# When Opera Stars Were Mainstream: Game Show!



## kappablanca (9 mo ago)

On the TV show What's My Line, every episode had a special feature where a blindfolded panel tried to guess the identity of a "mystery challenger" with yes/no questions. In the 50s and 60s, when the show was held, some of the challengers were stars at the Met. Here are some excerpts of the episodes.
(I'm sure some of you are old enough to have watched the show live). Of course, this has to be taken with a grain of salt since the show was held in New York and the panel consisted of high-society socialites, but it's still interesting to see how much more popular opera was back in the day - but, then again, Price seems to get plenty of applause. Observe how Arlene Francis (probably the opera fan of the group) jokes about Gottedammerung, references Lauritz Melchior and Rudolf Bing, recognizes the contestants, etc.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Every episode of this show was on our television when I was young. Another panelist was Kitty Carlisle, who actually sang at the Met (Prince Orlovsky in _Fledermaus_, at least) and I may remember Patrice Munsel as well. Thanks for the memory.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

We had our own version of the show, which ran on exactly the same lines. I remember watching it with my mother.

Talking of how scheduling was different in those day, I think I mentioned before a quiz programme called _Face The Music_, in which contestants would answer questions about classical music. Regular round were "Hidden Melody" in which Joseph Cooper would play a piece of music using a well-known tune dressed up in the style of a particular composer. Contestants had to identify both the tune and the composer. Another was the "Dummy Keyboard" when he would play a piece on a keyboard that made no sound (the sound faded in for the audience at home about half way through) and identify the piece. The opera section would show film of one opera with sound from another and the contestants would have to identify both. We looked forward to it every week. You'd mever see anything like that these days.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I am a bit too young, so I barely remember this but Anneliese Rothenberger hosted a show on German TV for most of the 1970s or even longer. In any case there was another show until the mid-1980s for guessing tunes and or opera scenes, I believe (not sure if this was the same). Rothenberger and other were also present as guests in other shows and I certainly remember a bit later, in the late 1980s when I already knew some classical music, Hermann Prey singing "Abschied" in a general audience saturday night game show!

A lateish try for popularization of classical music was a show with pianist (and founder of the Schleswig-Holstein festival in the 1980s) Justus Frantz in the 1990s. But this was already different from the way appearance of opera/operetta stars in TV was "natural" a few decades earlier.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Time passes too quickly, and before we know it we're living in a world we don't even recognize. In the '50s and '60s there were operas produced specifically for network television. A TV _Bluebeard's Castle_ still haunts me, along with my father objecting to _Le Nozze di Figaro_ because of too much recitative ("Where are the arias?"). The "variety show" was a major genre, and opera was standard fare. Now, of course, we have internet, so there's no need for television to waste precious minutes on classical music when it can be feeding the public's appetite for whatever it can convince the public that it ought to have an appetite for.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

That said, they only filmed Act II of the famous Callas/Gobbi *Tosca.* Why on earth didn't they film it complete?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Tsaraslondon said:


> That said, they only filmed Act II of the famous Callas/Gobbi *Tosca.* Why on earth didn't they film it complete?


Someone must have the answer to that, but I haven't heard it.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Tsaraslondon said:


> That said, they only filmed Act II of the famous Callas/Gobbi *Tosca.* Why on earth didn't they film it complete?


Wasn’t there some kind of Royal event taking precedence and they couldn’t spare the time for the whole opera!


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Tsaraslondon said:


> We had our own version of the show, which ran on exactly the same lines. I remember watching it with my mother.
> 
> Talking of how scheduling was different in those day, I think I mentioned before a quiz programme called _Face The Music_, in which contestants would answer questions about classical music. Regular round were "Hidden Melody" in which Joseph Cooper would play a piece of music using a well-known tune dressed up in the style of a particular composer. Contestants had to identify both the tune and the composer. Another was the "Dummy Keyboard" when he would play a piece on a keyboard that made no sound (the sound faded in for the audience at home about half way through) and identify the piece. The opera section would show film of one opera with sound from another and the contestants would have to identify both. We looked forward to it every week. *You'd mever see anything like that these days.*


In fact, didn't they try to bring it back about 15 years ago (totally new episodes, not repeats of the original)? The viewing figures were so low it came and went after very few episodes. (I have only a vague memory of this, so it may have been a new show with a similar format.

N.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

Tsaraslondon said:


> That said, they only filmed Act II of the famous Callas/Gobbi *Tosca.* Why on earth didn't they film it complete?


Maybe there is no need in it? The second act of you know what is good as it it is. The more time passes the less need in it is.


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Tsaraslondon said:


> *That said, they only filmed Act II of the famous Callas/Gobbi Tosca. Why on earth didn't they film it complete?*





Woodduck said:


> *Someone must have the answer to that, but I haven't heard it.*












How we made: Franco Zeffirelli and John Tooley on Tosca (1964)


'A nervous Callas stood in the wings, clutching Zeffirelli's arm. Even her dresser was bruised by her grip'




www.theguardian.com





Interview
*How we made: Franco Zeffirelli and John Tooley on Tosca (1964)*
Interviews by Anna Tims


*Franco Zeffirelli, director*
"Almost every week, I watch the video of the second act with friends. Here and there, there is some horrible acting, but no one did anything the music didn't demand. Everything that really matters is in that act: [Tito] Gobbi and [Maria] Callas, two of the greatest ever opera singers, the strength of the drama, the glory of the music, the magnificence of the scenery. It was the first great event of my career."

