"Prima donna" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Carlotta was my choice. Adelina was the most advertised, for she was a money-maker and demanded just so much notoriety when she engaged and signed her contracts. Her power was supreme and no one dared to say her nay. Woe be to the poor prima donna who sang better or had more applause or favors than she did. She was the only queen of song as long as her reign lasted. Emma Nevada and Madam Etelka Gersta were her especial victims when they sang the same season with ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... and abroad, Italian women were coming to the fore in musical circles, and no opera in any one of the continental capitals was complete without its prima donna. Among the distinguished singers of this epoch the two most celebrated were Faustina Bordoni and Catarina Gabrielli. Faustina, born in the year 1700, was the daughter of a noble Venetian family, and at an early age ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... more incorruptible than the frowning mountains. The waves swished along the smooth beach; the parrots screamed in the orange and ceiba-trees; the palms waved their limber fronds foolishly like an awkward chorus at the prima donna's cue to enter. ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... she had 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 oh! ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... 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 ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... Ripe" to the infinite satisfaction of her audience. Young Mowbray indeed, in the shape of Dandy Mick and some of his followers and admirers, insisted on an encore. The lady as she retired curtseyed like a Prima Donna; but the host continued on his legs for some time, throwing open his coat and bowing to his guests, who expressed by their applause how much they approved his enterprise. At length he resumed his seat; "It's almost too much." he exclaimed; ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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 than ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... day spent out, one evening, into Margie's dressing-room. Miss Harrison was preparing for the opera. There was a new prima donna, and Archer was anxious for her to hear the wonder. Margie had never looked lovelier. Her pink silk dress, with the corsage falling away from the shoulders, and the sleeves leaving the round arms bare, was peculiarly becoming, ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... slightest defect, and you will have 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 new pieces, known ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... 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
... the sea, the noise and colour of it, its violence and ruthlessness, as Wagner has here. It is the sea that pervades the whole of the act; but imposed on its ceaseless sound there are very splendid things—some worn a little threadbare by now, but many still fresh. In the next act the prima donna has her opportunity. Senta, the heroine, sits at her spinning-wheel amidst a number of maidens. After a conventional spinning chorus, Senta sings the ballad of the Flying Dutchman, whose picture hangs on the wall, and ends ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... 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 engaged a window ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... 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 Lia, or that was our old Momo;" but Momo or Lia the village ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... were given. At the latter place, Jenny Lind, accompanied by Barnum and his daughter, Mrs. Lyman, visited "The Hermitage," where Barnum himself had years before seen "Old Hickory" Jackson. While there, the prima donna heard, for the first time in her life, wild mocking birds singing in the trees, and ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... dreams of eager nations clamoring for telephone systems, and one after another they 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
... the Renaissance. They welcome you with open arms. That is because we know what the creators were thinking about. They are quite personal and familiar; they had as many moods, one suspects, as a fashionable prima donna. They give pleasure. This Faun gives pleasure and something more—a sense of disquieting intimacy. While intruding upon your reserve with his solemn, stark and almost hostile novelty, he makes at the same time a strange appeal—he touches upon ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... of the Vatican this winter to appoint rendezvous with Guilia Rezzonico without awakening the 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
... 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 ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... 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 ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... evening, however. A certain Madame Valentini, a former prima donna who had been a famous soprano in the early days of "Pinafore," and who came to Miss Peacock's each year for opera, had arrived during the day, and she and Miss Pritchard being old friends, the evening was devoted to her. Madame Valentini was ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... steadily. Besides sacred, he taught her operatic music. On one occasion Anielka sung an aria in so impassioned and masterly style, that the enraptured Justiniani clapped his hands for joy, skipped about the room, and not finding words enough to praise her, exclaimed several times, "Prima Donna! Prima Donna!" ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... and he wasn't in such dire financial straits, either. It was his money that backed the enterprise, and it was common property, undenied by him or anyone else, that the chief object in the speculation was the love of the prima donna, Carmenita Malban. And, Bob, she was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. The story was that she was a countess or something of the sort. Poverty forced her to make use of a glorious voice, and the devil sent Pagani to young Pavesi, who was then a student with some ripping big master, in ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... angel in sheer loathing and anger, a great lady feeling sick at the sudden intrusion of a cad. In a picture by Angelo Gaddi, she is standing with her hand on her chest, just risen from her chair, like a prima donna going to answer an encore—a gracious, but not too eager recognition of an expected ovation. In one by Cosimo Rossetti she lifts both hands with shocked astonishment as the angel scuddles in; in the lovely one, with ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... as such, he carried out both his own and Wagner's new and revolutionary principles of interpretation, which have gradually made the orchestral conductor a personage of even greater importance, in concert hall and opera-house, than the prima donna, travelling, like her, from city to city, to delight ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... and all that sort of thing and a damn good producer into the bargain! But the worst devil that ever escaped out of hell never had a wickeder temper! She and I fight all the time! Not a show, but she doesn't keep the stage waiting! But I won! I won't have her prima donna tricks in this theatre and so I've told her! ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... assigned him. For the time when he wrote, his music is wonderfully fine. It still retains its vitality, as has been vividly shown in several revivals of his "Orpheus" within recent years, in two of which (in America and in Italy) the American prima donna, Mme. Helene Hastreiter, ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... I!" said Cicely, 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 love,—love such as we read of in poetry and romance, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... 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, ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... with all the chief topics 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 favour you with a few personal reminiscences of ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... musical 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 ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... about their curious case; For although destined to 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
... A portly prima donna is the centre of another circle. Her wraps, her dogs, her admirers, and her brand-new husband (a handsome young Hungarian with a voice like two Bacian bulls) fill the sitting-room, where the piano gets ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... him talk, you'd think she had the money; Until it comes to ordering; then the Queen of Sheba isn't in it. 'I guess we can stand the best room in the house,' he says. And when I showed them the blue suite and told them Tarquina, the prima donna opening at the Metropolitan to-night, had the companion suite in rose, it's: 'Do you think you can put up with this blue, Annabel?' But there comes the cameo now. No, the other way, from ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... night was to be Wagner's benefit. Fifteen minutes before the curtain rose, he found the audience consisted of his landlady, her husband, and one Polish Jew. A free fight broke out behind the scenes; the prima donna's husband smote the second tenor, her lover, and every one joined in; even that small audience was dismissed. In this company die erste Liebhaberin was Wilhelmine Planer, one of twelve children of a poor spindle-maker. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... down hard 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
... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that have long passed out of every respectable repertory; and in other countries the Government official within whose jurisdiction the opera falls may, and very often does, enforce the engagement of some musically incompetent prima donna in whom he, or some scheming friend, takes ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... introduced 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 character with the sincere ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... of the body was retold, though more scientifically, by Mr. George Grodman, whose unexpected resurgence into the realm of his early exploits excited as keen a curiosity as the reappearance "for this occasion only" of a retired prima donna. His book, Criminals I have Caught, passed from the twenty-third to the twenty-fourth edition merely on the strength of it. Mr. Grodman stated that the body was still warm when he found it. He thought that death was quite recent. The door he had had to burst was bolted as well as locked. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... 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 ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... has pictured 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, of gentle presence ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... 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 ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... which I will not trouble you. On the 16th the theatre will be opened with 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)
... 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 this type is ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... his house first. But as usual he wouldn't say a thing. That old boy is certainly the mildest mannered hero of the day I ever went up against. The way he does dodge the spot-light!—it's enough to make one of your prima donna politicians die of heart failure. To do a great piece of work, and then be as modest about it as he is—well, Arn, I sure ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... never 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 ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... squalling with or not. Perhaps, though, mine mayn't be as remarkable an 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 ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... 