Nelson Eddy: The Opera Years is a biography by Sharon Rich, with a chapter featuring Jeanette MacDonald's opera career.
Before he became a movie star, Nelson Eddy was an opera star. This photo-filled book is a study of that career and a compilation of virtually every review, interview and article written about him from 1922 until 1935, when his success in the MGM musical Naughty Marietta co-starring soprano Jeanette MacDonald convinced him that his future was in Hollywood. Included are reproduced pages and clippings from his personal scrapbooks with his handwritten notations and many rare photographs, all his operas (including some tenor and bass roles), his oratorios, radio, earliest interviews and insight into his youthful romances.
An extra chapter includes Jeanette MacDonald's opera career (1943–45), plus coverage and rare photos of their operatic scenes in film, including the lost "Tosca" Act II from Maytime. There are also excerpts from an unproduced movie script written by Nelson on the life of Feodor Chaliapin, in which he had planned to play dual roles—Chaliapin and himself.
Famous quotes containing the words nelson, opera and/or years:
“Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, first we have to make them feel worse? Think of the last time you felt humiliated or treated unfairly. Did you feel like cooperating or doing better?”
—Jane Nelson (20th century)
“I wish the opera was every night. It is, of all entertainments, the sweetest and most delightful. Some of the songs seemed to melt my very soul.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“It seemed the mockery of hell to fold
The rottenness of eighty years in gold.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)