*John Tooley, assistant general administrator*
*"In the mid-60s, the live Sunday evening TV broadcasts from Covent Garden usually comprised single-aria musical interludes. But because of the drama and spectacle of this production, I suggested they broadcast the whole second act."*

Gobbi and Callas arrived for rehearsal only hours before filming. When I dashed home for an hour, I got a frantic call from the TV director who said the two singers were just larking about and he couldn't get a thing out of them. But being consummate professionals, I knew they could switch into the roles when the cameras started rolling.

Gobbi and Callas were a perfect team – they knocked sparks off each other. Zeffirelli adored Callas: she trusted him, and he calmed her nerves when she was about to perform. He would stand by her in the wings, with her clutching his hand or arm. Her dresser, Gertie, was another source of comfort, and sometimes suffered bruising on her arm from the pressure of Callas's grip.

In the first two years [1964 and '65] of this production, Callas sang only five performances because of ill health. She was a perfectionist, and worried a great deal about not being able to meet her own high standards. The other performances were sung magnificently by a gifted and distinguished Australian, Marie Collier.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

I had a feeling that only act two was broadcast because that was all that was performed on that night. It was a special TV performance and we are lucky to have it rather than a concert by Gobbi and Callas of arias.

N.


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

John Tooley - "Gobbi and Callas arrived for rehearsal only hours before filming. When I dashed home for an hour, I got a frantic call from the TV director 
who said *the two singers were just larking about and he couldn't get a thing out of them."*

Gobbi and Callas were Irish ? - Jaysus... ya learn somethin' new every day...


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

The Conte said:


> In fact, didn't they try to bring it back about 15 years ago (totally new episodes, not repeats of the original)? The viewing figures were so low it came and went after very few episodes. (I have only a vague memory of this, so it may have been a new show with a similar format.
> 
> N.


They DID try to bring it back (or at least did a pilot episode) and it WAS exactly seven years ago!

Face the Music 2007 - pilot episode - YouTube 

N.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

I doubt opera was "more popular" in America back in the 50s . There are far more opera companies now in the US than back then. And this would not be the case unless there were a genuine audience for opera today .


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

superhorn said:


> I doubt opera was "more popular" in America back in the 50s . There are far more opera companies now in the US than back then. And this would not be the case unless there were a genuine audience for opera today .


It's good that you put "popular" in quotes, because popularity can mean a number of different things. The number of opera "companies" - "company" may also mean different things - may reflect merely the fact the U. S. population has more than doubled since 1950, plus perhaps the ease of access to music and entertainments of every kind through the internet. 

What percentage of the population hears, much less actively seeks out, operatic music in 2022 as compared to 1950? I don't know the answer, but I'm pretty sure that far more people back then had at some point heard, and knew the names of, some leading operatic artists. No one in my small-town, working-class family had ever seen opera live, and no one knew much of anything about it, but opera singers were constantly appearing on popular TV shows, and we listened to them and even had favorites (my mother loved Robert Merrill, my father liked Roberta Peters but not Eileen Farrell, and I was ravenous for all of them). I inherited a stack of 78 rpm records that included singers such as Caruso and Galli-Curci; my father remembered recordings of Madame Schumann-Heink; his father had played the violin as an amateur; my maternal grandfather had records of Ezio Pinza and Anna Moffo; and in our piano bench - seemingly every household had a piano then, and there was generally someone who played - was a lot of sheet music containing popular arias and other bits from operas by Verdi, Wagner and others. The mother of one of my school friends also had many 78s and a piano, and enjoyed classical music though no one in the household had a musical background. I doubt that she'd ever seen an opera either, but she liked hearing me play operatic music on the piano and even indulged me when I talked endlessly about my newfound passion for Wagner and brought over recordings of his operas to play for her. Imagine getting your friend's mother to sit through _Tristan und Isolde_ and, apparently, enjoy it!

I don't really know how common my experience was, but I suspect that a large proportion of adults back then inherited at least a bit of old European culture from immigrant parents and grandparents, and that opera - enjoyed in the form of piano arrangements, phonograph records, TV and movies - was not entirely alien to them. What I do think is true is that culture was less fragmented, less broken into "niches" then, and that because popular music in the early 20th century was not so remote from the classical tradition it was easier for people to relate to operatic music and not find the singing exotic. The appearance in popular movies of opera singers like Helen Traubel and Lauritz Melchior, as well as actors with opera-calibre voices such as Deanna Durbin, Jeannette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, playing characters who might be singers or who merely happened to sing superbly, was common and, apparently, widely enjoyed, and people who never attended opera knew who those singers were. 

The 1950s were, I think, the last gasp of a period in Western culture which WW II brought to an end, and those of us whose sensibilities were formed in a less crowded, less noisy, less conflicted, fearful and angry time were both fortunate to have caught echoes of the prewar period and unfortunate to have heard them fade into mere memories. We're lucky a least to have music to transport us into a different reality. As opera lovers, we can get glimpses of earlier times in the singing we hear on old recordings. I'm always moved by just how much of their world some of those singers can bring to us, increasingly remote in time. Galli-Curci's motto was "Simplicity, Sincerity, Serenity," and her voice first communicated those things to me more than sixty years ago. It does so to this day, when those qualities are increasingly hard to find.


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