This was the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Music Score (for Louis Silvers) as 1934 was the first year that an Oscar for this category was introduced.
The role of Grace Moore's thickly-accented Italian dresser, Angelina, is played most convincingly by character actress Jessie Ralph who was born and died in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Grace Moore had trouble duplicating 'Un bel di' aria from "Madame Butterfly" during filming as she couldn't hit the high notes. She flew into a rage and blamed the orchestra for hindering her. Columbia studio head 'Harry Cohn' asked his musical director Morris Stoloff what seemed to be the problem. Stoloff replied that the orchestra was fine and that they were playing the original Puccini orchestrations - implying that Moore herself was at fault. She was then told either to return to the recording stage or she would have to pay a day's salary to the entire orchestra. Moore duly returned and successfully recorded the song.
Much of the interior of the Metropolitan Opera House was duplicated on Columbia's largest sound stage.
Designed as a star vehicle for Grace Moore, the film delighted Columbia by becoming a major hit with Moore attributed for most of its success. Indeed, she received an Oscar nomination for the role. MGM tried to lure her to their side with the offer of a starring role alongside Maurice Chevalier, sharing top billing. Chevalier had never conceded top billing to anyone else and was most put out by such move, to the extent that the film was never made and Chevalier quit Hollywood for good. None of Moore's subsequent films would ever match the success of One Night of Love (1934) and she stopped making films in 1939. She was killed in a plane crash at Copenhagen airport 8 years later.