On Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 7:54:49 PM UTC-7, Dorme Riposa wrote:
On the "other group," I read that Miss Thebom has died.
She was the first Carmen I saw on stage, in 1951, with Ramon Vinay as
Don Jose. I vividly remember her voice and her presence on that
occasion. She wore a white satin gown in Act 4 that stood out as the
only white costume on stage, not that she needed the costume to stand
out. The stillness of her duet with Escamillo was a high point of the
opera for me, as it has been ever since.
There was a spread in Life magazine about her -- mainly about her
never-cut, floor-length dark hair -- that my family and I loved to
look at repeatedly. I was not a fan of movie magazines, so this was
the closest I got to that sort of fanzine thing.
Soon, the Tristan recording came out with her as Brangaene, but I
didn't get to know those discs well until much later.
I have a half-hour VHS tape of her reminiscing in her home in San
Francisco. Until a few years ago I didn't know she lived here. It was
like coming full circle.
dav
Her Lebendige V. recording is on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idOCdkK0hro&list=OLAK5uy_lmTRMBIzX_wdAS9iaugMhq2QIQmp1H-UA&index=10
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)