"Prima donna" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the home-bird they missed on Plymouth Rock. In this generous treatment of their affection for it, they perhaps condoned for mating the English lark so incongruously; but it was true their choice was very limited. To match the prima donna carissima of English field and sky, it was necessary to select a meadow bird, with some other features of resemblance. It would never do to give the cherished name and association to one that lived in the forest, or built its nest ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... red-handed murderer to an incubator baby. The town seemed to be running over with celebrities. Norberg, the city editor, adores celebrities. He never allows one to escape uninterviewed. On Friday there fell to my lot a world-famous prima donna, an infamous prize-fighter, and a charming old maid. Norberg cared not whether the celebrity in question was noted for a magnificent high C, or a left half-scissors hook, so long as the interview was dished up hot and juicy, with plenty of quotation marks, a liberal ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... beast. He's not a beast that you ought to treat in that way. You'll be a beast too if you come to rise high in your profession. It is a kind of work which sharpens the intellect, but is apt to make men and women beasts. Did you ever hear of a prima donna who thought that another prima donna sang ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... table towards him, and in her vehemence clasped his wrist. The girl watched them both with a smile. It reminded her of a scene in an opera she had heard once in a strange language. The prima donna had looked and pleaded ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... was beating fast as she descended the stairway, bright spots of colour flaming in her cheeks and the diamonds sparkling in her ears. A prima donna might have guessed her feelings as she paused, a little breathless on the wide landing under the windows. She heard a footstep. Hugh came out of the library and stood motionless, looking up at her. But even those who have felt the silence and the stir that prefaces the clamorous applause of the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... excited over the announcement of a new prima donna, whose wonderful achievements in Italian opera had set even the exacting critics of Italy wild with enthusiasm ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... occurred to me. In this embarrassing position my mind became seriously disturbed; I felt the necessity of obtaining some relief, which might turn my thoughts for a while into a new channel. The secretary called on me, while I was still in doubt what to do. He reminded me that a new prima donna was advertised to appear on that night; and he suggested that we should go to the opera. Feeling as I did at the ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... delegation of home people were on hand to meet Miss Cayvan, and she immediately assumed the haughty airs of a prima donna. ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... and each tiny grass-blade glistened in the sun, bending under the weight of its liquid diamond. The birds were improvising a miniature symphony in the birches at the end of the garden; the song-thrush warbled with a sweet melancholy his long-drawn contralto notes; the lark, like a prima donna, hovering conspicuously in mid air, poured forth her joyous soprano solo; and the robin, quite unmindful of the tempo, filled out the pauses with his thoughtless staccato chirp. Augusta, who was herself the early bird of the pastor's family, had paid a visit to the little bath-house down ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... chairs, opposite each other, and he had composed me, what he termed 'a grog': himself preferring the more innocent mixture known as eau sucree, did he allude to Fidelio. I praised heartily the discipline of the orchestra, the prima donna, whom report made his country-woman, with her strong, sweet voice and her extraordinary beauty, the magnificence of the music, the fine impression ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... expressed it, she had never been in anything before in her life, and no prima donna was ever more excited over her debut than she at the thought of this little recitation; but her pleasure met with a sudden check upon the discovery that a white dress would be necessary. She hadn't a white dress, and she knew it was hopeless to think ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... consulting her children or saying a word to anybody, she went to see Mademoiselle Josepha Mirah, prima donna of the Royal Academy of Music, to find or to lose the hope that had gleamed before her like a will-o'-the-wisp. At midday, the great singer's waiting-maid brought her in the card of the Baronne Hulot, saying that this person was waiting at the door, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Bonanni, the celebrated lyric soprano, whose opinion would be worth having, and perhaps final. The great singer had the reputation of being very good-natured in such cases and was on friendly terms with Margaret's teacher, the latter being a retired prima donna. Margaret felt sure of a fair hearing, therefore, and it was for this trial that she was going to the ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... singer, refused to cultivate her talent for music, saying, "If I were to do this, it might induce her some day to go on the stage, and I would prefer to buy her a sieve of black cockles from Ring's End to cry about the streets of Dublin to seeing her the first prima donna of Europe." A genuine talent for music will assert itself in spite of neglect, and one evening at the house of Moore, where with her sister Olivia she listened in tearful enthusiasm to some of his melodies, sung as only the poet could sing them, was an important ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... are going to Ary Scheffer's to hear music and to see ever so many celebrities. Oh, and let me remember to tell you that M. Thierry, the blind historian, has sent us a message by his physician to ask us to go to see him, and as a matter of course we go. Madame Viardot, the prima donna, and Leonard, the first violin player at the Conservatoire, are ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... at the Teatro Real with Senor Espin y Guillen in a small group behind the scenes, and a prima donna singing. Actors standing apart ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... kitchen, I found the actors seated at supper and was kindly received. Belviso presented me to the principals—to a pleasant, plump old gentleman, who looked like the canon of a cathedral foundation, and was, in fact, the famous Arlecchino 'Gritti; to the prima donna, a black-browed lady, who, because she came from Sicily, was called La Panormita, her own name being Brigida, and her husband's Minghelli; to the cheerfulest drunkard I ever met, who played the lovers' parts, and was that same Minghelli; to the sustainers of Pantaleone, Scaramuccia, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... for going," said Latisan. He followed her, and to her profound amazement she discovered that a woodsman could be as temperamental as a prima donna. "I'm going, too, Mr. Flagg," he called over his shoulder. "I'm going for good and all where you're concerned. I'm done with you. I gave you your fair warning. Send another man north ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... this: a show gets stuck and needs a quick study. They call me up and I throw them what they want at an hour's notice. They can always count on me for anything from wardrobe