing next to me lost control,hit me in the ribs, and I almost ended up like Cio-Cio San.....NO ONE here could imagine...Think of a jet plane landing in your living room

What nostalgia as Renata returns to us in 1995. Piangero per sempre!!!!!!

  Ten years since she left us on Dec.19, 2004. Never to be forgotten!!!!!

  Ten years ago, on Dec.19, 2004, our beloved Renata Tebaldi departed this world, but those of us who knew her can never forget what she meant to us on and off stage.

 My mother's first opera was a Traviata in 1957, and I spoke Spanish to her,since I had not yet learned my operatic Italian and her English was limited. Every time we met she would say, "Carlos, com'e la mamma??"  (Carlos...not Carlo,because I started with her in espanol.)

We spoke on many birthdays in later years. You know we first met her oin Feb.1, 1955, after her Met Desdemona debut,which was Jan.31.Little did we know it was her birthday!!!!!

Non posso scordare la mia Renata..Sempre nel mio cuore!!!

One of the STARS of the Internet is "Coloratura Fan," who compiles an incredible number of material, and who is a STAR of the opera-loving Internet world. Here is an example. Just go to his page and enjoy!!

Happy Dec.15 birthday to a marvelous soprano who showed so much emotion and who could thrill audiences for so long!!!!!!

I am just thinking about Tebaldi a lot this week...I recall she went to Phila. for a perf...the Met used to go there. We saw her off in the last car...the baggage handler opened the door and she said, "Spoletta, CHIUDI." 
 

At a big affair once she was cutting the cake,held the knife up, and said, "Questo il bacio di Tosca."
   See how much fun we had with her.......
  

Also, at a Bell Tel.Hr.at Carnegie, we sat in the first row..She looked down at us "kids", winked...and then launched into "Inflammatus." She made us feel so important."
 Ten yearsthis week (Dec.19),Renata has been gone........and anyone who knew her from 1955 will treasure her memory..