Lucrezia Bori in Deems Taylor's Opera, "Peter Ibbetson"

BORI AS THE DUCHESS OF TOWERS

When they asked the composer of Peter Ibbetson for suggestions as to who should sing the idle of the Duchess of Toners he said "Bori", much in the spirit of one who, seeing the moon, thinks, "Well, there?s no harm in asking." When he learned that she was to sing it, he stayed away from her first three rehearsals, for fear she might change her mind. Lucrezia Bori was born in Valencia, the ancestral home of the Borgias, from whom she is descended; and she is living proof of the fact that we must be all wrong about the Borgias. She made her debut in Rome, in 1908. and came to the Metropolitan in 1913. Opera-goers then were not entirely accustomed to seeing prima donnas who were young, slim, and beautiful, so that her reception bordered upon the hysterical. When she retired in 1915, as the result of a disastrous throat operation, they went into public mourning for her, and when she returned in 1919, her voice and beauty unimpaired, they welcomed her back with an affectionate loyalty that any crowned head might have envied. Like all great artists, she works most of the time, and unlike many of them, has never yet despised her public or disparaged a colleague. She makes Mary, Duchess of Towers, a generous, glamorous person because, being who she is, she would hardly know how to make her otherwise

DEEMS TAYLOR