mistress to prima donna. That's how I get mine," she concluded with ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... some day with a little bundle of clothes, and a coin or two, or is fetched away by some far-sighted pedlar in such human wares, who buys them as bird-fanciers buy the finches from the nets; and then, years and years afterwards, the town or hamlet hears indistinctly of some great prima donna, or of some lark-throated tenor, that the big world is making happy as kings, and rich as kings' treasurers, and the people carding the flax or shelling the chestnuts say to one another, "That was little black ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the Turkish mart, he Still kept his spirits up—at least his face; The little fellow really look'd quite hearty, And bore him with some gaiety and grace, Showing a much more reconciled demeanour, Than did the prima donna and ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... fanatico, gave his undivided attention to the stage; and, in the meantime, I amused myself by observing the audience, which consisted, in chief part, of the very elite of the city. Having satisfied myself upon this point, I was about turning my eyes to the prima donna, when they were arrested and riveted by a figure in one of the private boxes which ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of every kind which can be performed for other people. Besides, those who oppose this view are unable to give a satisfactory explanation of all the phenomena of commerce. Of course, the qualification "recognized as useful" is of the utmost importance as a mark to determine what is goods. But a prima donna, or a world-renowned physician, cast naked by shipwreck on the shores of North America, is certainly, better off than a blind beggar, his fellow sufferer. Compare Storch, Handbuch II, 335 ff. and his Considerations sur la Nature ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... for that sound Hushed "Academie" sighed in silent awe; The fiddlers trembled as he looked around, For fear of some false note's detected flaw; The "Prima Donna's" tuneful heart would bound, Dreading the deep damnation of his "Bah!" Soprano, Basso, even the Contra-Alto, Wished him five fathom under ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... little. During the early summer I never wearied of watching the musical orioles flashing with their bright hues in and out of the foliage about the house; but when the early grapes were ripe, they took pay for their music with the sang-froid of a favorite prima donna. On one occasion I saw three or four alight on a Diana vine, and in five minutes they had spoiled a dozen clusters. If they would only take a bunch and eat it up clean, one would readily share with them, for there would be enough for all; but the dainty little epicures ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... his scene with Millie every time. But this article goes on to say, if he rubs his hands together and says, 'Very nice,' and walks off, that means he thinks you will probably make a better bookkeeper or baby dandler than you will a prima donna. Millie used to write that around the opera house in Vienna, when Auchinloss started rubbing his hands together after an audition, everybody used to have the ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... of thought as you are able to do, but a woman without a lover is a pathetic thing. There is no real reason for her existence; all her little miracles of expression and posing are for naught. She is a sort of prima donna lost out of the play. There is no one to give her the happy cue to the whole meaning of life. Oh, my Love! I cannot live without a lover. Do not bereave me! I should shrivel up, I am sure,—grow old and sour and ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... to the country villa of a great Jew banker, and since that moment the arrangement has gone off. We have offered her everything; the commandant's country castle; his lady's country farm; the villa of the director of the Opera; the retreat of our present prima donna; all in vain. We have even hinted at a temporary repose in a neighbouring royal residence; but all useless. The banker and the Signora are equally intractable, and Frankfort ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... 3. Donizetti's opera "Gemma di Vergi" presented at Niblo's Gardens, New York City, with Majocchi, prima donna, and Perozzi. ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... didn't! Hasn't every prima donna a larynx to hid behind?" She lifted off her fur cap, ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... Jefferson came of French parents, and was a Mrs. Burke, a widow with one child, a son, when she married Mr. Jefferson. Her son tells us that she had been one of the most attractive stars in America, the leading prima donna of the country; but she bore her changed fortune, as the wife of an unsuccessful actor and manager, with no less dignity on the stage of real life, where no applause was to be had but what came from those who loved her as ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... if the girl would feel that anything had been missing, but Marna seemed to be basking in the happiness of the hour. The great German prima donna had kissed her with tears in her eyes; the French baritone had spoken his compliments with convincing ardor; dozens had crowded about her with congratulations; and now, at the head of the glittering table in an opulent room, the little descendant of minstrels ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... instrument the soul is, and of what divine harmonies and profound emotions it is capable when played upon by any adequate power. To expect to maintain this exaltation with our present nature is like requiring of the athlete that he never relax his muscles, or of the prima donna that she never cease the exquisite trill which is but the momentary proof of what her present organization is capable. And yet it would appear that many, like poor Haldane, are tempted on one hand ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... honored by modern audiences, and especially operatic audiences, because they tend to rate temperament too high and art too low, and to tolerate singers whose voice-production is atrocious, simply because their temperament or personality interests them. Take a case in point: The Croatian prima donna, Milka Ternina, whose art ranges from Tosca to Isolde, sings (in "Tosca") the invocation to the Virgin which precedes the killing of Scarpia, with a wealth of voice combined with a power of dramatic ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... fatigued. He was received with rapturous applause. The members of the assembly were seated one-half on his right, and one-half on his left, in boxes handsomely fitted up for them; and as soon as they had all taken their places, a poem on the occasion was recited by the Prima Donna, in which there were some good points, which called forth great applause. I think it is Gresset who, in one of his odes ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... having the head, neck, breast, and upper back dove-coloured. It has none of the aggressive habits of its brethren of the plains. It keeps mainly to dense forests. Jerdon describes its cry as "mellow, subdued, and agreeable." It is the prima donna ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... said Jacks, "you ain't in the prima donna class. I've heard 'em warble in every city in the United States; and I tell you your vocal output don't go. Otherwise, you've got the grand opera bunch sent to the soap factory—in looks, I mean; for the high screechers generally look like Mary Ann on her Thursday out. But nix for ...