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 to entertain no Christian hope because they cannot produce these deep ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... posterity for the poet and much good may it do them. But for the musician, particularly for the song-bird, there is the vertigo of instant applause. In days like these, days that witness the fall of empires, the future holds for the donna, for the prima donna, for the prima donna assoluta, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... prima donna in loathing; he had so much to inquire about, and so much to relate: such a desire to torment and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 would find ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... her husband, Homer Samuels, the pianist, have been Kriya Yoga students for twenty years. The inspiring story of the famous prima donna's years of music has been recently published (GALLI-CURCI'S LIFE OF SONG, by C. E. LeMassena, Paebar Co., ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... would call there on its provincial progress, and it chanced one day, looking into a shop window, that Theophil caught sight of a photograph of a woman that startled him with its remarkable resemblance to Jenny. It was the prima donna of a Gaiety burlesque. Such was the strange shape Jenny had for the ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... consigned. It was not a place of 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 ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... Europe. Would you believe it, I met with her at the railway station. She was behind the counter in a refreshment-room, poor innocent, rinsing wine-glasses, and singing over her work. Good Heavens, such singing! Her upper notes electrified me. I said to myself; 'Here is a born prima donna—I will bring her out!' She is the third I have brought out in my time. I shall take her to Italy when her education is sufficiently advanced, and perfect her at Milan. In that unsophisticated girl, my dear lady, you see one of the future ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... blame you 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
... 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 ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... 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 ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... 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, who has never ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... 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 with the ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... and Louis Slupsky within—Million-Dollar Jimmie Cox, of a hundred hundred Broadway all-nights; the Success Shirt Waist Company, incorporated, entertaining the Keokuk Emporium; the newest husband of the oldest prima donna; and Mr. Herman Loeb, of Kahn, Loeb & Schulien, St. Louis, waited in line for the privilege of ordering a la carte from the most a la mode ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... have singed our mothy wings, and are crippled so that we may not fly again, let us beware. This may or may not be my last night on earth. . . . Let us go to the opera. Let us be original in all things. I shall pay a prima donna to sing my requiem from the footlights—before I ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... 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
... story; and so I will 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, it was ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... harlequin, buffo^, buffoon, farceur, grimacer, pantaloon, columbine; punchinello^; pulcinello^, pulcinella^; extra, bit- player, walk-on role, cameo appearance; mute, figurante^, general utility; super, supernumerary. company; first tragedian, prima donna [Sp.], protagonist; jeune premier [Fr.]; debutant, debutante [Fr.]; light comedian, genteel comedian, low comedian; walking gentleman, amoroso^, heavy father, ingenue [Fr.], jeune veuve [Fr.]. mummer, guiser^, guisard^, gysart^, masque. mountebank, Jack Pudding; tumbler, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... bride should bring to grace the ceremony. A rich muster she had made. They came in six coaches—the whole corps du ballet—French, Italian, men and women. Monsieur de B., the famous pirouetter of the day, led his fair spouse, but craggy, from the banks of the Seine. The Prima Donna had sent her excuse. But the first and second Buffa were there; and Signor Sc——, and Signora Ch——, and Madame V——, with a countless cavalcade besides of chorusers, figurantes, at the sight of whom Merry afterwards declared, that "then for the first time it struck him seriously, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... allurements of the most enticing shops in Germany; suns itself in the gardens of the Kursaal or on the wind-sheltered slopes of the Neroberg; listens to an orchestra of master-artists in the open or to a prima donna in the brilliance of the opera-house; dines, wines, gambles, dissipates, burns the lamp of life ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... 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
... calculating. The West prefers warm-blooded 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 ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... his piteous cry," 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
... she took a cursed fancy 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 is ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... great singers are made of, it's a repetition of 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 ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... 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 ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... held an auctioneer's hammer— "All in favor of his singing again say 'Aye!' Going! Going! Gone! The ayes have it." In the midst of the cheering Cranch jumped from the chair and taking Oliver by the hand as if he had been a young prima donna at her first appearance, led him to the piano with all the airs and graces common to ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... vocalist, songster, songstress, minstrel, chanter, cantatrice, cantor, prima donna, precentor, bard, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... 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 ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... other way, and, running her chromatic neatly up from about middle C, pauses for a breath, and then astonishes her audience by striking off two perfectly attuned notes several degrees higher up, hitting her mark with the ease and deftness of a prima donna. So odd and surprising a laugh is sure to be quickly infectious, and its owner is never at a loss for company in her merriment, while a cheerful temper, unclouded by a shade of envy or suspicion, is not in the least disturbed by the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... To-night we 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
