Soria, Dorle

Epithet: wife of Dario Soria

Dorle Jarmel Soria (1900-2002) was a publicist, record company impresario, and journalist in the classical music world of the mid-twentieth century.

She graduated from Columbia University and worked as a journalist before being hired as a publicist by the concert manager Arthur Judson, who managed the New York Philharmonic in addition to his own company. She was put in charge of publicity for all of Judson's projects, but in time her duties primarily became the Philharmonic and Columbia Artists Management.

In 1942, she married Dario Soria, an Italian who had emigrated to the United States in 1939. Mr. Soria established the Cetra-Soria label in 1948 to print and distribute opera recordings from the Italian Cetra catalog in the United States. In 1953, Ms. Soria left Judson to launch Angel Records with her husband. Angel produced and distributed classical recordings for its corporate parent, EMI. The Sorias left the company in 1958 after EMI merged it with its American subsidiary, Capitol Records. They then worked with the composer Gian Carlo Menotti to establish his Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, that same year. The couple also began producing classical recordings for RCA using the title "Soria Series."

In the 1960s, Ms. Soria wrote a weekly column for the Carnegie Hall concert programs. She went on to write regularly for the magazines High Fidelity, Musical America (where she wrote a monthly column called Artist Life), and Opera News. She also wrote a history of the Metropolitan Opera (1982).