— Options • O. Henry
... and corn-cockle invade the garden, I shall never use a hoe on them. More than this, if only the right weeds settled in the garden, I should grow no other flowers. But shepherd's purse! Compared with it, a cabbage is a posy for a bridesmaid, and sprouting broccoli a bouquet for a prima donna. After all, one ought to be allowed to choose the weeds for one's own garden. But then when one chooses them, one no longer calls them weeds. The periwinkle, the primrose and the mallow—we spare ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... Already the development of colorature singing had reached a high degree of perfection. Already the singer sought to astonish the hearer by covering an air with a bewildering variety of ornaments. The time was not far off when the opera prima donna was to become the incarnation of the artistic sensuousness which had beguiled Italy with a dream of Grecian resurrection. The way had been well built, for the attention of the fathers of the Roman church had been turned early to ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... having only made four hundred pounds with six concerts. My career as a prima donna is at an end. The public is tired ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... continued favourable. One night we went to the opera to hear a celebrated prima donna. When we returned home Miriam and I were sitting in her room, chatting over the events of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... course the ladies know,— I have my doubts. No matter,—here we go! What is a Prologue? Let our Tutor teach: Pro means beforehand; logos stands for speech. 'T is like the harper's prelude on the strings, The prima donna's courtesy ere she sings; Prologues in metre are to other pros As worsted stockings are to engine-hose. "The world's a stage,"—as Shakespeare said, one day; The stage a world—was what he meant to say. The outside world's a blunder, that is ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... satisfied with anything short of the battery which had caused us such trouble, (it being the battery that had blockaded the Cumberland river and captured our transports, among them the Prima Donna, commanded by Capt. Joe. Scott, formerly of Ripley, and had withstood the combined efforts of our gun-boats and iron-clads to dislodge them,) the order to have the regiment formed in readiness to make ...
— History of the Seventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry • R. C. Rankin
... and Carlotta of that of dancing; the talents of Michel were to be watched, and to be reported to Sidonia at fitting periods. As for Adele, she was consigned to a lady who had once been a celebrated prima donna, with whom she was to pursue her studies, although still residing under the paternal roof. 'Josephine will repair to Paris at once with her brother,' said Sidonia. 'My family will guard over her. She will enjoy her brother's society until I commence my travels. He will ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... after all, lost nothing of The Princess Pattie except half of the overture—a loss that, as operettas go, might indeed be counted a gain; but the succeeding activities of the prima donna, the ponderous basso and the brace of "comedians" were subject to a series of very sensible impediments and interruptions. Several times—and often at the most inopportune of moments—a swarthy, earnest young man walked across ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... sang with something beyond the talent of an amateur. At the age of seventeen, she heard Pasta in Paris; flew up in a fire of youthful enthusiasm; and the next morning, all alone and without introduction, found her way into the presence of the PRIMA DONNA and begged for lessons. Pasta made her sing, kissed her when she had done, and though she refused to be her mistress, placed her in the hands of a friend. Nor was this all, for when Pasta returned to Paris, she sent for the girl (once at least) to test her ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Cleofante Campanini, was a public singer of established reputation, and her success roused her young sister's ambition to become a great artist. Her parents were well to do, her father having a large army furnishing store in Florence, and they did not encourage her in her determination to become a prima donna. One prima donna, said her father, ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... said Holmes. "Hum! Born in New Jersey in the year 1858. Contralto—hum! La Scala, hum! Prima donna Imperial Opera of Warsaw—yes! Retired from operatic stage—ha! Living in London—quite so! Your Majesty, as I understand, became entangled with this young person, wrote her some compromising letters, and is now desirous ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... a brilliant success. To be sure, such sterling actors as Mr. and Mrs. John Barnes and the Hilsons played there, and during a short season of Italian opera, in which Daponte was enthusiastically interested, Adelaide Pedrotti was the prima donna. And one of New York's first "opera idols" sang there—Luciano Fornasari, generally acclaimed by New York ladies as the handsomest man who had ever been in the city! For a wonder, he wasn't a tenor, only a basso, but they adored him ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... cruelty, but of development. And when, out of the thousands of dogs sent there, the corps of trainers found one with promise of strong ability, such a pupil was handled with all the care and gentleness and skill that a temperamental prima donna might expect. ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... prima donna, as she threw a hasty glance at her deshabille and snatched up the kimono. "Pretty talk, Fullaway—very, and all intended to benefit Weiss there. Lost, indeed!—I've lost all my jewels, and up to now nobody"—here she ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... costume, only now her costume was richer and more chastened. It was her line, her condition, part of her expression. If at Miss Birdseye's, and afterwards in Charles Street, she might have been a rope-dancer, to-day she made a "scene" of the mean little room in Monadnoc Place, such a scene as a prima donna makes of daubed canvas and dusty boards. She addressed Basil Ransom as if she had seen him the other week and his merits were fresh to her, though she let him, while she sat smiling at him, explain in his ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... and thar ain't dishes enough to go around, but you're so contrivin' like, I thought you might find out a way." Memories of the footlights were temporarily banished upon hearing this wonderful intelligence. A puzzled pucker came between the brows of the little would-be prima donna and remained there until at last the exigency ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... politicians. Calder succeeded in spite of his manner, or his mask, or whatever it may have been; and he did it by a penetrating knowledge of the country, a superb capacity as administrator and a talent for keeping out of trouble. He was no man for prima donna scenes. Even the Education Department, a witch's cauldron of troubles over the Separate School question in the new provinces, never entangled him in theatricals. He was unpopular with the Opposition as soon as the new Government began, because he was regarded ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... reached the foyer she found herself surrounded by men and women whose frank interest was of the same well-bred but artless essence as that afforded a famous actress or prima donna exhibiting herself before the footlights. It was evident that she had a sense of humor, for as she made her way slowly toward the entrance a smile twitched her mouth more than once. Clavering thought that she was on the point of laughing ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... illness of the prima donna, the audience will have the unexpected privilege this evening of hearing an accomplished