... there was going to be trouble between the duchy and the kingdom, but unfortunately the prima donna ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... 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 ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... hand, I soon discovered the curious moral traffic established between the monster and Christine Daae. Hiding in the lumber-room next to the young prima donna's dressing-room, I listened to wonderful musical displays that evidently flung Christine into marvelous ecstasy; but, all the same, I would never have thought that Erik's voice—which was loud as thunder or soft as angels' voices, at will—could have ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... Reformer Persian Poetry Pictures, Something about President's Message, the Prima Donna, Who paid for the Pure Pearl ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... an ecstasy of delight. He sat there, mute and motionless, not even conscious of the crowding of the two priests. His soul poured out through his ears and his eyes. He seemed to be listening with every one of his pores. Suddenly a whirlwind of applause greeted the appearance of the prima donna. She came forward coquettishly to the footlights and curtsied to the audience with infinite grace. The brilliant light, the enthusiasm of a vast multitude, the illusion of the stage, the glamour of a costume which was most attractive for ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... M. de Valabreque, once fought a duel with a German baron who had insulted the prima donna; the weapons used were sabres, and Valabreque cut half of the Baron's nose clean off. Madame Catalani lived for many years, highly respected, at a handsome villa near Florence. Her two sons are now distinguished members of the Imperial court in ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... We learned one day, through his sister, dona Pepa, that he had gone way off with the little girl somewhere—what was that city you visited, Rafael?—Milan, yes, Milan, that's it! I've been told that's the market for singers. He wanted his Leonora to become a prima donna. He never came back, poor fellow!... Things must have gone badly with them. Every year he would write home to his sister to sell another piece of land. It is known that over there they lived in real poverty. In a few years the little fortune the Doctor got from ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... uncertain, but that was amusing and thrilling rather than pitiful or tragic. She had two or three "steadies" among singers, who gave her engagements as accompanist at small drawing-room recitals or charitable entertainments. There was a stout prima donna whose arias for dramatic soprano kept her practicing until midnight, and a rich young lady amateur who needed a very friendly and careful accompaniment because she sang flat and always lost her breath before the end of ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... feel disposed to hear some good music," he said a moment after, "follow me to the next room; the prima donna of Ancona lives there." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... She was a prima donna now, our little Margarita, a successful artist, a public character. "Margarita Josepha," Madame had christened her, for twenty years ago simple American surnames found no favour with the impressario, and "cette charmante Mme. Josepha," "artiste vraiment ravissante," ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... 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 the prayers ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... with a public conscience that countenances, even glorifies extravagance, all the while that women slave and children die of underfeeding and neglect. This feeling is intensified when he compares the thousands paid for a single hour of a prima donna's song or a playwright's wit with his own yearly wage laboriously earned. What supreme worth does art possess that it should ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... 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 ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... using his hands, he would often dictate to two or three secretaries at once. The masculine love of glory and ambition, expression of a well-working ante-pituitary, was combined with the effeminate echoes of an equally well-evolved post-pituitary. No prima donna was more concerned with the care of her skin, complexion and hair than he. The analogy extends even to superfluous hair which he had removed, not by the modern electrolysis, but by depilation with forceps and main force. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... Haviland Hicks, Jr., as agitated as a prima donna making her debut with the Metropolitan: Opera Company, decorated the Bannister bench, arrayed in one of the substitutes' baseball suits. It was too large for his splinter-structure, so that it flapped grotesquely, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... Physically ruined by early debaucheries, he was a husband only in name, living only by and through the influence of music. Very wealthy, he had educated Clara Tinti, discovered by him when still a child and a simple tavern servant. The young girl became, thanks to him, the celebrated prima donna of the Fenice theatre, at Venice in 1820. The wonderful tenor Genovese, of the same theatre, was also a protege of Duke Cataneo, who paid him a high salary to sing only with La Tinti. The Duke Cataneo cut a ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... the prima donna of Stockholm, is among the most distinguished of those geniuses who have been invited to welcome the queen to Germany. Her name has been unknown among us, as she is still young, and has not wandered much from the scene of her first triumphs; but many may have ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... 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 ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... 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; ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... 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
