“I once walked with her by the Arno, in Florence, where navvies engaged in road work put down their picks and stared in frank admiration as she passed. Supervia, without even a glance in their direction, sensed their admiration and visibly preened herself.
“‘You surely don’t enjoy men looking at you like that?’ I asked.
“‘I do,’ she replied, amused at such a very Anglo-Saxon question. ‘I don’t find it unpleasant to think that they are all saying to themsleves, ‘If I was a rich man, that’s what I’d want.’ You see, Italy is a woman’s country. In your country, if I walked down Bond Street,’ she went on lightheartedly, ‘not a man would notice me unless I pushed him off the pavement.’”
Conchita Supervia (quoted in Ivor Newton, At the Piano: The World of an Accompanist)