Dining with Divas (And Other Personal Encounters with Operatic Greats)

Contributing and Consulting Editors, Reviewers, and Readers of The Opera Quarterly

When the late E. Thomas Glasow was planning the "Singers of the Twentieth Century" double issue, he solicited anecdotes about personal encounters with great singers from the consulting and contributing editors, reviewers, and other regular readers of The Opera Quarterly. His illness prevented him from carrying out that plan, and after his death the anecdotes were gathered up and sent to me. Unfortunately, Tom left no record of what he had received for this portion of the issue, so it has proved impossible to determine whether all the anecdotes sent to him were in fact forwarded to me. If any stories submitted to Tom have been omitted, it is for this reason, and I apologize to any writers whose work may have been lost in this way.

Tom's original intent was to divide the stories between the two issues, concentrating on singers active primarily before 1950 in the first issue, with the rest to follow in the present one. That plan had to be abandoned, but the resulting longer compilation has a logic of its own (after all, very few singers observed the mid-century division in their careers). Individually, the vignettes provide amusing, instructive, or moving glimpses of important singers of the past century. Taken together, these stories suggest something more about these singers, their zest for life, and our relationship to them. The title I have given the entire set is somewhat flippant, but not entirely. Many of the stories are set in scenes of dining (often with the singer as host or chef), something that can be taken as emblematic of the sustenance they provide their listeners. The authors write from a number of perspectives—dinner guest, student, coach, admirer—and o ff er us a feast as well. Bon appetit!