In the flowing white robes of a Druid priestess, Rosa Ponselle, soprano of the Metropolitan Opera, waited in a dressing room of London Covent Garden last week. She tapped her foot, tried her voice, added a touch of carmine to her cheeks, adjusted the green wreath on her flowing black hair. Tomorrow her British debut would be over. Tonight she must face the coldest public in the world, a public which had not heard Norma since the late great Lilli Lehmann sang it in London 30 years before, Lehmann who had said: "I would rather sing all three Brünnhildes than Norma."
The door creaked open and there was the friendly face of Dame Nellie Melba. Taking Ponselle's cold hands between her warm ones, the grand old prima donna delivered a warning: "Now, my dear Rosa, don't expect Covent Garden to be like your Metropolitan. Above all, don't expect applause for your great aria, 'Casta Diva.' A London audience wouldn't clap the Angel Gabriel himself until the curtain was down and the proper time for applause had arrived."
Within two hours after this prediction, Rosa Ponselle sang her "Casta Diva." The great house listened. The top galleries bulged with humble music-lovers. In the boxes were the Italian Ambassador, Mme. Melba, Prince & Princess Bismarck, Margot, Countess of Oxford & Asquith, Lady Cunard, Lords Leesdale, Colebrooke and Monteagle, and onetime King Manuel of Portugal and his consort. . . . From top to bottom Covent Garden yielded itself to the spell of a glorious voice, forgot all traditions, burst into riotous applause. The third act brought another demonstration.
Next day the newspaper critics came as near to "raving" as Britons can. London was Rosa Ponselle's.
Thirty-two years ago in Meriden, Conn., a beady-eyed little girl was born to the Ponzillios, thrifty Italian immigrants. They named her Rosa. As she grew older she was always singing. She sang over her lessons in school, over the dishes at home, in the church choir. Her first job was as entertainer in the local "nickelodeon." Her fame spread locally, she was offered a position at New Haven's Molone's restaurant at the fabulus figure of $50 per week. Meanwhile, her elder sister, Carmela, entered smalltime vaudeville with her contralto voice. Rosa joined forces with her and as the "Ponzillio Sisters" they were favorites on the Keith circuit for three years.
A Metropolitan audition was the result of a word whispered into official ears by Caruso himself. Without having learned an operatic role, with but six months to study grand opera methods, she was given a contract straightaway. She made her debut (1918) opposite Caruso, in the Verdi opera called La Forza del Destino—The Power of Fate.