Music: Brave Return

"When the curtain fell on the second act the calm, suave, sophisticated gathering rose in its seats and cheered and shouted and screamed its delight with Mme Galli-Curci, the Gilda [Rigoletto] of the afternoon. Nothing like her had been heard, the audience individually and as a body asseverated, in the six years in which Chicago has had an opera company named for it. ... Galli-Curci, if Saturday's performance be a reasonable measure of her quality, is the greatest coloratura since Sembrich." So gushed the Chicago Tribune in 1916.

Last week, nervous almost...

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