American girl, a native of New York City, sing for the first time in Grand Opera. Miss Harriet Woodman will appear in ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... you know nothing of women." There was a moment's silence. From a distant room, dimly seen through a vista of curved and pillared archways, a woman's voice came pealing out to them, the passionate climax of an Italian love song, the voice of a prima donna of world-wide fame. A storm of applause was echoed through the near rooms, a buzz of appreciative criticism followed. Drexley rose up from the seat ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... been in Little Rivers twenty-four hours, and he had played a part in its criminal annals and become subject to all the embarrassment of favors of a royal bride or a prima donna who is about to sail. In a bower, amazed, he was meeting the world of Little Rivers and its wife. Men of all ages; men with foreign accent; men born and bred as farmers; men to whom the effect of indoor occupation clung; men still weak, but with red corpuscles singing a song of returning health ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... at a small musical party, I heard Euphrasia Borghese sing, whom you may have heard, and who is to be Prima Donna at the new Opera-house, which opens on the 25th or 2eth of the present month. They begin with the "Puritani." It will be altogether devoted to Italian music, I suppose, from the tendency of the New York taste and the ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... coming back to this Irrational Knot as a stranger after 25 years, I am proud to find that its morality is not readymade. The drunken prima donna of a bygone type of musical burlesque is not depicted as an immoral person, but as a person with a morality of her own, no worse in its way than the morality of her highly respectable wine merchant in its way. The sociology of the successful inventor is his own sociology too; and it is ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... of the day. He knew, and could tell you, the secret history of the last new opera; how much had been paid for it, what it had cost to produce, and all about the great green-room cabal against the new prima donna. He knew what amount of originality could be safely claimed for the last new drama that was taking the town by storm, and how many times the same story had been hashed up before. He had read the last French novel of any note, and could ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... serpents. That's what ailed Adam and Eve. They kept intoxicated with their own primordial sweetness until they got the jimmies and saw a talking snake prancing around the evergreen aisles of Eden with legs like unto a prima donna. At least I suppose the Edenic serpent was built that way, for the Lord cursed it and compelled it to go on its belly all the days of its life. Hence the Lord must have pulled its leg. So to speak, or words to that effect. As an intoxicant love ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... toe dancer in her attractive transformations; the Brothers Zincatello, Risley experts at the Hippodrome; Julian Jokes, "in his inimitable Hebrew monologue"; the Seven Sebastians, the world's most marvelous Herculean acrobatic performers; Mlle. Joujou, the popular singing comedienne, Prima Donna and Star, direct from her unusual and most distinguished triumph at the Palace Theater, London; and a dozen more of the younger and more popular people of the stage, all adorned, with adjectives and hyperbole. Down at the bottom of the list with a trembling pencil ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... and cheese, Chopin declined to give it to him; the editor of the "Courier" inserted in his paper a sonnet addressed to Chopin. Pecuniarily the concerts were likewise a success, although the concert-giver was of a different opinion. But then he seems to have had quite prima donna notions about receipts, for he writes very coolly: "From the two concerts I had, after deduction of all expenses, not as much as 5,000 florins (about 125 pounds)." Indeed, he treats this part of the business very cavalierly, and declares that money was no object with ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... swallowed that they have no strength left for the battle of life; and though your wife may know how to play on all musical instruments, and rival a prima donna, she is not well educated unless she can boil an Irish potato and broil a mutton-chop, since the diet sometimes decides the fate ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... proceed to let the reader into the secret of all this flutter and fluster. A great prince had made his appearance at the court of Paterflor, and had created almost as great an excitement in Fairyland as a new prima donna with bright eyes and a sfogato voice among mere mortals. Nobody knew exactly who he was, but he came from a great way off, and had a name as long as a province, and, beside being incalculably wealthy, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... sang the tenors, and the prima donna stepped out and sang a beautiful aria beginning "Now the cruel waves advancing." After she had finished the bass got in front of ...
— Fables For The Times • H. W. Phillips
... educational standard quite up to that of any Board school known to me. These nice little folk were certainly in no wise pallid or distraught; and, when they danced on the stage, the performance was a beautiful and delightful romp which suggested no idea of pain. To see the "prima donna" of the company trundling her hoop on a bright morning was as pretty a sight as one would care to see. The little lady was neither forward nor unhealthy, nor anything else that is objectionable—and it was plain that she enjoyed her life. Is it in the least likely that any sane manager would ill-treat ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... jealousy of Ugolino.... But it is nothing. I have almost quarrelled with Fanny for having revealed to her that the Holy Father repeated his benediction in Chapel Sixtine, with a singing master, like a prima donna...." ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... one—an American prima donna—who grew pensive as the amorous boasting increased. An opulent woman past 35, dark-haired, great-eyed; a robust enchantress with a sweep to her manner. Her beauty was an exaggeration. Exaggerated contours, colors, features that needed perspective to set ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... was at Home she would suck Lemons and complain about Draughts and tell why she didn't like the Other Girls' Voices. She began to act like a Prima Donna, and her Mother was encouraged a Lot. Lutie certainly had the Artistic Temperament bigger ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... with answering light in her eyes—"But I don't see how it's going to be done in my case! You may possibly get your wish, but I!