Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (; 22 December 185829 November 1924) was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire. Some of his arias, such as "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi, "Che gelida manina" from La bohème, and "Nessun dorma" from Turandot, have become part of popular culture.

Early life

Puccini was born in Lucca in Tuscany, into a family with five generations of musical history behind them, including composer Domenico Puccini. His father died when Giacomo was five years old, and he was sent to study with his uncle Fortunato Magi, who considered him to be a poor and undisciplined student. Magi may have been prejudiced against his nephew because his contract as choir master stipulated that he would hand over the position to Puccini "as soon as the said Signore Giacomo be old enough to discharge such duties." Puccini took the position of church organist and choir master in Lucca, but it was not until he saw a performance of Verdi's Aida that he became inspired to be an opera composer. He and his brother, Michele, walked 18.5 mi (30 km) to see the performance in Pisa.

In 1880, with the help of a relative and a grant, Puccini enrolled in the Milan Conservatory to study composition with Stefano Ronchetti-Monteviti, Amilcare Ponchielli, and Antonio Bazzini. In the same year, at the age of 21, he composed the Messa, which marks the culmination of his family's long association with church music in his native Lucca. Although Puccini himself correctly titled the work a Messa, referring to a setting of the Ordinary of the Catholic Mass, today the work is popularly known as his Messa di Gloria, a name that technically refers to a setting of only the first two prayers of the Ordinary, the Kyrie and the Gloria, while omitting the Credo, the Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei.

The work anticipates Puccini's career as an operatic composer by offering glimpses of the dramatic power that he would soon bring forth onto the stage; the powerful "arias" for tenor and bass soloists are certainly more operatic than is usual in church music and, in its orchestration and dramatic power, the Messa compares interestingly with Verdi's Requiem.

While studying at the Conservatory, Puccini obtained a libretto from Ferdinando Fontana and entered a competition for a one-act opera in 1882. Although he did not win, Le Villi was later staged in 1884 at the Teatro Dal Verme and it caught the attention of Giulio Ricordi, head of G. Ricordi & Co. music publishers, who commissioned a second opera, Edgar, in 1889. Edgar failed: it was a bad story and Fontana's libretto was poor. This may have had an effect on Puccini's thinking because when he began his next opera, Manon Lescaut, he announced that he would write his own libretto so that "no fool of a librettist" could spoil it. Ricordi persuaded him to accept Leoncavallo as his librettist, but Puccini soon asked Ricordi to remove him from the project. Four other librettists were then involved with the opera, due mainly to Puccini constantly changing his mind about the structure of the piece. It was almost by accident that the final two, Illica and Giacosa, came together to complete the opera. They remained with Puccini for his next three operas and probably his greatest successes: La Boheme, Tosca and Madama Butterfly.

It may well have been the failure of Edgar that made Puccini so apt to change his mind. Edgar nearly cost him his career. Puccini had eloped with the married Elvira Gemignani and Ricordi's associates were willing to turn a blind eye to his life style as long as he was successful. When Edgar failed, they suggested to Ricordi that he should drop Puccini, but Ricordi said that he would stay with him and made him an allowance from his own pocket until his next opera. Manon Lescaut was a great success and Puccini went on to become the leading operatic composer of his day.

Puccini at Torre del Lago

]] From 1891 onwards, Puccini spent most of his time at Torre del Lago, a small community about fifteen miles from Lucca situated between the Ligurian Sea and Lake Massaciuccoli, just south of Viareggio. While renting a house there, he spent time hunting, but regularly visited Lucca.

By 1900, he had acquired land and built a villa on the lake, now known as the "Villa Museo Puccini." He lived there until 1921, when pollution produced by peat works on the lake forced him to move to Viareggio, a few kilometres north. After his death, a mausoleum was created in the Villa Puccini and the composer is buried there in the chapel, along with his wife and son who died later.

The Villa Museo Puccini is presently owned by his granddaughter, Simonetta Puccini, and is open to the public.

Operas written at Torre del Lago

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Manon Lescaut (1893), his third opera, was his first great success. It launched his remarkable relationship with the librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, who collaborated with him on his next three operas, which became his three most famous and most-performed operas. These were:

La bohème (1896) is considered one of his best works as well as one of the most romantic operas ever composed. It is together with Tosca one of today's most popular operas.

Tosca (1900) was arguably Puccini's first foray into verismo, the realistic depiction of many facets of real life including violence. The opera is generally considered of major importance in the history of opera because of its many significant features.

Madama Butterfly (1904) was initially greeted with great hostility (mostly organized by his rivals) but, after some reworking, became another of his most successful operas.

After 1904, compositions were less frequent. Following his passion for driving fast cars, Puccini was nearly killed in a major accident in 1903. In 1906 Giacosa died and, in 1909, there was scandal after Puccini's wife, Elvira, falsely accused their maid Doria Manfredi of having an affair with Puccini. The maid then committed suicide. Elvira was successfully sued by the Manfredis, and Giacomo had to pay damages. Finally, in 1912, the death of Giulio Ricordi, Puccini's editor and publisher, ended a productive period of his career.

However, Puccini completed La fanciulla del West in 1910 and finished the score of La rondine in 1916.

In 1918, Il trittico premiered in New York. This work is composed of three one-act operas: a horrific episode (Il tabarro), in the style of the Parisian Grand Guignol, a sentimental tragedy (Suor Angelica), and a comedy (Gianni Schicchi). Of the three, Gianni Schicchi has remained the most popular, containing the popular aria "O mio babbino caro".

Final years

A habitual Toscano cigar and cigarette chain smoker, Puccini began to complain of chronic sore throats towards the end of 1923. A diagnosis of throat cancer led his doctors to recommend a new and experimental radiation therapy treatment, which was being offered in Brussels. Puccini and his wife never knew how serious the cancer was, as the news was only revealed to his son.

Puccini died there on 29 November 1924, from complications after the treatment; uncontrolled bleeding led to a heart attack the day after surgery. News of his death reached Rome during a performance of La bohème. The opera was immediately stopped, and the orchestra played Chopin's Funeral March for the stunned audience. He was buried in Milan, in Toscanini's family tomb, but that was always intended as a temporary measure. In 1926 his son arranged for the transfer of his father's remains to a specially created chapel inside the Puccini villa at Torre del Lago.

Turandot, his final opera, was left unfinished, and the last two scenes were completed by Franco Alfano based on the composer's sketches. Some dispute whether Alfano followed the sketches or not, since the sketches were said to be indecipherable, but he is believed to have done so, since, together with the autographs, he was given (still existing) transcriptions from Guido Zuccoli who was accustomed to interpreting Puccini's handiwork.

When Arturo Toscanini conducted the premiere performance in April 1926 (in front of a sold-out crowd, with every prominent Italian except for Benito Mussolini in attendance), he chose not to perform Alfano's portion of the score. The performance reached the point where Puccini had completed the score, at which time Toscanini stopped the orchestra. The conductor turned to the audience and said: "Here the opera finishes, because at this point the Maestro died." (Some record that he said, more poetically, "Here the Maestro laid down his pen.") (Some record that then Toscanini picked up the baton, turned to the audience, and announced, "But his disciples finished his work." At which time the opera closed to thunderous applause.)