... declared the little ones were just as important as the great ones, and that all were of equal consequence, considered as an artistic whole. The hero would only play parts composed of nothing but points; for those brought him down the applause. The prima donna would only play in a red light; for she declared that a blue one 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 the director. My breath stopped and my head whirled round; ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... some lady connected with the stage, and asking Margaret to come and visit her. Of course, Margaret went, and has been all this time on a long visit to her relative, who came to Europe with the great prima donna, Olympia. It is her adopted daughter that ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... glittered in brilliant circles, and whence he returned laden with choice specimens of art and luxury, and followed by the report of strange and flattering adventures. Finally, he was the prime patron of the Maltese opera, and brought over a celebrated Prima Donna from San Carlo in ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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 ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... then, I think Miss Marsden does herself injustice by attempting music that would tax the powers of a prima donna." ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... waiting. It is therefore not surprising that Wilfred Ball felt the same glow greatly intensified when he strolled up to the pay-box, twirling his walking-stick, to take his stand near by as the future proprietor of the girl inside. Perhaps the young husband of a great prima donna may feel nearly as sophisticated and proud and "in it" when he strolls carelessly into the dressing-room where the bouquets of admirers overflow upon the floor—but this is scarcely likely, for he would not have the morning ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... concert tour, having only made four hundred pounds with six concerts. My career as a prima donna is at an end. The ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Washington at one of the theaters where Jenny Lind was singing before an audience composed of the first people of our land. In one of the boxes sat the author, then on a visit to this country, and a favorite everywhere. The prima donna sang her greatest classical music and moved her audience to the wildest applause. Then in response to the renewed calls she stepped to the front of the stage, turned her face to the box where the poet sat, and in a voice of marvelous pathos ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... bad case of the grippe, leave her hotel voiceless, facing a matinee of Juliet. Arrived in her dressing-room at the opera, she proceeded to change into the costume for the first act. Under the spell of her role, that prima donna seemed literally to shed her malady with her ordinary garments, and to take on health and vitality with her Juliet robes. Even in the Waltz song her voice did not betray her, and apparently no critic detected ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... 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 them off. Diluted by distance and bathed ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... preparing for the evening—hard for the mind and body—and she had lately lived on poor fare, and wanted the exercise upon which her physical constitution should support itself. At once these troubles were forgotten. Now was to come the duet with the prima donna. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... 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 own rather ceremonious ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... know nothing of her sudden plans, she had kept the trip secret. Besides Buck and the office staff, her son Jock was the only one who knew. But she found her cabin stocked like a prima donna's on a farewell tour. There were boxes of flowers, a package of books, baskets of fruit, piles of magazines, even a neat little sheaf of telegrams, one from the faithful bookkeeper, one from the workroom foreman, ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... agonized months she had received from the others in the company such kindness and generosity as only stage folk can show—flowers, candy, dainties, magazines, sent by every one from the prima donna to the call boy. Then the show left town. There came a few letters of kind inquiry, then an occasional post card, signed by half a dozen members of the company. Then these ceased. Josie Fifer, in her cast and splints and bandages and pain, dragged ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... 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
... 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
... entertainment to a cowboy means principally music—so after supper the boys gathered around a roaring log fire and sang themselves hoarse. After Slim Degnan, the foreman, and Fat Milton, his chubby assistant, had rendered their duet, and Snake Purdee had given his famous imitation of a prima donna singing "Bury Me Not," Bud, with Nort and Dick, decided to take a stroll about the place to see if anything had changed. Their own particular ranch was several miles removed from Diamond X, ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... us to individuals taken from life and cleverly drawn. We have Comte Zustiniani, the dilettante, a wealthy patron of the fine arts; Porpora, the old master, who looks upon his art as something sacred; Corilla, the prima donna, annoyed at seeing a new star appear; Anzoleto, the tenor, who is jealous because he gets less applause than his friend; and above and beyond all the others Consuelo, good kind ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... face!" said Miss Van Tuyn. "She keeps us waiting, like the great prima donna in a concert, just long enough to give a touch of excitement to her appearance. Dear Lady Sellingworth! She has a wonderful knowledge of just how to do things. That only comes ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... 