—why, my dear, I see myself in futur-oe as a 'prima donna assoluta' perhaps, with several painted and padded bassi and tenori making sham love to me in opera till I get perfectly sick of cuore and amore, and cry out for something else by way of a change! I am quite positive that ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... But Boutraix, who has been entirely converted from his Voltairianism by the shock, sets aside the first idea like a soldier, and Bascara rebuts the second like a sensible man. Brigands certainly would give no such warning of their presence, and a wise manager does not expose his prima donna's throat to cohabitation in ruins with skeletons and owls. They finally agree on silence, and shortly afterwards the three officers leave Spain. Sergy is killed at Lutzen, murmuring the name of Ines. Boutraix, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... and she brought a flicker of admiration into his bronzed and grimy face, for he played for her the same tune over and over, encouraging her with nods and bravas. She was enjoying her triumph quite as much as any prima donna who ever tripped it on ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... we had the "Italiana in Algieri:" the Prima Donna, who is an admired singer, gave the comic airs with great power and effect, but her bold execution and her ungraceful unliquid voice disgusted me, and I came away fatigued and dissatisfied. The dancing is execrable at ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... name, or, as fancy dictated, that of one of "my" operas. I retreated behind the scenes, to encounter very nearly as much, and at closer quarters, too, as that lately sustained before the audience. After an embrace of two minutes duration from the manager, I ran the gauntlet from the prima donna to the last triangle of the orchestra, who cut away a back button of my coat as a "souvenir." During all this, I must confess, very little acting was needed on my part. They were so perfectly contented with their self-deception, that if I had made an affidavit before the mayor—if there be such ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... with prime donne before, scores of times. Yes; I have had experience." He laughed sardonically. "I thought I knew what to do. Generally a prima donna has either a pet dog or a pet parrot—sopranos go in for dogs, contraltos seem to prefer parrots. I have made a study of these agreeable animals, and I have found that through them their mistresses can be approached when all other avenues are closed. I can talk ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... shook her hair, and walked to the piano with the mien of a prima donna who has the capitals of Europe at her feet, exultant in her youth, her charm, her voice, revelling unconsciously in the vivacity of her blood, and consciously in her power over Harry, which Harry strove in vain to conceal under an ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... PATTI, ADELINA, prima donna, born in Madrid, of Italian extraction; made her first appearance at New York in 1859, and in London at Covent Garden, as Amina in "La Somnambula," in 1861, and has since made the round once and again of the Continent and America, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... struck on the piano a chord of the dominant seventh, and asked the young aspirant for dramatic glory what she thought it meant. Presuming it to be incumbent upon a prospective prima donna to have uppermost in her mind the grand passion, she replied, in a sentimental tone, "Love!" Promptly Karl Formes sounded the solution to the chord. "There is your answer," quoth he. "I ask a question, and it is thought I speak of love. Go home, my good girl, and seek some other avocation. ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... began with an overture from the orchestra. Then came Fraulein, the prima donna of the Imperial Opera, and then the boys. Carl came first, and played a brilliant, sparkling little piece, and was loudly applauded; next Gottfried and Johann, and then Raoul. When he stepped out upon the platform, his handsome face and fine ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... Unparalleled Upside-Down Man! He Doesn't Know Whether He's On His Head Or His Heels. He's Always Up In The Air About Something, But You Can't Upset Him! Vaudeville To-night—The Bodongo Brothers, Brilliant Burmese Balancers—Arctic Annie, the Prima Donna of Sealdom, and Tristan LeHuber, The Balloon Man—He Uses An Anchor For A Parachute!" At last indeed the LeHuber family will have arrived sensationally in ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... would rather sing here in August than April!" exclaimed Lady Turnour, with the air of a spoiled prima donna. And then she shivered and wanted to go down to the car without waiting for the sunset, which, after all, could only be like any other mountain sunset, and she could see plenty of better ones next summer in Switzerland. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... in their inevitable roles—the bride as prima donna, James Polder the heroic tenor. Mrs. Corinne de Barry, a thin, concerned figure in glistening lavender, supported a lamenting mezzo, the bulky, masculine figure at her side, with an imposing diamond on a hand like two bricks, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... this?" Barney demanded. Thank Heavens, Old Jimmie was one person he did not have to treat like a prima donna! ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... try men's souls; but Van Bibber passed the stage-door man with as calmly polite a nod as though the piece had been running a hundred nights, and the manager was thinking up souvenirs for the one hundred and fiftieth, and the prima donna had, as usual, began to hint for a new set of costumes. The stage-door keeper hesitated and was lost, and Van Bibber stepped into the unsuppressed excitement of the place with a pleased sniff at the familiar smell of paint ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... utmost frankness and simplicity of speech. When McAdoo asked him at the White House if the present drive was satisfactory, he said in the most innocent way, "I am not there." Viviani, who is the head of the French Commission, is as jealous as a prima donna, terribly jealous of Joffre, (which makes Joffre feel most uncomfortable) because, of course, Joffre is ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... outward eye he had been for years past. But before he reached the door he caught the glance of a little, round, elderly woman at a table close to him, and he stopped. She had a faded, showy bonnet, and she carried her worn clothes with an air. He recognised the companion and friend of a famous prima donna whom he had not ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... and so no doubt is cocoa; Tea did for Johnson and the Chinamen: When 'Dulce et desipere in loco' Was written, real Falernian winged the pen. When a rapt audience has encored 'Fra Poco' Or 'Casta Diva,' I have heard that then The Prima Donna, smiling herself out, Recruits her flagging powers with ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... a softly blue sky. 2. The river runs rapid. 3. You must read more distinct. 4. It was an uncommon good harvest. 5. She is most sixteen. 6. The discussion waxed warmly. 7. The prima donna sings sweet. 8. She is miserable poor. 9. My head feels badly. 10. He spoke up prompt. 11. He went most there. 12. He behaved very bad. 13. This is a mighty ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... songstress, minstrel, chanter, cantatrice, cantor, prima donna, precentor, bard, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... eve Frank and Aleta went down town to hear Tetrazzini sing in the streets. The famous prima donna faced an audience which numbered upward of a hundred thousand. They thronged—a joyous celebrant, dark mass—on Market, Geary, Third and Kearny streets. Every window was ablaze, alive with silhouetted figures. Frank, who had ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... her instantly showing her teeth, whisking her tail, yelping, barking, and growling. At the present time, there is not a concert or an opera at Darmstadt to which Mr. S—— and his wonderful dog are not invited; or, at least, the dog. The voice of the prima donna, the instruments of the band—whether violin, clarionet, hautbois, or bugle—all of them must execute their parts in perfect harmony, otherwise Poodle looks at its master, erects its ears, shows its grinders, and howls outright. Old or ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... evening, because Annette's husband had turned up unexpectedly; and Charteris had gone again to hear Nadine Neroni, the new prima donna, concerning whom he and his enameled Italian friend raved tediously. But I never greatly cared for music; besides, the opera that night was Faust; the last act of which in particular, when three ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... lives with work. What for? They rob men of their lives. What for, I ask? My master—I lost my life in the textile mill of Nefidov—my master presented one prima donna with a golden wash basin. Every one of her toilet articles was gold. That basin holds my life-blood, my very life. That's for what my life went! A man killed me with work in order to comfort his mistress with my ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... give you even the faintest idea of the brilliancy of the scene, or the splendor of the triumph achieved over the legions of prejudice, the cohorts of injustice, and the old national guard of hoary conservatism. If the triumph of a prima donna is something to boast, what was the triumph of these toil-worn women, when not only the members of the Committee, but Senators and Members of the House, crowded around them with congratulations and assurances that their able and earnest arguments had fully prevailed, and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... are the only times I go into public. In the evening, I visit my sweetheart; when the night is fine, we pass it on her balcony.' I don't know whether you have a sweetheart, or whether she has a balcony. But if you are so happy, it's certainly better than trying to find a charm in a third-rate prima donna." ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... doubled its capital stock. The ice and lighting plants were enlarged, and the city bought a site up the river, built a dam, installed pumping engines and constructed water mains into the city. An opera house was built, which, though its walls never re-echoed to the high soprano notes of a prima donna; had trembled to their foundations at the invectives of E. T. Franks; had shed sections of blistered plaster at the sad wailings of Gus Wilson, and had been moved by the matchless eloquence of A. O. Stanley when telling the tale of his ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... organ as we think; and even if you hadn't made me give up trying for light opera, because I received one Insult (with a capital I) while I was Madame Larese's favourite pupil, I mightn't in any case have turned into a great prima donna. I was rather excited and amused by the Insult myself—it made me feel so interesting, and so like a heroine of romance; but you didn't approve of it; and we had some hard times, hadn't we, after all our money was spent in globe-trotting, ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... carnival I had assumed the black dress and the short silk coat of an abbate, and had become a new and happier person. For the first time I took part in the jollities of the carnival, and at the end of the first day again came across Bernardo, who insisted upon taking me to the opera to hear a new prima donna who had turned everybody's heart at Naples. Rumour had not belied her. Her appearance was greeted with rapturous applause. Bernardo seized my arm; he had recognised in her his Jewish maiden, just as I was about to exclaim, "It is she!"—the lovely child who had preached that Christmas ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... Nicolai's "Merry Wives." After that we shall have "The Huguenots," "Cellini," and Verdi's "I Due Foscari." "Lohengrin" will not be given just yet because Ortrud (Frau Knopp) has left us, and the new prima donna, Fraulein Woltendorff, will at least require three or four months to learn the part. But as "Tannhauser" and the "Flying Dutchman" have proved "draws," they will be sure ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... The prima donna of the little company was Amelia Larkins, Baroski's own articled pupil, on whose future reputation the eminent master staked his own, whose profits he was to share, and whom he had farmed, to this end, from her father, ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tenor at the Theatre "an der Wien," sang the part of Florestan in the spring of that year, when Fidelio was revived. Mdlle. Milder, afterwards Mdme. Hauptmann, played Leonore; Mdme. Marconi was also prima donna.] ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... in Naples, who had much difficulty in keeping him to the work of composition, his facility in writing often leading him to defer work until it was the very eve of performance. In 1823, under the auspices of Barbaja, and with the assistance of the prima donna, Colbran, whom Rossini married about this time, his opera "Zelmira" and others of his works were given with such brilliant success as to raise his aspirations for a wider and more promising field of labor. In the year 1823 he went to Paris and London, finally settling in the former city, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... beckoned to some of the faces crowding the windows; but the movement was not seen, as none of the circumstances were at all understood. Wilfrid, however, knew well who had sung those three bars, concerning which the 'Prima donna' questioned Mr. Pericles, and would not be put off by hearing that it was a startled jackdaw, or an owl, and an ole nightingale. The Greek rubbed his hands. "Now to recommence," he said; "and we shall not notice a jackdaw again." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in Mozart's "Don Giovanni," in "Tancred," "Romeo and Juliet," and two of her father's operas. Here she married a French merchant, Malibran. After her separation from him she returned to Paris, where she was engaged as prima donna at a salary of 50,000 francs. Thereafter she sang at every season in Paris, London, Milan, Rome and Naples. For one engagement of forty nights in Naples she received 100,000 francs. Both as a singer and woman she exercised an extraordinary fascination over her contemporaries. ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... lines therefore cost 34 francs. A great sum! Engaging under these circumstances a Prima Donna, at the miserable pittance of 40,000 francs, the answer of Mathilde amounts to much less, for every syllable would then cost but 8 sous: but even that is not so bad ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... pointed to the other numbers upon the program which the orchestra would perform, and Randy, with a contented little sigh, leaned back to await the next number, when the Prima Donna, a vision of loveliness, came ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... on Cataneo's part, as he seemed inclined to dispute this order, which was given with an action worthy of Semiramis,—the part in which la Tinti had won her fame,—the prima donna flew at the old ape and put him out ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... sing with tenderness and feeling. In rendering something that required simplicity, nature, and pathos, no prima donna could surpass her, for while her voice was not powerful, and had no unusual compass, it was as sweet as that of a thrush ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... been persuaded to remain in Berlin during the winter, on condition of the renewal of their contract for another six weeks in the spring. Ilka was in the meanwhile to take lessons in singing at Hahn's expense, possibly with a view to future distinction as a prima donna of the opera. Her maestro had told her repeatedly that she had naturally a better voice than Nilsson, and that, if she could dry up for ever her fountain of tears, she might become a great artiste. For Ilka had the deplorable habit of crying on very slight provocation. The maestro, ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... income was mortgaged for a number of years to pay off the costs of certain Italian escapades which are inconceivable in Paris. He had ruined himself in supporting a theatre at Milan in order to force upon a public a very inferior prima donna, whom he was said to love madly. A fine future was therefore before him, and he did not care to risk it for the paltry distinction of a bit of red ribbon. He was not a brave man, but he was certainly a philosopher; ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... He heard the applause and he saw the roses going up over the footlights until they were stacked half as high as the piano, and the petals fell and scattered, making