Toscanini's laying down the baton has been misinterpreted by some journalists as a gesture of disapproval of Alfano's contribution. In 2009 William Hartson in the Daily Expess told his readers with great authority that "Toscanini never conducted Turandot again." In fact, he conducted it again on the two following nights - including Alfano's ending - a total of three performances.

Toscanini edited Alfano's suggested completion ('Alfano I'), to produce a version now known as 'Alfano II', and this is the version usually used in performance. However, some musicians consider Alfano I to be a more dramatically complete version.

In 2002, an official new ending was composed by Luciano Berio from original sketches, but this finale has, to date, been performed only infrequently.

Politics

Unlike Verdi and Wagner, Puccini did not appear to be active in the politics of his day. However, Mussolini, Fascist dictator of Italy at the time, claimed that Puccini applied for admission to the National Fascist Party. While it has been proven that Puccini was indeed among the early supporters of the Fascist party at the time of the election campaign of 1919 (in which the Fascist candidates were utterly defeated, earning a meagre 4,000 votes), there appear to be no records or proof of any application given to the party by Puccini.

This notwithstanding, Fascist propaganda appropriated Puccini's figure, and one of the most widely played marches during Fascist street parades and public ceremonies was the "Inno a Roma" (Hymn to Rome), composed in 1919 by Puccini to lyrics by Fausto Salvatori, based on these verses from Horace's Carmen saeculare:

Alme Sol, curru nitido diem qui / Promis et celas alius que et idem / Nasceris, possis nihil urbe Roma / Visere maius. (O Sun, that unchanged, yet ever new, / Lead'st out the day and bring'st it home, / May nothing be present to thy view / Greater than Rome!)

Style

The subject of Puccini's style is one that was once treated dismissively by musicologists; this can be attributed to a perception that his work, with its emphasis on melody and evident popular appeal, lacked "depth." Comments, however, have been contradictory with some critics telling us that it was only his theatrical flair that made him successful while others have said that he was never a great theatrical composer. The answer to this determined antipathy may well be that there have always been critics who resent a composer who becomes popular. Despite the place Puccini clearly occupies in the popular tradition of Verdi, his style of orchestration also shows the strong influence of Wagner, matching specific orchestral configurations and timbres to different dramatic moments. His operas contain an unparalleled manipulation of orchestral colors, with the orchestra often creating the scene's atmosphere.

The structures of Puccini's works are also noteworthy. While it is to an extent possible to divide his operas into arias or numbers (like Verdi's), his scores generally present a very strong sense of continuous flow and connectivity, perhaps another sign of Wagner's influence. Like Wagner, Puccini used leitmotifs to connote characters and sentiments (or combinations thereof). This is most apparent in Tosca, where the three chords which signal the beginning of the opera are used throughout to announce Scarpia; the descending brass motive (Vivacissimo con violenza) is connected to the repressive regime which ruled Rome at the setting of the opera and most clearly to Angelotti, one of the regime's victims; the harp arpeggio figure which appears at Tosca's entrance and the aria Vissi d'arte symbolizing Tosca's religious fervor; the clarinet ascending-descending scale indicating Mario's suffering and his doomed love for Tosca. Several motifs are also linked to Mimi and the bohemians in La bohème and to Cio-Cio-San's eventual suicide in Butterfly. Unlike Wagner, though, Puccini's motifs are static: where Wagner's motifs develop into more complicated figures as the characters develop, Puccini's remain more or less identical throughout the opera (in this respect anticipating the themes of modern musical theatre).

Another distinctive quality in Puccini's works is the use of the voice in the style of speech i.e. canto parlando; characters sing short phrases one after another as if they were in conversation. Puccini is also celebrated for his melodic gift and many of his melodies are both memorable and enduringly popular. At their simplest these melodies are made of sequences from the scale, a very distinctive example being Quando me'n vo' (Musetta's Waltz) from La bohème and E lucevan le stelle from Act III of Tosca.

Unusual for operas written by Italian composers up until that time, many of Puccini’s operas are set outside Italy—in exotic places such as Japan (Madama Butterfly), gold-mining country in California (La fanciulla del West), Paris and the Riviera (La rondine), and China (Turandot).

Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Lloyd Schwartz summarized Puccini thus: "Is it possible for a work of art to seem both completely sincere in its intentions and at the same time counterfeit and manipulative? Puccini built a major career on these contradictions. But people care about him, even admire him, because he did it both so shamelessly and so skillfully. How can you complain about a composer whose music is so relentlessly memorable, even — maybe especially — at its most saccharine?"

Music

Although Puccini is mainly known for his operas, he also wrote some other orchestral pieces, sacred music, chamber music and songs for voice and piano.

Operas

Le Villi, libretto by Ferdinando Fontana (in one act – premiered at the Teatro Dal Verme, 31 May 1884)

* second version (in two acts – premiered at the Teatro Regio of Torino, 26 December 1884)

* third version (in two acts – premiered at La Scala (the Teatro alla Scala), 24 January 1885)

* fourth version (in two acts – premiered at the Teatro dal Verme, 7 November 1889)

Edgar, libretto by Ferdinando Fontana (in four acts – premiered at La Scala, 21 April 1889)

* second version (in four acts – premiered at the Teatro del Giglio, 5 September 1891)

* third version (in three acts – premiered at the Teatro Comunale, 28 January 1892)

* fourth version (in three acts – premiered at the Teatro Colón di Buenos Aires, 8 July 1905)

Manon Lescaut, libretto by Luigi Illica, Marco Praga and Domenico Oliva (premiered at the Teatro Regio, 1 February 1893)

* second version (premiered at the Teatro Coccia, 21 December 1893)

La bohème, libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa (premiered at the Teatro Regio of Torino, 1 February 1896)

Tosca, libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa (premiered at the Teatro Costanzi, 14 January 1900)

Madama Butterfly, libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa (in two acts – premiered at La Scala, 17 February 1904)

* second version (in two acts – premiered at the Teatro Grande di Brescia, 28 May 1904)

* third version (premiered at Covent Garden, London 10 July 1905)

* fourth version (premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, 28 December 1906)

* fifth version (premiered at the Teatro Carcano, 9 December 1920)

La fanciulla del West, libretto by Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini (premiered at the Metropolitan Opera, 10 December 1910)

* second version (premiered at La Scala, 29 December 1912)

La rondine, libretto by Giuseppe Adami (premiered at the Opéra of Monte Carlo, 27 March 1917)

* second version (premiered at the Opéra of Monte Carlo, 10 April 1920)

* third version (possible premier at the Teatro Verdi, 11 April 1924); orchestration of the third act completed in 1994 by Lorenzo Ferrero (premiered at Teatro Regio di Torino, 22 March 1994)

Il trittico (premiered at the Metropolitan Opera, 14 December 1918)

:Il tabarro, libretto by Giuseppe Adami :Suor Angelica, libretto by Giovacchino Forzano :Gianni Schicchi, libretto by Giovacchino Forzano

