The Ever So Delicate Art of Becoming An Operatic Prima Donna

Overheard during an intermission notlong ago at the City Opera: An American soprano of note, who never quite made it to the rank of prima donna, snapping exasperatedly to her companion, “Just how did Beverly Sills get to be so famous?”

The answer to that question could fill a book, although not even the celebrated culture heroine herself supplied many convincing explanations in her chatty autobiography, “Bubbles: A Self‐Portrait.” No, the subtle chemistry that can turn a soprano into a full‐fledged prima donna is difficult to analyze, a fact made clear by recent record releases from divas of the past and present, as well as two hopeful future candidates for the title. Let's first take a look at Lily Pons, who died last year at the age of 71, 72, or 73 or 78 (few reference books agree on her birth date, one sure sign of prima donna status), and whose vocal art is celebrated on a three record album from Columbia.

Luck is a prime element in any career and Pons was very lucky—she appeared in just the right place at the right time, took full advantage of the fact and remained unchallenged in her repertory for at least 20 years. When she made her Met debut as Lucia on Saturday afternoon, Jan. 3, 1931, she was an unknown from France. The Met's astute general manager Gatti‐Cassazza intentionally groomed her to succeed Amelita GalliCurci who had retired the previous season.

Young, exceptionally charming and attractive, her coloratura soprano fresh, agile and brilliant, Pons created an instant sensation. Could it happen again today the same way? Doubtfully. We have long been conditioned by the more high‐powered voices and dramatic accents of Callas, Sutherland, Caballé and Sills in the bel canto repertory; Pons's pert “canary bird” approach to this music and her rather detached petit‐point style would now probably sound rather tame, if not downright superficial.

Music critics played a relatively minor role in Pons's ascendency. Olin Downes, writing in this paper about her debut, was decidedly on the fence if not acutally hostile. He granted her pleasing stage personality and vocal facility, but was at a loss to understand what drove the audience to such ecstasy. Finally Downes shrugged his shoulders and wrote, “The audience wished to make the most of her and did so.” So it went for most of Pons's 31‐year Met career. “Miss Pons is not the greatest coloratura soprano one has ever heard,” noted Virgil Thomson after her 1990 “Daughter of the Regiment” and let it go at that—why fight an institution so securely lodged in the public's affections.

Once she had arrived, Pons did her part to keep the image alive. She may not have played the prima donna role to the hilt—the spoiled‐child antics of an Adelina Patti from an earlier genera tion were no longer feasible in the 1930's —but she made it clear that she was something special. On her first crosscountry tour following her debut, Pons traveled in the company of a pet jaguar named Ita. Maryland named a town after her (and every year the soprano's Christmas cards bore the postmark “Lilypons, Md.”).

Her chic glamour lead to the inevitable invitations from Hollywood and a string of B films, the most famous being the appropriately titled “Hitting a New High.” When she sang the “Marseillaise” outside the Paris Opera on Liberation Day in the midst of marching soldiers, bands, political, dignitaries and cheering crowds, she breathlessly summed up the exciting event after returning home in true prima donna fashion: “Oh, it was wonderful—I was in fabulous voice!”

Yes, Pons was adored right from the beginning and like most famous opera stars for many reason quite apart from her voice. Still, with all her luck, personal charm and capacity for hard work, she could never have attained such a peak of public acceptance without a unique vocal quality, and a hint of what drove her fans wild may be heard on Columbia's three‐disk compendium.

At its best, Pons's voice was the perfect complement to her petite parisienne beauty. It was a pretty sound with a full, pure, bell‐like clarity that her younger competitors in the 50'sMunsel, Peters, Wilson, Hurley‐could not match. Her coloratura was usually neat and accurate but old‐fashioned by today's lights, a mechanical kind of tippy‐toe without a great deal of musical or dramatic relevance as the tones bounced over the notes like a pink rubber ball. This, too, in its way contributed to the image of lovable Lily.

The recordings at hand are taken from her final years in the studio, 194154. According to annotator William Seward, she regarded these performances as her musical and artistic legacy in terms of vocal maturity and artistic expression. This critic respectfully disagrees. What one hears here is a lovely, rather fragile instrument unmistakably in decline. She sang nearly all the opera arias to better effect on her earlier series of Victor recordings (1930–40) and some even better still on the rare disks made for French Odeon back in 1928 and 1929.

Perhaps the most appalling item is “Caro nome”— thin and pinched, rhythmically careless, pauses for breath not only in mid‐phase but sometimes in the middle of a word. Fortunately three of the six sides are devoted to songs in which she can still spin out a smooth legato and project considerable charm. particularly the Rachmaninoff selections and Milhaud's “Ronsard” cycle. written especially for her. But in general the singing at this late date illustrates Irving Kolodin's waspish remark in his history of the Met, that the favor Pons found with her public “remained well after the reasons for it had departed.”

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Now that she is no longer with us and only the recorded voice is left, posterity will likely accord Pons a somewhat lower niche in the prima donna ranks than opera goers might have guessed 40 years ago. The same fate no doubt awaits a number of today's highly acclaimed divas after the extramusical circumstances that helped create their public images have been swept away and time rights the perspective.

Yet with the notable exception of Beverly Sills, whose life story must be more familiar to the country at large than the sound of her voice, the current leading ladies of the opera stage keep their private lives pretty much to themselves and the voice alone has become the primary vehicle to superstardom. Take Montserrat Caballé, for example, whose career to date has been remarkably free of off‐stage color and whose success illustrates the different forces presently at work in the opera world than the ones that assisted Pons on her way to the top.

