A Familiar Voice

Manhattan's critics had cleared their throats and sung an unaccustomed high C for Flagstad (see above). Next night, in a Carnegie Hall loaded with Met stars and singing teachers, they had to strain their voices again for a singer most of them had never seen, though they had heard her on records.

When plump little Italian Mezzo-Soprano Ebe Stignani walked onstage for her New York debut, she got an unexpected ovation. It overwhelmed her so much she could hardly get through her first group of Handel and Vivaldi songs. "I can't sing when I am emotional," she said. But when she got her own emotions under control, her listeners began to lose theirs. A singer in the great bel canto tradition, she was as golden at the top of her voice as at the bottom, and as velvety in her ringing forte as in her piano. And she could move her voice around as fast as a flute.

Ebe Stignani is a gay little woman who admits to being "only as old as I look" (early fortyish). The night after her concert last week, she went to dinner with Arturo Toscanini, who had listened in frowning silence to her voice when she was 20, then next day sent her a contract to sing at Milan's La Scala. At dinner, says Ebe, "Maestro was in a reminiscing mood, but he only covered the period 1898 to 1913--not my time."

Originally, Ebe was to have come to the U.S. in 1940 (she had a Met contract), but couldn't leave Italy after the war broke out. She likes Italian opera best, has the power and range, but "not the temperament" to sing Wagner. Says she: "It is dangerous for an Italian to attempt Wagner. I do not feel heroic."

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