crimson splotches on the floor. Down this crimson pathway came Adriance with his youthful step, leading his prima donna by the hand; a dark woman this time, ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... love, an offer of marriage, and, presumably, a hint at the settlement, is, with our more practical visionaries and enthusiasts of the nineteenth century, rather an echo of the stock market than a poetical fancy. We fear that no prima donna looks at her flowers without a thought of how much they have cost, and that the belle estimates her bouquet according to the commercial value of a lily- of-the-valley as compared with that of a Jacqueminot rose, rather ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... Davidge remarked, presently. "He's our prima donna. He's the champion riveter of this part of the ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... success, both as pianist and composer, such as no American musician has ever won before a metropolitan concert audience. A Philharmonic audience can be cold when it does not like a piece or a player; but Mr. MacDowell ... had an ovation such as is accorded only to a popular prima donna at the opera. Again and again he had to get up and bow after every movement of his concerto; again and again was he recalled at the close ... For once a prophet has had great honour in his own country ... He ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... and Camilla Urso was the recipient of great honours in Paris. She was presented by the public with a pair of valuable diamond earrings, and was treated almost like a prima donna. ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... he stopped and shut one eye and gazed, with his head on one side, at the unimaginative MacWilliams—"what I'd like to do now," he continued, thoughtfully, "would be to sit in the front row at a comic opera, ON THE AISLE. The prima donna must be very, very beautiful, and sing most of her songs at me, and there must be three comedians, all good, and a chorus entirely composed of girls. I never could see why they have men in the chorus, anyway. No one ever looks at them. Now that's where I'd like to be. ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... first lover in the piece; he declared that the inferior parts were as important as the great ones, and deserving equal consideration, as parts of an artistic whole. The hero of the piece would only play in a part containing points likely to bring down the applause of the house. The 'prima donna' would only act when the lights were red, for she declared that a blue light did not suit her complexion. It was like a company of flies in a bottle, and I was in the bottle with them; for I was their director. My breath was taken away, my head whirled, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... is stated that Prince Frederic is in London. The name of the lady who has so infatuated him is Mlle. Yvonne Trebizond, the well-known prima donna." ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... quite a novel element of moral responsibility into the undertaking. And the characters were very unusual on the English stage. The younger heroine is, like her mother, an Englishwoman to the backbone, and not, like the heroines of our fashionable drama, a prima donna of Italian origin. Consequently she was sure to be denounced as unnatural and undramatic by the critics. The most vicious man in the play is not in the least a stage villain; indeed, he regards his own moral ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... on that song last night," he went on. "There was a time when that wouldn't have been a starter for you, eh? Did you know Stella used to warble like a prima donna, Jack?" ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... age once, when he married her; now she had grown old Critical in their first glance at a prima donna Forgetfulness is like a closing sea He is inexorable, being the guilty one of the two Her singing struck a note of grateful remembered delight It rarely astonishes our ears. It illumines our souls Madness that sane men enamoured can be struck by Obedience oils necessity Our life is but ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... Prima Donna of the Metropolitan Opera Company, and herself one of the most beautiful women in America, Mme. Jeritza tells Evening Journal readers her secrets of beauty. She has studied the art of creating and preserving beauty and writes authoritatively. Being a highly cultured and professionally ...
— What's in the New York Evening Journal - America's Greatest Evening Newspaper • New York Evening Journal
... producing genius had not conceived the idea of ending off nearly every musical-comedy song with a dance, and yet another genius of equally enviable parts had not created the beauty chorus, I don't know how many a prima donna of the lighter stage would ever be able to get through her own numbers. For, to dance at the end of her little ditty, and to have the chorus girls relieve her of further action at the end of the first verse, brings as great a relief to her as well as to the audience, as do ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... either in Dons or Undergraduates, in Presidents or Scouts. He could sit down at his piano, and give you - after the manner of Theodore Hook, or John Parry - a burlesque opera; singing high up in his head for the prima donna, and going down to his boots for the basso profondo of the great Lablache. He could also draw corks, saw wood, do a bee in ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... had been disposed of Ted leaned forward to catch Elinor's eye. "Have you broken the news to the future prima donna?" he asked with interest. "I saw Merton today—you know his sister is living at Venusburg now—and he said it was a dandy place. Receptions every week. Tea-room on the premises. Art mongers and singers and a few chaperones ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... hand and the name of a Neapolitan music-master, ten years younger than herself, and with no fortune but his fiddle-bow. The marriage was most unhappy, and the Maestro Grandoni was suspected of using the fiddle-bow as an instrument of conjugal correction. He had finally run off with a prima donna assoluta, who, it was to be hoped, had given him a taste of the quality implied in her title. He was believed to be living still, but he had shrunk to a small black spot in Madame Grandoni's life, and for ten years she had not ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... said Jane, gently; "surely you forget that most of these people have been to town and heard plenty of good music, Madame Velma herself most likely, and all the great singers. They know they cannot sing like a prima donna; but they do their anxious best, because you ask them. I cannot see that they ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... going out to Europe with her. I don't know; I think I preferred the idyllic flavor I was beginning to find in the presence of the ordinary, futureless young girl, voyaging under the chaperonage of her own innocence,—the Little Sister of the Whole Ship. But this crepusculant prima donna—no, I don't like it. Though it explains some things. These splendid creatures are never sent half equipped into the world. I fancy that where there's an operatic voice, there's an operatic soul to go with it. Well, La Sanguinelli will wear me out, yet! Suggest some new topic, Dunham; talk of something ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... you, my dear," she wrote; "it will be delightful. And what has happened to you? Your letter actually conveyed a sense of cordiality. You never used to be cordial. And I wish to meet some of your nice friends. Ask one or two, please—a prima donna of some kind and a pianist, I think. I want them weird and original—the prima donna with short hair, and the pianist with long. In Tony's new station in life I never see anybody except the sort of people ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... better; if not, very well, I will go the queen and say, 'It is impossible to have my opera performed;' then I will take my seat in my carriage and return to Vienna." Doubtless this result would have been much to the prima donna's liking, but she had ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... me insomnia for months. But now I'm as puzzled as ever, for there are two pictures, one on either side of the leaf, and each has possibilities. Which is it—the society bud or the prima donna?" ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... is all this yappin' about. You pampered pets give me a large pain. I'm askin' you to do somethin'. Either you do it or you don't. Somebody told you you're a star reporter and you believe it. You're developin' a temperament, like a prima donna. I'm payin' you a compliment by giving you a swell feature story; I'm sendin' you where you'd probably like to go anyway; I'm payin' your expenses for your vacation. I'm payin' for all the beer and ale you can guzzle and ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... sung a solo it would have been less humiliating," replied Mrs. Kirby, with a masterly change of front. "I was indignant! Christian, with her charming voice, only playing accompaniments and singing in the glees, and that unendurable Mangan girl posing as the Prima Donna, and ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... was very good. They gave "Demetrio." The prima donna sings well, but is inanimate, and if you did not see her acting, but only singing, you might suppose she was not singing at all, for she can't open her mouth, and whines out everything; but this is nothing new to us. The seconda donna looks like a grenadier, and has a very powerful voice; she ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... of Girolamo Riario, whose hereditary possession, Forli, she gallantly defended first against his murderers, and then against Cesare Borgia. Though finally vanquished, she retained the admiration of her countrymen and the title 'prima donna d'Italia.' This heroic vein can be detected in many of the women of the Renaissance, though none found the same opportunity of showing their heroism to the world. In Isabella Gonzaga ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... failed. Frederick A. Gower was the first of these. He was an adventurous chevalier of business who gave up an agent's contract in return for a right to become a roving propagandist. Later he met a prima donna, fell in love with and married her, forsook telephony for ballooning, and lost his life in attempting to fly across ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... we have made the reckoning without our host," said he, grumblingly. "But it is a pity. Such a capital joke it would have been, and you would have laughed most. Still, it can't be helped, so we'll make the best of the spoiled game. I see the prima donna has thrown off her role, so you had better go after her, Seestern, and see her safe to the chateau. Your monk's cowl is a protection in itself. Don't look disconcerted; you can come back. Our revel does not end yet; it has hardly begun. You, Muckicza, ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... on the scene, and I suppose the play grew more entertaining to Mother, and Betty, and Molly, in the boxes. People don't think, you know, when they look down at the prima donna, painted, and smiling, and decked with flowers,—they don't think if she has a husband who ill-uses her, or a child dying at home. She has come there to make them sport. Well, there came an old lord,—a man ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... quality he demanded; and when his friends persisted in urging the production of his first, last, and only opera, Beethoven went into a great rage and declared if the subject were ever mentioned again, he would burn the manuscript. At one time friends begged him to hear a new prima donna, Wilhelmina Schroeder, the daughter of a great actress, believing that in her he ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... Charlie suddenly appeared on the scene; and for a time she was privileged to slip into the background. Charlie had been to hear the choral, and Col. Baker was very anxious to know as to its success. You would have supposed them to be talking about a prima donna concert. At last Charlie turned to Flossy ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... The great prima donna had come to San Francisco to sing at the ground-breaking for the Panama Exposition and in an ever-generous spirit agreed to give her matchless services to the cause in which she was deeply interested. The ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... to one's self that because the Russian prima donna can show herself a whirlwind of dynamic passion on the stage, therefore she must show some of these qualities in private life, one would quickly become disabused of such an impression when face to face with the artist. One would then meet a slender, graceful young woman, ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... the cards turned up by Calve in the third act of 'Carmen.' I've written the thing for my paper and I mean to turn it into a short story some day." Every one had tales to relate of the meanness, rapacity, dissipation and extravagance of the prima donna's husband from Adelina Patti to Mitwindt, the German singer who regularly committed her husband to jail at the beginning of her season, only releasing him when September came, for then her money was ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... dazzling allurements offered by various "careers" which bring fame and perhaps fortune. The glittering triumphs of a prima donna, a picture on the line in the Salon, or a possible book which shall sell into the hundred thousands, are not without a certain charm, even though people who are "wedded to their art" sometimes get a ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... was dead gone on my lips let them get a husband first thats fit to be looked at and a daughter like mine or see if they can excite a swell with money that can pick and choose whoever he wants like Boylan to do it 4 or 5 times locked in each others arms or the voice either I could have been a prima donna only I married him comes looooves old deep down chin back not too much make it double My Ladys Bower is too long for an encore about the moated grange at twilight and vaunted rooms yes Ill sing Winds that blow from the south that he gave after the choirstairs performance ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... The tenth knock-out in the prize ring received by the professional pugilist was followed by the immediate sequestration of his fee for that particular encounter, and the tenth aria vibrating from the lips of a prima donna was either compounded for at a certain rate or taken in kind by the official who attended at every performance of ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... unt had a individualness pointed out whereeffer I went. I vas orchestra leader at the Theater Royal in Stuttgart, unt our king haf complimented me many times. But I vas foolish. I vas foolish enough to think that ven a man iss great he can stay great. I married me to a clefer prima donna, unt composed a great opera, which vas finer as anything Herr Wagner has efer done. Eh? But dere vas jealousness at work to opposition me. Von day ven my fine opera vas all complete I vent to the theater to lead mine orchestra. To my surprisement der Herr Director tells me I ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... Eleanor heartily. "Bug's on your shoulder, Bishop! For de Lawd's sake!" she squealed excitedly, in delicious high notes that a prima donna might envy; then caught the fat grasshopper from the black clerical coat, and stood holding it, lips compressed and the joy of adventure dancing in her eyes. The Bishop took out his watch and looked at it, as Eleanor, her soul on the grasshopper, opened her fist and ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews |
