Opera Index honors Marjory Walters, Doris Keeley
On the afternoon of Sunday, May 3, at the Essex House on Central Park South, Opera Index held its Spring Lunch. President Murray Rosenthal was retiring after 16 brilliant years at the helm and will now serve as treasurer. Affable, unflappable and effervescent, he will be sorely missed.
Two longtime supporters, Marjorie Walters and Doris Keeley, were honored for their generous and loyal support through the years. Walters, now 90, noted the passage of time and laughingly admonished “Don’t get old.” She recalled her late husband Arthur, who was the photographer for Opera Index until 1999. Keeley recalled her very first opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) when she was 11 and her meeting William Wells years later. Wells founded Opera Index and attended Keeley’s wedding to Opera Index member Gus Formicola. Since 1984, Opera Index has given awards in excess of $1 million to 365 young singers.
A few days earlier, on April 23, “the world’s number one opera fan” Lois Kirschenbaum, attended a premier of a documentary film at the National Opera Center on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan sponsored by Opera Index on her own life called “Quiet Diva,” produced by Kieran Walsh. Lois was born in Brooklyn, and due to her premature birth was legally blind. Despite this handicap, she became a Brooklyn Dodger fan while working as a secretary. Devastated when the Dodgers left Brooklyn for Los Angeles, she needed another outlet for her emotions, and her father brought her two records: one featuring Enrico Caruso and a “La Boheme” with soprano Renata Tebaldi. Lois met her idol Mme. Tebaldi and soon became a fixture on the Metropolitan Opera’s standee line. Since 1957, she attended practically every performance and was considered a good-luck omen backstage, where all of the great singers treasured her. Opera Index honored Lois at its Spring Lunch a few years ago.