A True Story about Zinka Milanov and Me

Abstract

Mr. Elvins submitted this article to The Opera Quarterly nearly a year prior to Mme Milanov's death. In so doing, he wrote, “The tone of this reminiscence is lighter than that usually found in your articles, and I could provide a more academic analysis of Milanov's art, but I hope that this personal approach conveys the extraordinary impact that her voice had on so many of us in the 1950s and 1960s.” The founding editors, forming their opinion while the great soprano was still living, passed the article on with the following notation: “A floridly written adulation of Zinka Milanov. Quite different from the usual fare but definitely to be considered.” It is entirely fitting that this piece be included here, chronicling as it does, in the author's words, “the extraordinary impact” Milanov had on a generation of opera lovers. The final paragraph has been left purposefully as originally written, in the present tense.That impact, dearly, is not a thing of the past.