Seventeen years ago a slender, piquant figure dressed in 18th-Century furbelows stepped on the stage of Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House and began in an appealing but none-too-confident voice the music which Giacomo Puccini had written for his Manon Lescaut.* The debutante was Lucrezia Bori, a young Spaniard who by rights was Lucrezia Borgia, namesake and descendant of the Renaissance sorceress. The hero who lifted his voice high in praise for her was Enrico Caruso. On the stage they loved and she forsook him for the riches of another. They were reconciled and together...
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