Rosa Ponselle: American Diva

by Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, Beverly Sills (Contributor)

Rosa Ponselle (1897-1981) was one of the greatest American opera singers of the twentieth century. This definitive biography, published on the centenary of her birth, provides a compelling, in-depth, and balanced portrait of the brilliant soprano. It is a captivating Cinderella story of the spirited diva's rise from modest beginnings in Meriden, Connecticut, to star of the Metropolitan Opera.

Drawing on interviews and extensive documentary research, Mary Jane Phillips-Matz charts the course of Ponselle's incredible career, from demonstrating sheet music in dime stores, to singing in motion picture houses and restaurants, to performing on the vaudeville stage with her beloved and talented sister Carmela, to her pivotal audition for Enrico Caruso. With Caruso's backing, the twenty-one-year-old soprano, with no previous experience in opera, made a sensational debut at the Metropolitan Opera and became an overnight celebrity. The extraordinarily successful operatic and concert career that followed the diva's debut is chronicled in this vibrant account.

Also included are Ponselle's headstrong disputes with the Metropolitan, her troubled marriage and divorce, and her productive retirement years as Artistic Director of the Baltimore Civic Opera and teacher of such future opera stars as Placido Domingo, Beverly Sills, William Warfield, James Morris, and Sherill Milnes.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published October 23, 1997

About the author

Mary Jane Phillips-Matz was an American biographer and writer on opera. She is mainly known for her biography of Giuseppe Verdi, a result of 30 years' research and published in 1992 by Oxford University Press. Educated at Smith College and Columbia University, she lived for many years in Italy, and even after her return to the United States in the early 1970s spent her summers in Verdi's hometown of Busseto where she continued her exhaustive research into his life.