Italian diva, 66, scores a Carnegie Hall triumph
mainEve Queler has been conducting little-known bel canto operas at Carnegie for so long that her performances are taken for granted and generally ignored by the hype machine that is the late New York Times.
This week was not different. Eve, herself no adolescent, brought back an Italian soprano who has sung often at the Met without ever enjoying the acclaim she attracts back home. Mariella Devia is now 66. She sang Queen Elizabeth, a woman her own age, in Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux. And the audience erupted.
Read all about it in quick-off-the-mark NYCR. Right here.
I heard Mariella Devia in her first audition for Eve Queler, which took place at Manhattan School of Music’s sixth-floor rehearsal studio. I spoke with her, as I recall, then heard her sing a nice Bell Song from Lakme, with the orchestra. I remember her as having come from Romania, or Bulgaria, not Italy. She might be Italian now, but was not then. By the way, she got engaged. This was in 1983 or 84.