Years ago I read a book of interviews called The Last Prima Donnas.
It made such an impression on me, that recently I got myself a second-hand copy so I could read it again.

There are about 55 ladies interviewed for this book.
It was published on or around 1980.
A number of the 55 had already died by then.
Since then, all of the 55 have passed away,
the last, Rosanna Carteri, in 2020 (the pandemic maybe?).
All of them were retired from singing by the time the book was published.
This was one reason for excluding the great soprano Magda Olivero,
who was still singing publicly when the book was published.
She finally retired, and was over a hundred years old when she died.

I mention Olivero because her name comes up again and again in The Last Prima Donnas;
some of the ladies were contemporaries of hers, or sang with her.
IN some ways she is the Last of the Prima Donnas herself.

Something else that figures largely in this book is what is known, popularly, as
the Casa Verdi: in Milan, built by Giuseppe Verdi himself,
for retired opera singers who were impoverished and had nowhere to live.
At least half a dozen of the Prima Donnas interviewed were found in the Casa Verdi, living out the end of their lives.
The Casa Verdi is still going today.

The two world wars, especially the second one, figure largely in the accounts of the Prima Donnas' lives and careers.
It was after the Second World War that, they say, the art of opera became a corporate industry, a business;
and singers became products to use up and throw away.
It's depressing, but this theme recurs again and again in the interviews.