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At 14 she was playing in a local nickelodeon for $12 a week. Scarcely tall enough to see the screen over the battered upright piano, she rattled off loud, hectic accompaniments for villains, soft, trembling tunes for injured heroines. Occasionally from her place in the pit she would sing a song or two. Her singing got her a $50-a-week job at Mellone's Restaurant in New Haven.
In Rosa Ponselle's penthouse apartment a pair of blue & gold portieres hang as souvenir of the second stage of her career. They are a part of the cyclorama used by the Ponzillo sisters (Carmela & Rosa) in vaudeville. Carmela had gone to New York ahead of Rosa, worked as a cloak model and sung in a cabaret. She and Rosa were engaged for their sister act when they had no money left, no clothes except their street suits. When they arrived at the theatre for their first turn, the manager protested about their clothes. They told a cock-&-bull story about a dressmaker who had disappointed them so the manager let them go on in their shirtwaists and striped skirts, heard them bring down the house with O Sole Mio.
After three years on the Keith circuit, the sisters returned to Manhattan. Carmela determined to study seriously. William Thorner, her teacher, happened also to hear Rosa who, nothing daunted, undertook to sing the difficult Casta diva aria from Norma. Thorner interrupted her in the middle of it to call in his friend Enrico Caruso. Caruso prophesied that in two years Rosa would be singing with him. Six months later, as Rosa Ponselle, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut. Impresario Gatti-Casazza picked the name for her.
At her debut in 1918 Ponselle weighed 205 lb., moved awkwardly about the stage, sang in a big, booming voice which often lacked control. Thinner, infinitely more polished, she has progressed until now she alone at the Metropolitan is believed capable of singing the early Italian roles which only the great oldtime singers have sung successfully, roles like Norma, the priestess in La Vestale, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, operas which might never have been revived if there had not been a voice with the range and flexibility of Ponselle's. She has still much to learn. She will never have the grace of Bori, the subtlety of Garden, the force of Jeritza. She has heavy Italian features, difficult to disguise. But her voice, critics almost without exception say, is the greatest to be heard today. It has brought her glamorous reward. Her concert earnings average $3,000 an appearance, her broadcasts $5,000 apiece.