Renata Tebaldi

Reata Tebaldi and Jussi Bjorling singing the love duet form La Boheme.

Un bel di vedremo from Madame Butterfly

There were huge hissy fits among opera queens as to who was the better singer, Tebaldi or Callas.

Well I doubt anyone (even on the DL) has heard her live. She was born in 1922!

R3 I always thought it was between Callas, Tebaldi, Leontyne Price, and Joan Sutherland.

Well, she was no Florence Foster Jennings.

Tebaldi retired from the opera stage in 1973 as Desdemona in Verdi's Otello in the Metropolitan Opera.

Anyone who heard her live has to be 80+.

There are a lot of good recordings though. I have her Aida.

Opera queen Christopher Plummer said she was his favorite soprano.

R6, I think you are referring to Miss Florence Foster JENKINS.

Thank god Madama Tibaldi was no Jenkins.

“Dimples of iron.”

Thank you, R1.

I love “O soave fanciulla.”

O Partia Mia from Aida

R7 I heard her live and I'm 61. My grandmother was a Managing Director (trustee) at the Met and took me often.

She makes a guy feel good.

Follies was 1971 and it seems everyone who saw it onstage is here on DL

I don't think she was in Follies

I’m 40, but love Tebaldi through her recordings. Her Forza with Del Monaco is a revelation. Her recording of Ballo with Pavarotti is outstanding as well- the act two duet is one of the greatest on record.

She could sing bel canto with the best of them, as well as spinto roles and the heavier Puccini repertoire.

Bitch wouldn't do anal.

"I knew you were gay .I mean, how many straight men remember Renata Tebaldi?"

She was so gifted she was hailed “La queef d’putto!”

Bump

…and with the caftan of Mama Cass!

She was a great singer

She was no Lily Pons...

I always thought she was better than Callas

In the Caftan Hall of Fame, there's a statue with her name.

Callas was quoted in Time magazine as saying that comparing her with Tebaldi was like "comparing Champagne with Cognac. No, with Coca Cola."

R23 I thought she was wearing a Snuggie.

She was a poor man’s Ashlee Simpson

Amateur

She was fantastic! I like the earlier recordings better. I think a lot of singers changed their technique to sound better on recordings and this caused them trouble if they tried the same technique singing to an audience. There is an earlier recording of her with Del Monaco in Aida (1954?), and she is phenomenal. The sound just poors forth, but when captured on record it lacks variety. Her later recording with Bergonzi 1958?) shows more variety in colour, but that are misleading as in the theatre they would be inaudible without the singer really pushing. God, for another like her or the sadly largely forgotten Zinka Milanov!

Was Del Monaco a stud? I seem to remember him as that.

Classic Frasier

magnificent

She was supposedly a very nice woman--not a melodramatic diva in her personal life like Callas often was. (I love that photo of Callas at r31 with her neck arched and her nose high in the air.)

It's so funny to think how seriously gay men used to take the "feuds" between competing divas in the 40s-70s particularly. I only vaguely remember that era (I was born in the mid 60s).

If you ask the person on the street to this day to name a female opera diva they will name Maria Callas .

Was a big fan of “As the World Turns.” Once met Eileen Fulton and said, “Lisa, you naughty girl!”

If you ask the person on the street to this day to name a female opera diva they will name Mariah Carey. FIFY

R37, if they say anyone, it's likely they'll say Beverly Sills.

Beverly Cleary, maybe. Or a Beverly Hillbilly.

Them’s the only Beverly anyone might know today.

[quote] [R37], if they say anyone, it's likely they'll say Beverly Sills.

Which makes me think of the great anecdote about Leontyne Price:

She was supposedly shopping in some high-end store in Manhattan like Henri Bendel, and a white woman came up to her, and said to her, awestruck, "Excuse me, but aren't you Marian Anderson?" And Price flashed her a brilliant smile and responded, "No, honey: I'm Beverly Sills!"

I've always loved the story about the opera queen who met this clue while completing a crossword -- "Tebaldi or Scotto (6 letters) -- and immediately started to fill it in TEBALDI (that 7th letter be damned!).

R18, I have a perverse fondness for that BALLO, but it's hardly the best of Tebaldi (to say nothing of BALLO) -- it was her last complete opera recording, and despite some fine moments she's very clearly hard pressed by it. (It can't have helped that she never played the role live.)

Makes no sense, at all!^

As one reviewer said, if you want to hear a beautiful voice in ""Forza", you listen to Tebaldi. If you are interested in the fate of Leonora, you listen to Callas.

And if you want to hear the music really thrillingly sung, you listen to Martina Arroyo or Anita Cerquetti or Júlia Várady.