The return of the divas.(Viewpoint)

What was your first diva experience? My first real encounter with the species was when I was fifteen years old. The opera was Tosca, the diva Renata Tebaldi. Nothing I had seen on The Bell Telephone Hour or The Ed Sullivan Show had prepared me for the blood-sport thrill of watching an authentic star in complete control of her audience. I was too green to appreciate fully the sound of one of the century's great voices, but from the moment she stepped onto the stage of the Met that afternoon, I "got" Tebaldi. The exact nature of her magic was evanescent and fleeting: it wasn't so much a question of what she did as what she didn't do. There was nothing obvious or flashy about her. Handsome and imposing, supremely ladylike, Tebaldi dominated her territory with a striking economy of gesture. I still remember the keen little lift of her upstage shoulder as she turned her deeply dimpled smile on Cavaradossi, the measured break in her stride as she entered Scarpia's room, the heroic angle of her chin as she watched the firing squad take aim. If one defines acting in terms of impersonation skill or psychological acuity, she may not have been a great actress, but in those long-ago, pre-Met Titles days, to a high-school sophomore who didn't understand a word of Italian, Tebaldi made every moment of Tosca crystal-clear.

A singular combination of vocal warmth and dramatic cool, Tebaldi had a slight air of mystery that was essential to her charisma, as was so aptly described by Manuela Hoelterhoff in her book, Cinderella & Company. Generous and gracious as she was, Tebaldi always seemed to be holding a little something back. That air of reserve, that small but deliberate measure of distance from her audience, that disciplined refusal to beg for affection, was ...