Word: renata
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...operatic circuit. In her rise to the top she has experienced only one real failure-a performance of Traviata at La Scala in 1951 in which her voice broke twice on high notes. The audience of rabid Tebaldi fans "exclaimed in wonder and dismay," as she puts it, and Renata took to her room for two months. But with characteristic stubbornness, she then accepted an invitation from the San Carlo Opera in Naples to sing nine successive performances of Traviata, and earned nine successive ovations...
...Tebaldi, life at the top of the operatic world has proved only slightly different from the life she knew on the way up. "Outside the theater," says Renata, "I feel that nothing in me has changed since adolescence." Although she has had several vague romantic attachments (including one to Bass Nicola Rossi-Lemeni), she has never seriously considered marriage. Says Callas, wife of wealthy Giovanni Battista Meneghini: "What I really wish for her is that she find some wonderful person to marry. Love completes a woman; her art would be even better...
...Carabiniere. Until she died last winter, Renata Tebaldi's mother accompanied her on all her tours, acted so effectively as a backstage buffer for her daughter that fellow singers affectionately nicknamed her "The Carabiniere." She handled Renata's mail (weeding out the occasional poison-pen letters from over-zealous Callas fans), took care of her clothes and costumes, stationed herself in the wings to minister to Renata with a Thermos jug of warm tea and an emergency flask of brandy when she came offstage. She was quick to resent any affronts to her daughter. Backstage lore...
Neither success nor the passage of time has reconciled Tebaldi to her father, whom she resents almost as fiercely as she adored her mother, for having deserted his family. He has written Renata hundreds of letters but has never received a reply. Several years ago, when Renata was scheduled to sing in Reggio Emilia, where her father now lives, he wrote her how much he looked forward to seeing her again. Renata cabled the manager of the local theater that she would walk out if her father were in the house...
...preserved the remarkable instrument of her voice in all its original power and glory. While other singers' voices begin to fray, Tebaldi's only grows more refulgent with the years. "A career," says Tebaldi's friend Licia Albanese, "should be slow, taken quietly. Renata is a quiet person. And she takes the singing quiet. She is right. It must...