Years ago, sometime in the early '80s, I was watching 60 Minutes with my parents. One of the segments was a profile on an up-and-coming young opera singer, female, probably soprano but I’m not sure. At any rate, in talking about her family, she casually mentioned that her mom had had an affair with “the Greek across the hall.” Mike Wallace prompted, “And you are the daughter of…?” “The Greek across the hall.”
I cannot for the life of me remember, or find out, who that was. She was relatively young at the time, perhaps outstandingly young for opera, which might have been the reason she was such a phenom, and had dark curly hair, and was slender, or at least not huge. Any clue?
So was she (the opera singer) Greek too? Or some other nationality?
Well, I’m just not sure. I mean, biologically, she was at least half-Greek, and did look Mediterranean, but as for her mom and mom’s husband, I dunno.
A couple of sopranos come to mind:
Elena Kelessidi is Greek, but the incomparable (Greek-sounding) Angela Gheorghiu is Romanian. Maria Callas was Greek, but too old for your time frame.
Well, Gheorghiu didn’t even graduate from music school until 1990, so forget that. Can’t find anything on Kelessidi. :dubious:
Young, slender and dark curly hair makes me think of Celia Bartolli. (I could be really wrong about her last name.)
Maybe Julia Migenes? I believe she was using the name Julia Migenes-Johnson when she appeared on 60 Minutes.
http://www.aviv2.com/julia/
That would have put her in her early to mid 30s, rather old for an “up-and-coming” opera singer.
That said, I ignored the timelines, in writing my own response. 
Bartoli is pure Italian.
Well, perhaps it wasn’t because she was young, and perhaps she wasn’t up-and-coming. Obviously I don’t remember that much!
As I recall, (it’s been a long time for me, too) the 60 Minutes profile treated her as if she had just recently made a big splash in the opera world. So given that tone, and the fact that I normally don’t pay enough attention to that world to know better, I got the impression that she was a newly rising star, even if she wasn’t in her first blush of youth.