Turandot, libretto by Renato Simoni and Giuseppe Adami (incomplete at the time of Puccini's death, completed by Franco Alfano: premiered at La Scala, 25 April 1926; an alternative completion was commissioned from Luciano Berio in 2002)

Other works and versions

(with dates of premieres and locations)

A te (c.1875)

Preludio a orchestra (1876)

Plaudite populi (Lucca, 1877)

Credo (Lucca, 1878)

Vexilla Regis (1878)

Messa a 4 voci con orchestra (Lucca, 1880) Published in 1951 as Messa di Gloria

Adagio in A major (1881)

Largo Adagetto in F major (c.1881-83)

Salve del ciel Regina (c.1882)

Mentìa l’avviso (c.1882)

Preludio Sinfonico in A major (Milan, 1882)

Fugues (c.1883)

Scherzo in D (1883)

Storiella d’amore (1883)

Capriccio Sinfonico (Milan, 1883)

Sole ed amore (1888)

Crisantemi (String Quartet, 1890, "Alla memoria di Amadeo di Savoia Duca d'Aosta")

Minuetto n.1 (String Quartet, published about 1892, "A.S.A.R. Vittoria Augusta di Borbone, Principessa di Capua")

Minuetto n.2 (String Quartet, published about 1892, "All'esimio violinista prof. Augusto Michelangeli")

Minuetto n.3 (String Quartet, published about 1892, "All'amico maestro Carlo Carignani")

Piccolo valzer (1894)

Avanti Urania! (1896)

Scossa elettrica (1896)

Inno a Diana (1897)

E l'uccellino (1899)

Terra e mare (1902)

Canto d’anime (1904)

Requiem (27 January 1905, Milan)

Casa mia, casa mia (1908)

Sogno d'or (1913)

Pezzo per pianoforte (1916)

Morire? (c.1917) - This song was transposed by a half step (into G-flat major) and set to different text in the 1st revision of his work La Rondine called "Parigi è la città dei desideri" which is sung by Ruggero in the 1st act. Besides the key and text changes, it is the exact music to the aria.

Inno a Roma (1 June 1919, Rome)

Centres for Puccini Studies

Founded in 1996 in Lucca, the Centro Studi Giacomo Puccini embraces a wide range of approaches to the study of Puccini's work.

In the USA, the American Center for Puccini Studies specializes in the presentation of unusual performing editions of composer's works and introduces many neglected or unknown Puccini pieces to the music loving public. It was founded in 2004 by a leading Puccini artist and scholar, Dr. Harry Dunstan.

Detailed information about both organizations exists on their websites.

Samples

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See also

Julian Budden; author on Puccini, and sometime President of Centro Studi di Giacomo Puccini

Ferdinando Fontana; librettist for Puccini's first two operas

Festival Puccini; the annual Festival of Puccini's operas in Torre del Lago.

References

;Notes

;Bibliography

Ashbrook W. & Powers H. Puccini's Turandot:The End of the Great Tradition, Princeton Univ. Press, 1991

Carner, Mosco, Puccini:A Critical Biography, Alfred Knopf, 1959

Keolker, James, "Last Acts, The Operas of Puccini and His Italian Contemporaries", 2001.

Leone, Giuseppe & Roberto Zambonini, "Puccini e le "more" di Silone: viaggio poetico musicale fra "soavi fanciulle" e coraggiose eroine", Malgrate (Lc), 27 August 2009.

Svejda, Jim. The Record Shelf Guide to the Classical Repertoire, 1990 ISBN 1559580518

External links

Giacomo Puccini at w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de San Diego Opera's Operapaedia at www.operapaedia.org

Centro Studi di Giacomo Puccini

American Center for Puccini Studies

Festival Puccini e la sua Lucca

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Giacomo Puccini

Puccini cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.

Manon Lescaut MP3 Creative Commons Recording

Puccini's music in movies

Free MP3 Puccini's operas

Puccini's Public Domain Recordings

Category:1858 births Category:1924 deaths Category:20th-century classical composers Category:Italian composers Category:Opera composers Category:People from Lucca Category:Romantic composers Category:Deaths from esophageal cancer Category:Cancer deaths in Belgium Category:Milan Conservatory alumni

Maria Callas () (December 2, 1923September 16, 1977) was an American-born Greek soprano and one of the most renowned opera singers of the 20th century. She combined an impressive bel canto technique, a wide-ranging voice, and great dramatic gifts. An extremely versatile singer, her repertoire ranged from classical opera seria to the bel canto operas of Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini; further, to the works of Verdi and Puccini; and, in her early career, to the music dramas of Wagner. Her remarkable musical and dramatic talents led to her being hailed as La Divina.

Born in New York City and raised by an overbearing mother, she received her musical education in Greece and established her career in Italy. Forced to deal with the exigencies of wartime poverty and with myopia that left her nearly blind on stage, she endured struggles and scandal over the course of her career. She turned herself from a heavy woman into a svelte and glamorous one after a mid-career weight loss, which might have contributed to her vocal decline and the premature end of her career. The press exulted in publicizing Callas's allegedly temperamental behavior, her supposed rivalry with Renata Tebaldi, and her love affair with Aristotle Onassis. Her dramatic life and personal tragedy have often overshadowed Callas the artist in the popular press. However, her artistic achievements were such that Leonard Bernstein called her "The Bible of opera", and her influence so enduring that, in 2006, Opera News wrote of her: "Nearly thirty years after her death, she's still the definition of the diva as artist—and still one of classical music's best-selling vocalists."

Early life

Family life, childhood and move to Greece

According to her birth certificate, Maria Callas was born Sophia Cecelia Kalos at Flower Hospital (now the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center), at 1249 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, on December 2, 1923 to Greek parents George Kalogeropoulos and Evangelia "Litsa" (sometimes "Litza") Dimitriadou, though she was christened Anna Maria Sofia Cecilia Kalogeropoulou – the genitive of the patronymic Kalogeropoulos – (). Callas's father had shortened the surname Kalogeropoulos first to "Kalos" and subsequently to "Callas" in order to make it more manageable. The marriage continued to deteriorate and in 1937 Evangelia decided to return to Athens with her two daughters.

In 1957, she told Norman Ross, "Children should have a wonderful childhood. I have not had it – I wish I had." On the other hand, biographer Pestalis-Diomidis asserts that it was actually Evangelia's hateful treatment of George in front of their young children which led to resentment and dislike on Callas's part. However, when interviewed by Pierre Desgraupes on the French program L'Invitee Du Dimanche, Callas attributed the development of her chest voice not to Trivella, but to her next teacher, the well-known Spanish coloratura soprano Elvira de Hidalgo.

Callas studied with Trivella for two years before her mother secured another audition at the Athens Conservatoire with de Hidalgo. Callas auditioned with "Ocean, Thou Mighty Monster." De Hidalgo recalled hearing "tempestuous, extravagant cascades of sounds, as yet uncontrolled but full of drama and emotion". Callas herself said that she would go to "the conservatoire at 10 in the morning and leave with the last pupil ... devouring music" for 10 hours a day. When asked by her teacher why she did this, her answer was that even "with the least talented pupil, he can teach you something that you, the most talented, might not be able to do."

