War at the Opera

There was a young lady named Callas Who never did play the old Palace --but if she had, she could scarcely have put on a better vaudeville act than she and some of her colleagues did last week at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera. It began, more or less, during a matinee of Lucia di Lammermoor which was broad cast from coast to coast. Often Callas sang superbly, notably in the famous mad scene, but sometimes she sounded as shrill as static, and during her second-act duet with Baritone Enzo Sordello she dropped her highest note like a hot knife, while Baritone Sordello held his. What happened next could be the script for a third-rate opera buff a.

As Sordello tells it, Callas grabbed him and whispered loudly: "Don't hold that note!" He held on for dear life. In the in termission. Callas told him: "You will never sing with me again." Then she canceled her next performance of Lucia, to put pressure on Manager Rudolf Bing to fire Sordello--or so Sordello says. Her failure to appear in Lucia caused a near riot of disappointed ticket holders who had to be quieted by the cops. And two days later, Sordello got a registered letter from Manager Bing dismissing him from the Met. "Miss Callas," Sordello summed up, "wields tremendous power, and I've been a victim of it."

Callas agrees that Sordello did indeed hold the high note, and that during intermission she told him "it wasn't a nice thing to do." To which, said Diva Callas, he replied: " I am going to kill you'--meaning vocally, of course." She did not even mention the matter to Manager Bing, and canceled her performance because of a throat irritation. Harassed Manager Bing, firmly siding with Diva Callas, said Sordello had been fired solely because he had added extra embellishments and showy high notes to his part in Lucia, and, when reprimanded, had been "impertinent" to Conductor Fausto Cleva. The final Callas word on Sordello: "He's nothing but a bit player and a nasty man."

And after this fling

Who could blame Mr. Bing

If he shipped Madam Callas to Dallas?

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