Word: donna
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...know more about me," said the world's top prima donna at the close of this last interview, "than my own family does...
Once upon a time a prima donna was opera's indispensable lady, an unearthly creature who fed on acclaim, dressed in kudos and walked a path strewn with money, jewels and lovers. For her the real world was only an extension of the unlikely world of opera, a world of passionate hate, tempestuous love and outrageous gesture. The prima donna was larger than life, and a law only to her own towering talent. One composer did not dream of objecting when Maria Malibran (1808-36) regally replaced one whole act he had written with music by another composer. Adelina...
...owes him 10% of her earnings since he launched her in 1947 (when she scaled almost 200 Ibs.), slim (5 ft. 7 in., 132 Ibs.) Maria will make her Metropolitan Opera debut late this month. No process servers greeted her at New York's Idlewild Airport, and Prima Donna Callas fell happily into the arms of her papa, a Bronx pharmacist...
Perhaps hardest on the Prince was his obligation to provide his house with an heir, for he was not the marrying kind. He eventually chose his 20-year-old cousin, Donna Maria d'Avalos, a girl of "surprising beauty," and even more surprising reputation: her first husband had reportedly died from trying to appease her insatiable sexual appetite. In due course, she presented Don Carlo with two children, but Gesualdo lost interest in his wife, and she fixed hers on a handsome nobleman...
...Prima Donna: The word has, in the mouths of the more thinking members of the musical public, taken on a half-humorous, half-caustic meaning . . . (The child who in an examination paper misspelt the term Prim Madonna was very young...