Early operatic career in Greece

After several appearances as a student, Callas began appearing in secondary roles at the Greek National Opera. De Hidalgo was instrumental in securing roles for her, allowing Callas to earn a small salary, which would help her and her family get through the difficult war years.

Main operatic career

After returning to the United States and reuniting with her father in September 1945, Callas made the round of auditions. Subsequently he recommended Callas to retired tenor and impresario Giovanni Zenatello. During her audition, Zenatello became so excited that he jumped up and joined Callas in the Act 4 duet. She was engaged to sing the role of Brünnhilde in Die Walküre at the Teatro la Fenice, when Margherita Carosio, who was engaged to sing Elvira in I puritani in the same theater, fell ill. Unable to find a replacement for Carosio, Maestro Serafin told Callas that she would be singing Elvira in six days; when Callas protested that she not only did not know the role, but also had three more Brünnhildes to sing, he told her "I guarantee that you can." Franco Zeffirelli recalled, "What she did in Venice was really incredible. You need to be familiar with opera to realize the enormity of her achievement. It was as if someone asked Birgit Nilsson, who is famous for her great Wagnerian voice, to substitute overnight for Beverly Sills, who is one of the great coloratura sopranos of our time." and he directed her in lavish new productions of La vestale, La traviata, La sonnambula, Anna Bolena, and Iphigénie en Tauride. Callas was notably instrumental in arranging Franco Corelli's debut at La Scala in 1954, where he sang Licinio in Spontini's La vestale opposite Callas's Julia. The two had sung together for the first time the year previously in Rome in a production of Norma. Anthony Tommasini wrote that Corelli had "earned great respect from the fearsomely demanding Callas, who in Mr. Corelli finally had someone with whom she could act." The two collaborated several more times at La Scala, singing opposite each other in productions of Fedora (1956), Il pirata (1958) and Poliuto (1960). Their partnership continued throughout the rest of Callas's career.

Callas made her American debut in Chicago in 1954, and "with the Callas Norma, Lyric Opera of Chicago was born." Her Metropolitan Opera debut, opening the Met's seventy-second season on October 29, 1956 was again with Norma, but was preceded with an unflattering cover story in Time magazine which rehashed all of the Callas clichés, including her temper, her supposed rivalry with Renata Tebaldi, and especially her difficult relationship with her mother. She further solidified this company's standing when, in 1958, she gave "a towering performance as Violetta in La Traviata and that same year, in her only American performances of Medea, gave an interpretation of the title role worthy of Euripides."

In 1958 a feud with Rudolf Bing led to Callas's Metropolitan Opera contract being cancelled. Impresario Allen Oxenburg realised that this situation provided him with an opportunity to hire Callas for his own company, the American Opera Society, and he accordingly approached Callas with a contract to perform Imogene in Il pirata. She accepted and sang the role in a January 1959 performance that according to opera critic Allan Kozinn "quickly became legendary in operatic circles". Bing and Callas later reconciled their differences and she returned to the house in 1965 to sing the title role in two performances as Tosca opposite Franco Corelli as Cavaradossi for one performance (March 19, 1965) and Richard Tucker (March 25, 1965) with Tito Gobbi as Scarpia for her final performances at the Met.

In 1952, she made her London debut at the Royal Opera House in Norma with veteran mezzo soprano Ebe Stignani as Adalgisa, a performance which survives on record and also features the young Joan Sutherland in the small role of Clotilde. In 1968, Callas told Edward Downes that during her initial performances in Cherubini's Medea in May 1953, she realized that she needed a leaner face and figure to do dramatic justice to this as well as the other roles she was undertaking. She adds,

I was getting so heavy that even my vocalizing was getting heavy. I was tiring myself, I was perspiring too much, and I was really working too hard. And I wasn't really well, as in health; I couldn't move freely. And then I was tired of playing a game, for instance playing this beautiful young woman, and I was heavy and uncomfortable to move around. In any case, it was uncomfortable and I didn't like it. So I felt now if I'm going to do things right—I've studied all my life to put things right musically, so why don't I diet and put myself into a certain condition where I'm presentable. Various rumors spread regarding her weight loss method; one had her swallowing a tapeworm, while Rome's Pantanella Mills pasta company claimed she lost weight by eating their "physiologic pasta", prompting Callas to file a lawsuit. Walter Legge stated that Callas possessed that most essential ingredient for a great singer: an instantly recognizable voice. During "The Callas Debate", Italian critic Rodolfo Celletti stated, "The timbre of Callas's voice, considered purely as sound, was essentially ugly: it was a thin sound, which gave the impression of dryness, of aridity. It lacked those elements which, in a singer's jargon, are described as velvet and varnish... yet I really believe that part of her appeal was precisely due to this fact. Why? Because for all its natural lack of varnish, velvet and richness, this voice could acquire such distinctive colours and timbres as to be unforgettable." However, in his review of Callas's 1951 live recording of I vespri siciliani, Ira Siff writes, "Accepted wisdom tells us that Callas possessed, even early on, a flawed voice, unattractive by conventional standards — an instrument that signaled from the beginning vocal problems to come. Yet listen to her entrance in this performance and one encounters a rich, spinning sound, ravishing by any standard, capable of delicate dynamic nuance. High notes are free of wobble, chest tones unforced, and the middle register displays none of the "bottled" quality that became more and more pronounced as Callas matured."

Nicola Rossi-Lemeni relates that Callas's mentor Tullio Serafin used to refer to her as "Una grande vociaccia"; he continues, "Vociaccia is a little bit pejorative—it means an ugly voice—but grande means a big voice, a great voice. A great ugly voice, in a way." Callas herself did not like the sound of her own voice; in one of her last interviews, answering whether or not she was able to listen to her own voice, she replies,

Yes, but I don't like it. I have to do it, but I don't like it at all because I don't like the kind of voice I have. I really hate listening to myself! The first time I listened to a recording of my singing was when we were recording San Giovanni Battista by Stradella in a church in Perugia in 1949. They made me listen to the tape and I cried my eyes out. I wanted to stop everything, to give up singing... Also now even though I don't like my voice, I've become able to accept it and to be detached and objective about it so I can say, "Oh, that was really well sung," or "It was nearly perfect."

Maestro Carlo Maria Giulini has described the appeal of Callas's voice:

It is very difficult to speak of the voice of Callas. Her voice was a very special instrument. Something happens sometimes with string instruments—violin, viola, cello—where the first moment you listen to the sound of this instrument, the first feeling is a bit strange sometimes. But after just a few minutes, when you get used to, when you become friends with this kind of sound, then the sound becomes a magical quality. This was Callas. On the other hand, music critic John Ardoin has argued that Callas was the reincarnation of the nineteenth century soprano sfogato or "unlimited soprano", a throwback to Maria Malibran and Giuditta Pasta, for whom many of the famous bel canto operas were written. He avers that like Pasta and Malibran, Callas was a natural mezzo-soprano whose range was extended through training and willpower, resulting in a voice which "lacked the homogeneous color and evenness of scale once so prized in singing. There were unruly sections of their voices never fully under control. Many who heard Pasta, for example, remarked that her uppermost notes seemed produced by ventriloquism, a charge which would later be made against Callas".

