Radio
A double performance of Cavalleria and Pagliacci was transmitted as the first-ever broadcast by New York City's Metropolitan Opera on December 11, 1910. Radio pioneer Lee De Forest talked Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the Met manager, into sending the program over the airwaves via a backstage radio transmitter and a rooftop antenna, "using a long fishing pole for his mast." Enrico Caruso and Emmy Destinn were in the leading roles.
Few listened. There were no radios. But public receivers had been set up in several well-advertised locations in New York City, and people could catch at least an inkling of the music on earphones. The next day, The New York Times reported that static and other interference "kept the homeless song waves from finding themselves."
In Los Angeles, California, an "Italian Night" concert was heard live "in its entirety" on May 6, 1930, as the third program of the Adohr opera series over radio station KFI, featuring "A distinguished cast . . . headed by Lisa Roma, noted lyric soprano. . . . Music lovers should not fail to tune in."
A notable use of the Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana in the United States was as the theme for a regular radio broadcast, Symphony of the Rockies, which featured "a small string group playing light classical music" in the 1930s and 1940s over Denver radio station KOA, then owned and operated by the NBC network. It "was a 'feed' to the entire network from the KOA studios."
Read more about this topic: Cavalleria Rusticana
Famous quotes containing the word radio:
“All radio is dead. Which means that these tape recordings I’m making are for the sake of future history. If any.”
—Barré Lyndon (1896–1972)
“Having a thirteen-year-old in the family is like having a general-admission ticket to the movies, radio and TV. You get to understand that the glittering new arts of our civilization are directed to the teen-agers, and by their suffrage they stand or fall.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)
“Local television shows do not, in general, supply make-up artists. The exception to this is Los Angeles, an unusually generous city in this regard, since they also provide this service for radio appearances.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)