Like Pons, Caballé became an overnight international celebrity after one New York performance in a bel canto work by Donizetti. Significantly, though, the opera was not a standard repertory item like “Lucia,” but “Lucrezia Borgia” which in 1964 was virtually unknown. Since then, Caballé has sung an astonishingly wide range of roles around the world. Pons, on the other hand, remained close to the Met where she sang five parts during the first four months of her career and only added five more over the next 30 years.

Of course Pons's repertory was necessarily limited due to the light nature of her voice, while Caballé's more richly colored, full‐bodied instrument permits her to move through both coloratura and spinto territory. Even so, this is also a sign of the times—opera fans want to hear their favorites in many different kinds of roles, both familiar and nonstandard. Caballé has obliged, and her active repertory is enormous, covering Mozart, Wagner, Puccini, Verdi, Strauss, Gluck, Dvorak, Smetana, D'Albert, Offenbach, Borodin, Massenet, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Nono as well as Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti.

Caballé's new recital disk indicates further expansion into even heavier fare, the dramatic arias of Lady Macbeth, Santuzza, Turandot and Gioconda. The penalty to be paid here is not so much the danger of vocal damageCaballé's technique is one of the most secure and she never pushes the natural boundaries of her basic instrument—but a loss of vocal personality. It takes a singer of remarkable interpretive insight to encompass such a kaleidoscopic range of musical styles and characterizations, and Caballé's strong points lie elsewhere.

Again, like Pons, Caballé's forte is the sheer sound of her voice, in this case a velvety, caressing timbre of uncommon natural beauty. Since she does nothing in this recital to imperil that quality, those who respond to its sensual texture will no doubt be satisfied with the beguiling tone and token gestures of generalized temperament. Not surprisingly, though. Caballé makes her best effects in moments of lyrical repose: Leonora's “Tacea la notte,” Wally's “Ebben, ne andro lontana,” parts of “Suicidio” and “La mamma morta.” Lady Macbeth's opening aria, with its blowsy coloratura and a letter‐reading that sounds as sinister as a recipe for fudge, and Turandot's majestic address, with its fluffed diction and droopy phrasing, are pretty much a dead loss. It's difficult to take this sort of thing seriously, but such is Caballé's standing today that she could doubtlessly ask to sing Isolde and find many

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If Caballé is the very model of a modern prima donna—a slightly anonymous beautiful voice—what will tomorrow's divas be like? There is some indication that they will have to be a more fiery crew, especially if the romantic opera revival continues to explore the highpowered French‐Italian turn‐of‐the‐century repertory. One new contender is Sylvia Sass, who made her Met debut last month as Tosca. Hoping for another overnight sensation, London Records, in true pop‐world fashion, was ready with a recital disk heralding “Opera's Sensational New Star.”

It didn't quite turn out that way—Sass's Tosca seemed rudimentary, showing more promise than fulfillment. She is, after all, only 25 and barely out of the conservatory, although rave reviews from Europe indicated some sort of revelation was at hand. Still, this record reveals an immensely impressive potential in a testing repertory of Verdi and Puccini that duplicates Caballe's choice of roles in several instances. Sass clearly is more suited by nature to this heavy fare than her older colleague and she lights into it with confidence and passionate abandon. A lot of her singing is clumsy and interpretively half formed (she has obviously listened closely to Callas's recordings), but the thrust, power and fresh quality of her soprano augurs well for the future if she does not burn herself out as so many of “Opera's Sensational New Stars” often do. On an imported Hungaroton disk she can be heard in an all‐Mozart program, a sensible antidote to the rigors of Turandot el al, on the London recital.

Another new face at the Met last month was Ileana Cotrubas as Mimi in “La Bohème.” Less fuss surrounded her debut than that of Sass, but one knew that a major singer had arrived, if for no other reason than Columbia Records was ready with their new recital record to mark the occasion. If Cotrubas seemed a more finished artist than Sass, it's hardly surprising—at 37, she has already established herself firmly in European opera houses and has marked out the lyric soprano repertory as her special province.

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From all one knows of Cotrubas' vocal personality and career to date, the traditional prima donna role is not in her makeup. If there is one singer from the recent past she recalls it is Bidύ Sayâo. Not only do they share many of the same roles (Violetta, Manon, Norina), but the same sort of honey‐sweet voice, musical sensitivity and appealing feminine fragility. The Mozart, Verdi, Donizetti, Puccini material on her recorded program all suits her to the ground, except possibly Leonora's “Pace, pace” which is a more dramatic role than she would likely assume in the theater. Even here, however, she colors the words with a touching pathos.

Sass and Cotrubas represent opposite polarities among today's up and coming young singers and, owing to the exigencies and circumstances of opera in 1977, both behave quite differently from their illustrious predecessors. We will surely be hearing much more of them in the future as their art comes into clearer focus. If and how they may arrive at the pinnacle—“get to be so famous” as the frustrated soprano we met at the beginning of this review observed—remains to be seen. Times have changed since Lily Pons's day, but the thirst for new stars and the apparatus to create them are still with us. Each fresh arrival will be individual and unique with her own story to tell—and in that, as the Marschallin like the whole difference.

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LILY PONS: Coloratura Assoluta; Columbia D3M 34294. MONTSERRAT CABALLE: Dramatic Soprano Arias; London OS 26497. SYLVIA SASS: Opera's Sensational New Star; London OS 26524; Mozart Arias; Hungaroton SLPX 11812. ILEANA COTRUBAS: Opera Arias; Columbia M 34519.