Vocal size and range

Regarding the sheer size of Callas's instrument, Celletti says, "Her voice was penetrating. The volume as such was average: neither small nor powerful. But the penetration, allied to this incisive quality (which bordered on the ugly because it frequently contained an element of harshness) ensured that her voice could be clearly heard anywhere in the auditorium." In his book, Michael Scott makes the distinction that whereas Callas's pre-1954 voice was a "dramatic soprano with an exceptional top", after the weight loss, it became, as one Chicago critic described the voice in Lucia, however, this claim is refuted by John Ardoin's review of the live recording of the performance as well as by the review of the recording in Opera News, both of which refer to the note as a high E-natural. For Italian soprano Renata Tebaldi, "the most fantastic thing was the possibility for her to sing the soprano coloratura with this big voice! This was something really special. Fantastic absolutely!" she considered herself first and foremost "a musician, that is, the first instrument of the orchestra." Maestro Victor de Sabata confided to Walter Legge, "If the public could understand, as we do, how deeply and utterly musical Callas is, they would be stunned", Callas possessed an innate architectural sense of line-proportion

In addition to her musical skills, Callas had a particular gift for language and the use of language in music. Soprano Martina Arroyo states, "What interested me most was how she gave the runs and the cadenzas words. That always floored me. I always felt I heard her saying something – it was never just singing notes. That alone is an art." Callas was not, however, a realistic or verismo style actress: Mathew Gurewitsch adds,

In fact the essence of her art was refinement. The term seems odd for a performer whose imagination and means of expression were so prodigious. She was eminently capable of the grand gesture; still, judging strictly from the evidence of her recordings, we know (and her few existing film clips confirm) that her power flowed not from excess but from unbroken concentration, unfaltering truth in the moment. It flowed also from irreproachable musicianship. People say that Callas would not hesitate to distort a vocal line for dramatic effect. In the throes of operatic passion plenty of singers snarl, growl, whine, and shriek. Callas was not one of them. She found all she needed in the notes.

Ewa Podles likewise stated that "It's enough to hear her, I’m positive! Because she could say everything only with her voice! I can imagine everything, I can see everything in front of my eye." Sandro Sequi recalls, "She was never in a hurry. Everything was very paced, proportioned, classical, precise... She was extremely powerful but extremely stylized. Her gestures were not many... I don't think she did more than 20 gestures in a performance. But she was capable of standing 10 minutes without moving a hand or finger, compelling everyone to look at her." However, witnesses to the interview stated that Callas only said "champagne with cognac", and it was a bystander who quipped, "No, with Coca-Cola", but the Time reporter attributed the latter comment to Callas.

Callas visited Tebaldi after a performance of Adriana Lecouvreur at the Met in the late 1960s, and the two were reunited. In 1978, Tebaldi spoke warmly of her late colleague and summarized this rivalry:

This rivality was really building from the people of the newspapers and the fans. But I think it was very good for both of us, because the publicity was so big and it created a very big interest about me and Maria and was very good in the end. But I don’t know why they put this kind of rivality, because the voice was very different. She was really something unusual. And I remember that I was very young artist too, and I stayed near the radio every time that I know that there was something on radio by Maria.

Louise Caselotti, who worked with Callas in 1946 and 1947, prior to her Italian debut, felt that it was not the heavy roles that hurt Callas's voice, but the lighter ones.

In the same vein, Joan Sutherland, who heard Callas throughout the 1950s, said in a BBC interview,

[Hearing Callas in Norma in 1952] was a shock, a wonderful shock. You just got shivers up and down the spine. It was a bigger sound in those earlier performances, before she lost weight. I think she tried very hard to recreate the sort of “fatness” of the sound which she had when she was as fat as she was. But when she lost the weight, she couldn’t seem to sustain the great sound that she had made, and the body seemed to be too frail to support that sound that she was making. Oh, but it was oh so exciting. It was thrilling. I don’t think that anyone who heard Callas after 1955 really heard the Callas voice.

Michael Scott has proposed that Callas's loss of strength and breath support was directly caused by her rapid and progressive weight-loss, This continual change in posture has been cited as visual proof of a progressive loss of breath support. It is also at this time that unsteady top notes first begin to appear.

There were others, however, who felt that the voice had benefitted from the weight loss. Of her performance of Norma in Chicago in 1954, Claudia Cassidy would write, "there is a slight unsteadiness in some of the sustained upper notes. but to me her voice is more beautiful in color, more even through the range, than it used to be".

Callas herself attributed her problems to a loss of confidence brought about by a loss of breath support, even though she does not make the connection between her weight and her breath support. In an April 1977 interview with journalist Philippe Caloni, she stated,

"My best recordings were made when I was skinny. and I say skinny, not slim, because I worked a lot and couldn't gain weight back; I became even too skinny. . . I had my greatest successes--Lucia, Sonnambula, Medea, Anna Bolena--when I was skinny as a nail. Even for my first time here in Paris in 1958 when the show was broadcast through Eurovision, I was skinny. Really skinny."

And shortly before her death, Callas confided her own thoughts on her vocal problems to Peter Dragadze:

I never lost my voice, but I lost strength in my diaphragm. ... Because of those organic complaints, I lost my courage and boldness. My vocal cords were and still are in excellent condition, but my 'sound boxes' have not been working well even though I have been to all the doctors. The result was that I overstrained my voice, and that caused it to wobble. (Gente, October 1, 1977) The scandal became notorious as the "Rome Walkout". Callas brought a lawsuit against the Rome Opera House, but by the time the case was settled thirteen years later and the Rome Opera was found to be at fault for having refused to provide an understudy,

Bing would later say that Callas was the most difficult artist he ever worked with, "because she was so much more intelligent. Other artists, you could get around. But Callas you could not get around. She knew exactly what she wanted, and why she wanted it." In his book about his wife, Meneghini states categorically that Maria Callas was unable to bear children. As well, various sources dismiss Gage's claim, as they note that the birth certificates Gage used to prove of this "secret child" were issued in 1998, twenty-one years after Callas's death. Still other sources claim that Callas had at least one abortion while involved with Onassis. The relationship ended nine years later in 1968, when Onassis left Callas in favour of Jacqueline Kennedy. However, the Onassis family's private secretary, Kiki, writes in her memoir that even while Aristotle was with Jackie, he frequently met up with Maria in Paris, where they resumed what had now become a clandestine affair.

Legacy

In late 2004, opera and film director Franco Zeffirelli made what many consider a bizarre claim that Callas may have been murdered by her confidant, Greek pianist Vasso Devetzi, in order to gain control of Callas's United States $9,000,000 estate. A more likely explanation is that Callas's death was due to heart failure brought on by (possibly unintentional) overuse of Mandrax (methaqualone), a sleeping aid.

