That's Right, Honey

It was obvious that the girl had talent. She could talk to a television camera as if it were her pastor. She could smile lovingly at a new car and slip into the driver's seat while letting only a proper amount of knee show. She had a Grey Lady's sincerity and a sorority sister's charm. And she earned $150,000 a year as the Chrysler Girl on television. Then she suddenly announced she was giving it all up for grand opera. That's right, honey, her friends told her, lots of luck.

Last week, after five years on the outskirts of her ambition, Soprano Mary Costa finally made it to the Met, and her debut was one of the rare victories of art over advertising. It was also among the season's most difficult. Without the comfort of a single stage rehearsal in one of opera's most treacherous roles, she sang La Traviata's Violetta only three weeks after Joan Sutherland's Met debut in the same role. With La Stupenda's triumph still fresh in mind, the critics expected only a nice try from La Costa. But after a faint and breathless first act, she became the very spirit of Verdi's epic courtesan. "It seemed the obstacles were all against me," she said, "but now I am really thrilled to death."

Mary Costa, 31, had little luck in her first attempts at the stage; she was hampered by a Grand Ole Opry accent learned in her native Knoxville. She quit college after her father's death and helped support her family by singing at women's clubs and speaking the part of Sleeping Beauty in Walt Disney's movie. But soon she was selling cars on TV, where her Greer Garson beauty and Grace Kelly style quickly made her one of the best in the business. She made her opera debut in Los Angeles in 1958 after Jack Benny talked her into taking herself seriously; he would, he said, gladly have junked his career to become a concert violinist if only he had the talent.

Costa has been a star of the San Francisco Opera ever since her debut there in 1959, but her voice has developed remarkably in the past two or three seasons. She is a strong lyric soprano with an agile coloratura range, giving her an easy facility in a wide reach of the soprano repertoire. In New York the critics found it hard to keep their minds on her singing because of her dazzling beauty. The Met, they suggested, could use some dazzlers.

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