Graciela Rivera year she made her operatic debut as Rosina in "The Barber of Seville" by Gioachino Rossini at the New Orleans Opera. In December 1951, she became the first Puerto Rican to sing a lead role at the New York Metropolitan Opera as Lucia in the production of Lucia di Lammermoor. She earned accolades for her performance from critics around the world. In 1953, Rivera was proclaimed "Citizen of the Year" by the City of New York. In 1954 Rivera was featured as a guest singer in Name That Tune, and later that year, at an instance of Your Show of
Gioachino Rossini wife died in 1845, and on 16 August 1846, he married Olympe Pélissier, who had sat for Vernet for his picture of "Judith and Holofernes". Political disturbances compelled Rossini to leave Bologna in 1848. After living for a time in Florence, he settled in Paris in 1855, where he hosted many artistic and literary figures in his apartment at 2 Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin. Among them was the forty years younger Belgian mattauphone virtuoso Edmond Michotte, whom Rossini considered his "quasi figlio". Rossini had been a well-known gourmand and an excellent amateur chef his entire life, but he indulged these