According to biographer Stelios Galatopoulos, Devetzi insinuated herself into Callas's trust and acted virtually as her agent. This claim is corroborated by Iakintha (Jackie) Callas in her book Sisters, wherein she asserts that Devetzi conned Maria out of control of half of her estate, while promising to establish the Maria Callas Foundation to provide scholarships for young singers. After hundreds of thousands of dollars had allegedly vanished, Devetzi finally did establish the foundation.

In 2002, filmmaker Zeffirelli produced and directed a film in Callas's memory. Callas Forever was a highly fictionalized motion picture in which Callas was played by Fanny Ardant. It depicted the last months of Callas's life, when she was seduced into the making of a movie of Carmen, lip-synching to her 1964 recording of that opera.

In 2007, Callas was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In the same year, she was voted the greatest soprano of all time by BBC Music Magazine.

The 30th anniversary of the death of Maria Callas was selected as main motif for a high value euro collectors' coins; the €10 Greek Maria Callas commemorative coin, minted in 2007. Her image is shown in the obverse of the coin, while on the reverse the National Emblem of Greece with her signature is depicted.

On December 2, 2008, on the 85th anniversary of Callas's birth, a group of Greek and Italian officials unveiled a plaque in her honor at Flower Hospital (now the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center) where she was born. Made of Carrara marble and engraved in Italy, the plaque reads, "Maria Callas was born in this hospital on December 2, 1923. These halls heard for the first time the musical notes of her voice, a voice which has conquered the world. To this great interpreter of universal language of music, with gratitude."

Gus Van Sant's 2008 movie Milk features selected recordings of Callas' rendition of Tosca, which, it is suggested, was an opera of which Harvey Milk was particularly fond. Similarly, Jonathan Demme's 1993 movie Philadelphia features a recording by Callas.

A number of musical artists including Linda Ronstadt, Patti Smith and Emmylou Harris have mentioned Callas as a great musical influence, and some have paid tribute to Callas in their own music:

R.E.M. mention Callas in their song "E-Bow the Letter" from the album New Adventures in Hi-Fi.

Enigma named a song which featured samples of Callas's voice, on their 1991 album MCMXC a.D., "Callas Went Away".

Buffalo Tom's 2007 album Three Easy Pieces contains the song "C.C. and Callas", which appears to be about songwriter Chris Colbourn's reflections on Callas.

La Diva, on Celine Dion's 2007 French language album D'elles is about Maria Callas. The track samples the 1956 recording of La Boheme.

Singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright mentions Callas in his song "Beauty Mark", from his album Rufus Wainwright. Rufus is known to be an opera fan, particularly passionate about Callas's work. In an interview to the Spanish newspaper El País, he declared that one of the things anyone should do at least once in a lifetime was to listen to a Maria Callas album after a night out, if possible during sunrise. On Jonathan Ross' Radio 2 show he stated that Lord Harewood's interview of Callas is part of the inspiration for his opera Prima Donna.

Jason Mraz lists her performance of "O mio babbino caro" as a romantic musical influence for him.

Ben Sollee mentions her in his song "Mute with a Bullhorn."

Band Faithless sampled her voice on the intro to one of their songs on Reverence, "Drifting Away".

The Mountain Goats mention Callas in their song "Horseradish Road" from the album The Coroner's Gambit.

Notable recordings

All recordings are in mono unless otherwise indicated. Live performances are typically available on multiple labels.

Verdi, Nabucco, conducted by Vittorio Gui, live performance, Napoli, 20 December 1949

Verdi, Il trovatore, conducted by Guido Picco, live performance, Mexico City, June 20, 1950

Verdi, Aida, conducted by Oliviero De Fabritiis, live performance, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, July 3, 1951

Ponchielli, La Gioconda, conducted by Antonino Votto, studio recording for Fonit Cetra, September 1952

Bellini, Norma, conducted by Vittorio Gui, live performance, Covent Garden, London, November 18, 1952

Verdi, Macbeth, conducted by Victor de Sabata, live performance, La Scala, Milan, December 7, 1952

Bellini, I puritani, conducted by Tullio Serafin, studio recording for EMI, March–April 1953

Mascagni, Cavalleria rusticana, conducted by Tullio Serafin, studio recording for EMI, August 1953

Puccini, Tosca, conducted by Victor de Sabata, studio recording for EMI, August 1953.

Verdi, La traviata, conducted by Gabriele Santini, studio recording for Fonit Cetra, September 1953

Cherubini, Medea, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, live performance, La Scala, Milan, December 10, 1953

Leoncavallo, Pagliacci, conducted by Tullio Serafin, studio recording for EMI, June 1954

Spontini, La vestale, conducted by Antonino Votto, live performance, La Scala, Milan, December 7, 1954

Verdi, La traviata, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, live performance, La Scala, Milan, May 28, 1955

Puccini, Madama Butterfly, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, studio recording for EMI, August 1955

Verdi, Aida, conducted by Tullio Serafin, studio recording for EMI, August 1955

Verdi, Rigoletto, conducted by Tullio Serafin, studio recording for EMI, September 1955

Donizetti, Lucia di Lammermoor, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, live performance, Berlin, September 29, 1955

Bellini, Norma, conducted by Antonino Votto, live performance, La Scala, Milan, December 7, 1955.

Verdi, Il trovatore, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, studio recording for EMI, August 1956

Puccini, La bohème, conducted by Antonino Votto, studio recording for EMI, August–September 1956. Like her later recording of Carmen, this was her only performance of the complete opera, as she never appeared onstage in it.

Verdi, Un ballo in maschera, conducted by Antonino Votto, studio recording for EMI, September 1956

Rossini, The Barber of Seville, conducted by Alceo Galliera, studio recording for EMI in stereo, February 1957

Bellini, La sonnambula, conducted by Antonino Votto, studio recording for EMI, March 1957

Donizetti, Anna Bolena, conducted by Gianandrea Gavazzeni, live performance, La Scala, Milan, April 14, 1957

Bellini, La sonnambula, conducted by Antonino Votto, live performance, Cologne, July 4, 1957

Puccini, Turandot, conducted by Tullio Serafin, studio recording for EMI, July 1957

Cherubini, Medea, conducted by Tullio Serafin, studio recording for Ricordi in stereo, September 1957

Verdi, Un ballo in maschera, conducted by Gianandrea Gavazzeni, live performance, La Scala, Milan, December 7, 1957

Verdi, La traviata, conducted by Franco Ghione, live performance, Lisbon, March 27, 1958

Mad Scenes (excerpts from Anna Bolena, Bellini's Il pirata and Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet), conducted by Nicola Rescigno, studio recording for EMI in stereo, September 1958

Cherubini, Medea conducted by Nicola Rescigno, live performance at the Dallas Civic Opera in 1958; considered to be Callas's most notable performance of Cherubini's opera.

Ponchielli, La Gioconda, conducted by Antonino Votto, studio recording for EMI in stereo, September 1959

Puccini, Tosca, conducted by Carlo Felice Cillario, live performance, London, January 1964

Bizet, Carmen, conducted by Georges Prêtre, studio recording for EMI in stereo, 1964. It is her only performance of the role, and her only performance of the complete opera; she never appeared in it onstage. The recording used the recitatives added after Bizet's death. Callas's performance caused critic Harold C. Schonberg to speculate in his book The Glorious Ones that Callas perhaps should have sung mezzo roles instead of simply soprano ones.