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 was ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... 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 progress. ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seat with Mrs. Field led the singing. She was past middle age, but her voice was still sweet, although once in a while it quavered. She had sung in the church choir ever since she was a child, and was the prima donna of the village. The young girl with roses in her hat who sat in front of Mrs. Field also sang with fervor, although her voice was little more than a sweetly husky breath. She kept her eyes, at once bold and timid, fixed upon the young ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... 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 them with our tongue as with our hoe. This, perhaps, suggests the only definition of ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... station. She was behind the counter in a refreshment-room, poor innocent, rinsing wine-glasses, and singing over her work. Good Heavens, such singing! Her upper notes electrified me. I said to myself; 'Here is a born prima donna—I will bring her out!' She is the third I have brought out in my time. I shall take her to Italy when her education is sufficiently advanced, and perfect her at Milan. In that unsophisticated girl, my dear lady, you see one of the future Queens of Song. Listen! She is beginning ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... 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 love,—love such as we read of ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... 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. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... 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 ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... scarfs—wearing a most unseaworthy hat, her broad, vigorous face wreathed in smiles. She was too much an American not to believe in publicity. All advertising was good. If it was good for breakfast foods, it was good for prime donna,—especially for a prima donna who would never be any younger and who had just announced her intention of marrying ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... ardor the theory of Bartley's aberration, and she met Marcia with a sympathy in her voice and eyes that could only have come from sincere conviction. She was a simple country thing, who would never be a prima donna; but the overflowing sentimentality which enabled her to accept herself at the estimate of her enthusiastic fellow-villagers made her of far greater comfort to Marcia than the sublimest musical genius would have done. She worshipped the heroine of so tragic a fact, and her heart began ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... 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
... that beset a public 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
... and surprised when he hears of the famine that the prima donna has left behind her. Byng is one of the best that ever was. He is trying to do his fellow-creatures a good turn down there at the mine. He never did any harm that I ever heard of—and this is his house, and these are his guests. He would, I'll stake my life, do Al'mah a good turn ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... do when the good days come— When the prima donna's lips are dumb, And the man who reads us his "little things" Has lost his voice like the girl who sings; When stilled is the breath of the cornet-man, And the shrilling chords of the quartette clan; When our neighbors' children have lost their drums Oh, what will we do when the good time ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... itself till he had entreated them with every circumstance of civility to excuse an incident so mortifying to him. But with all his haste he lost so much time in this that he had little left to show them through the theatre, and their presentation to the prima donna was reduced to the obeisances with which they met and parted as she went upon the stage at the lifting of the curtain. In the lack of a common language this was perhaps as well as a longer interview; and nothing ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... "She's a prima donna all right," chuckled Bob. "Where now? Oh! To Stone's shoe shop? Well, what do you know about this notice in the paper?" and his ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... continued. The great soprano, the prima donna, appeared and delivered herself of a song for which she was famous with astonishing eclat. Then in a little while the stage grew dark, the orchestration lapsed to a murmur, and the tenor and the soprano reentered. He clasped her in his arms and sang a half-dozen bars, then holding ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... had all along filled him was now greater than ever. He well knew under what circumstances even an ordinarily good house is collected together. There must either be undoubted fame in the prima donna, or else the most wide-spread and comprehensive efforts on the part of a skillful impresario. His efforts had been great, but not such as to insure any thing like this. To account for the prodigious crowd which filled every part of the large edifice ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... see him was the saddest part of leaving Crompton, and for a moment hot tears rolled down her cheeks,—tears which, if Jack could have seen and known their cause, would have brought him back from Worcester and the prima donna who that night was entrancing a crowded house with her song. Dashing her tears away, Eloise's thoughts reverted to Amy, who had ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... 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 ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... 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 played with that splendid kind of virtuosity which makes ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman |
