Opera. Collection of c.90 photographs signed by great operatic divas, including Ponselle, Flagstad, Farrar, 1920-1940

OPERA.

Good collection of c.90 photographs signed by great operatic sopranos, many from the 1920s & 1930s 

including over 20 large early photographs signed by Rosa Ponselle (2), Kirsten Flagstad, Eva Turner (2), Geraldine Farrar (3), Luisa Tetrazzini, Amelita Galli-Curci, Zinka Milanov (2), Gladys Swarthout, Grace Moore, Toti Dal Monte, Marion Telva, Birgit Nilsson, Marjorie Lawrence, Margaret Matzenauer, Lisa Della Casa, Licia Albanese, Stella Roman, Deborah Riedel and Josephine Veasey, c.25 x 20cm, 1919-1947 where dated; together with further photographs also signed by Tetrazzini, Turner, Farrar, Lucrezia Bori, Iva Pacetti, Miliza Korjus, Margaret Ritchie, Elena Souliotis, Lily Pons, Maria Caniglia, Maria Jeritza, Mary Ellis, Clara Clairbert, Sigrid Onegin, Leyla Gencer, Renata Tebaldi, Montserrat Caballé, Adriana Guerrini, Magda Olivero, Jane Rolland, Jennie Tourel, Yvonne Printemps, Olivia Stapp, Bianca Scacciati, Mado Robin, Johanna Gadski, Sofia Zandini, Aurora Baudes, Dorothy Kirsten, Beniamina Pinza, Elena Gerhardt and others, various sizes and formats; also including some thirty postcard photographs etc of Hempel, Lotte Lehmann, Clara Butt, Dal Monte, Anja Silja, Victoria Sladen, Marina Hotine, Horiana Branisteanu, Arienne Miglietti, Gabriella Gatti, Mafalda Favero, Irina Malatiosi, Giuseppina Corbelli, Ebe Stignani, Rosa Raisa, Gina Cigna, Göta Ljungberg, Conchita Flores, Martha Nespoulous, Rita Orlandi, Tatiana Menotti, Orianna Santunione, Mietta Sighele and others

over 100 items in all, 1919-1976, in an album 

These are fine large photographs of the most famous divas from the period between the two world wars; those inscribed by Ponselle (1927 & 1929), Farrar (1931), Flagstad (c.1935), Tetrazzini (1919 & 1921) and Galli-Curci (1925) are particularly striking. These are the sopranos that Henry Pleasants highlights in his book The Great Singers (1974): Ponselle (as the greatest Norma, "the ultimate test"), Tetrazzini and Galli-Curci (for the "breath-taking ease and brilliance" of their virtuosic coloratura), Farrar (for her compelling beauty, which entranced Toscanini for seven years) and, especially Flagstad ("that she could reign supreme among nearly a dozen of the finest dramatic sopranos of the century speaks for itself").