Puccini, Tosca, conducted by Georges Prêtre, studio recording for EMI in stereo, December 1964.

References

In "All love (Solo amore)" cd - June 2010,Santeramo Musica Release - by Giovanni Tangorra composer, a track her dedicated: "Rainha Maria (Onassis story)": singer Marika Spadafino, guitar Nicola Albano

Bibliography

External links

Divina Callas's official website

Maria Callas International Club

German Maria Callas Club

Newsreel on Maria Callas' "Rome Walkout"

International Jose Guillermo Carrillo Foundation

A very extensive and accurate list of all her performances and recordings by Frank Hamilton

Discography (Capon's Lists of Opera Recordings)

Music in MP3 format

Visit Maria Callas at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris

Maria Callas in an excerpt from Tosca (1956).

"Living and Dying for Art and Love" Free documentary on her last performance(ClassicalTV)

Eva Mendes to play Maria Callas in film based on "Greek Fire"

The YouTube channel dedicated to Maria Callas and her art

Maria Callas: Voice Of Perfect Imperfection by NPR

Articles on Callas Indepth articles discussing Callas's recorded legacy by Dr. Robert E. Seletsky and Milan Petkovic.

Category:1923 births Category:1977 deaths Category:Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in France Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Greek artists Category:Greek female singers Category:Greek opera singers Category:Greek sopranos Category:Operatic sopranos

Vittorio Grigolo (b. February 19, 1977, Arezzo, Italy) is an Italian singer. Grigolo was born in Arezzo, but raised in Rome. He began singing by the age of four. When he was nine years old he accompanied his mother to have her eyes tested and, hearing someone singing from another room, he spontaneously began his own rendition of "Ave Maria." The singer, the optician's father, was so impressed that he insisted Grigolo have an audition for the Sistine Chapel Choir as soon as possible. Young Vittorio was chosen to become part of Sistine Chapel Choir as a soloist. He then studied for five years at the Schola Puerorum at the Sistine Chapel.

At age 13 he played the Pastorello in a performance of Tosca at Rome's opera house, where he shared the stage with Pavarotti; becoming known as 'Il Pavarottino'. When 18, Vittorio joined the Vienna Opera Company. He became the youngest man to perform in Milan's La Scala at age 23. He is the first Italian male to be excused compulsory military service on account of his promising career; and also raced Pre-3000 Formula cars for a while until an accident limited his opportunities in this field.

Grigolo sang in performances of The Barber of Seville, La traviata, Così fan tutte, Faust, and many others before taking the life-changing role as Tony in West Side Story. Sharing the stage with James Gandolfini, he saw the potential of opera to reach a wider audience.

Debut album

Grigolo recorded a solo album, In the Hands of Love, in the pop/opera genre he calls "Popera". The Classical Advisory Panel of England kept the album out of the classical charts, defining it as precisely 35.7 percent classical (a minimum of 60 percent is required for entry in the classical charts). In the Hands of Love debuted in the Top Ten of the U.K. pop charts instead, entering at number 6 and setting a new sales record. The album contains renditions of Keane's "Bedshaped", "Maria" from West Side Story, Stevie Wonder's "All in Love Is Fair", and a duet with Katherine Jenkins titled "You Are My Miracle".

The album was launched in the US in September 2006 titled simply Vittorio. The US version of the duet "You Are My Miracle" features Nicole Scherzinger of The Pussycat Dolls. The album was released in Australia on October 23, 2006.

Grigolo and Hayley Westenra, as Tony and Maria, recorded West Side Story in conjunction with the Leonard Bernstein Foundation, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of this great American musical. West Side Story entered the UK Classic FM Chart at number 1.

On October 1, 2010 He released his Second studio album, "The Italian Tenor" according to his website.

Awards and nominations

Awards

The European Commission of the EU granted Grigolo and Romano Musumarra a European Border Breakers Award, along with the record company, authors and publishers, for recording the highest sales for a debut album in 2006 within the European Union, but outside of its country of production.

The Capri/Hollywood Film Festival granted Grigolo a Capri Exploit Music Award. The award ceremony took place on January 1, 2008, on the island of Capri, where Grigolo also performed a tribute to Leonard Bernstein.

Nominations

Grammy Award 2008 Best Musical Show Album - West Side Story

Live appearances

In April 2006 Grigolo made his debut with a concert held at the Royal Albert Hall in London, he returned to the RAH to appear alongside such singers as Plácido Domingo and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, at the 'Classical Brit Awards' evening, performing arias taken from his repertoire.

In July 2006 Grigolo performed "Bedshaped" at the Miss Universe 2006 evening gown competition in the Los Angeles, USA.

In September 2006 Grigolo appeared alongside Lionel Richie at 'Proms in the Park' London, England.

In September 2006 Grigolo performed at the Macy's Passport fashion and charity events in the US, where he was the only musical entertainment, performing in front of a combined audience of 10,000.

Also in September 2006 Grigolo appeared on the US television series Dancing with the Stars.

Vittorio will start a promotional tour of Australia in October 2006.

On October 16, 2006, Grigolo appeared in ABC's reality TV series The Bachelor.

On November 14, 2006, Grigolo appeared on Dancing with the Stars in Australia.

October 2007 Grigolo performed "Nessun Dorma" at the NIAF 32nd Gala Dinner, Washington, D.C., in tribute to Luciano Pavarotti.

Discography

In the Hands of Love (2006)

Westside Story (2007)

The Italian Tenor (2010)

DVD

Recorded at Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli, Italy. A live performance of tracks from his album, as well as a few additional pieces. The DVD was recorded specifically for the Great Performances series on PBS TV USA.

Grigolo plays Cassio in Giuseppe Verdi Otello recorded at Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona 2006

Latest opera/classical appearances

'Camillo de Rossillon' in La vedova allegra at Roma Opera House, Rome December 2007

'Rodolfo' in La bohème at the Kennedy Center Opera House, Washington, D.C. September 2007 and at Zurich Opera House, Oct/Nov 2009.

Stabat Mater by Rossini at Sydney Opera House Australia, May 2007

'Alfredo' in La traviata at Roma Opera Theatre April 2007, at Théâtre Antique d'Orange, Les Chorégies d'Orange, 11 & 15 July 2009, at La Fenice Sept 2009, Deutsche Oper Berlin Sept 2009/March 2010

'Cassio' in Otello at the Liceu, Barcelona Feb 2006.

'Il Duca de Mantova' in Rigoletto at Hamburg State Opera, Sept/Oct 2005.

'Don Carlos' in Don Carlos at Geneva Opera House, June 2008.

'Edgardo' in Lucia di Lammermoor at Zurich Opera House, Sept 2008.

'Rodolfo' in La bohème at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, October 2010. It was his debut with the company.

'Corrado' in Il corsaro at Zurich Opera House, Nov 2009/Jan 2010.

'Hoffmann' in Les contes d'Hoffmann at Zurich Opera House, March/April 2010.

Repertory

Verdi: Messa da Requiem/Falstaff/Rigoletto/La traviata/Il corsaro

Donizetti: L'elisir d'amore/Don Sebastiano/Don Pasquale/Favorita/La fille du régiment/Lucia di Lammermoor

Bellini: I Puritani/I Capuleti e i Montecchi

Zandonai: Francesca da Rimini (Malatestino)

Puccini: La Rondine/La bohème/Gianni Schicchi

Gounod: Faust

Rossini: Petite Messe Solemnelle/Stabat Mater

Mozart: Requiem/Don Giovanni/Idomeneo/Così fan tutte

Cilea: L’Arlesiana

Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier

Massenet: Werther

Mascagni: Amico Fritz

Léo Delibes: ''Lakmé

Bernstein: Candide/West Side Story

Franz Lehár: it. La Vedova Allegra aka (The Merry Widow / Die lustige Witwe'')

Jacques Offenbach: Les contes d'Hoffmann

External links

Official site

Italian version

Popera site

Video from Traviata (Roma Opera Theatre, 2007)

Vittorio Grigolo section on ClassicalX

Vittorio Grigolo interview with C Music TV

Category:1977 births Category:Living people Category:Italian opera singers Category:Operatic tenors Category:Opera crossover singers

Shirley Verrett (May 31, 1931 – November 5, 2010) was an American operatic mezzo-soprano who successfully transitioned into soprano roles i.e. soprano sfogato. Verrett enjoyed great fame from the late 1960s through the 1990s, particularly well-known for singing the works of Verdi and Donizetti.

Early life and education

Born into an African-American family of devout Seventh-day Adventists in New Orleans, Louisiana, Verrett was raised in Los Angeles, California. She sang in church and showed early musical abilities, but initially a singing career was frowned upon by her family. Later Verrett went on to study with Anna Fitziu and with Marion Szekely Freschl at the Juilliard School in New York. In 1961 she won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.

International career

In 1957, Verrett made her operatic debut in Britten's The Rape of Lucretia. In 1958, she made her New York City Opera debut as Irina in Kurt Weill's Lost in the Stars. In 1959, she made her European debut in Cologne, Germany in Nabokov's Rasputins Tod. In 1962, she received critical acclaim for her Carmen in Spoleto, and repeated the role at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1963, and at the NY City Opera in 1964 (opposite Richard Cassilly and Norman Treigle). Verrett first appeared at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1966 as Ulrica in Un ballo in maschera.

She appeared in the first concert ever televised from Lincoln Center in 1962, and also appeared that year in the first of the Leonard Bernstein Young People's Concerts ever televised from that venue, in what is now Avery Fisher Hall.

She made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1968, with Carmen, and at La Scala in 1969 in Samson and Dalila. Verrett's mezzo roles included Cassandra and Didon (Berlioz's Les Troyens)-including the Met premiere, when she sang both roles in the same performance, Giuseppe Verdi's Ulrica, Amneris, Eboli, Azucena, Saint-Saëns' Dalila, Donizetti's Elisabetta I in "Maria Stuarda", Leonora in La favorita, Gluck's Orpheus, and Rossini's Neocles (L'assedio di Corinto) and Sinaide in Moïse. Many of these roles were recorded, either professionally or privately.

Beginning in the late 1970s she began to tackle soprano roles, including Selika in L'Africaine, Judith in Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle, Lady Macbeth Macbeth , Madame Lidoine in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites (Met1977), Tosca, Norma ( from Boston 1976 till Messina 1989), Aida (Boston 1980 and 1989), Desdemona (Otello) (1981), Leonore (Fidelio) (Met 1983), Iphigénie (1984-85), Alceste (1985), Médée (Cherubini) (1986).. Her Tosca was televised by PBS on Live from the Met in December of 1978, just six days before Christmas. She sang the role opposite the Cavaradossi of Luciano Pavarotti.

In 1990, Verrett sang Dido in Les Troyens at the inauguration of the Opéra Bastille in Paris, and added a new role at her repertoire: Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana in Sienna. In 1994, she made her Broadway debut in the Tony Award-winning revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater, playing Nettie Fowler.

In 1996 Verrett joined the faculty of the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance as a Professor of Voice and the James Earl Jones University Professor of Music. The preceding year at the National Opera Association Gala Banquet and Concert honoring Mattiwilda Dobbs, Todd Duncan, Camilla Williams and Robert McFerrin, Verrett said: "I'm always so happy when I can speak to young people because I remember those who were kind to me that didn't need to be. The first reason I came tonight was for the honorees because I needed to say this. The second reason I came was for you, the youth. These great people here were the trailblazers for me. I hope in my own way I did something to help your generation, and that you will help the next. This is the way it's supposed to be. You just keep passing that baton on!"

Autobiography

In 2003, Shirley Verrett published a memoir, I Never Walked Alone (ISBN 0-471-20991-0), in which she spoke frankly about the racism she encountered as a black person in the American classical music world. When the conductor Leopold Stokowski invited her to sing with the Houston Symphony in the early 1960s, he had to rescind his invitation when the orchestra board refused to accept a black soloist. Stokowski later made amends by giving her a prestigious date with the much better known Philadelphia Orchestra.

Death

Verrett died in Ann Arbor, Michigan on November 5, 2010 of heart failure after a long illness. She was 79 years old.

Notes and references

;See also

External links

Shirley Verrett's website

University of Michigan faculty page

Discography (Capon's Lists of Opera Recordings)

An appreciation

Highlights from Verrett's discography with analysis and discussion by F. Paul Driscoll

Category:1931 births Category:2010 deaths Category:African American singers Category:American female singers Category:American musical theatre actors Category:American opera singers Category:International House of New York alumni Category:Juilliard School of Music alumni Category:Operatic mezzo-sopranos Category:Writers from Louisiana Category:Writers from Michigan Category:People from New Orleans, Louisiana Category:University of Michigan faculty Category:Winners of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions Category:deaths from heart failure

Roberto Alagna (born 7 June 1963) is a French operatic tenor of Sicilian (Italian) descent. He was born in Clichy-sous-Bois, Seine-Saint-Denis, France.

Early years

Alagna was born outside of the city of Paris in 1963 to a family of Sicilian (Italian) immigrants . As a teenager, the young Alagna began busking and singing pop in Parisian cabarets for tips. Influenced primarily by the films of Mario Lanza, but also from recordings of many historic tenors, he then switched to opera, but remained largely self-taught.

Career

After winning the Luciano Pavarotti Voice Competition, Alagna made his professional debut in 1988 as Alfredo Germont in La Traviata with the Glyndebourne touring company. This led to many engagements throughout the smaller cities in France and Italy, mainly again as Alfredo, a role he would eventually sing over 150 times. His reputation grew and he was soon invited to sing at major theaters such as La Scala in 1990, Covent Garden in 1992 and the Metropolitan Opera as Rodolfo in 1996. His performances of Roméo in Roméo et Juliette by Charles Gounod at Covent Garden in 1994 (opposite Leontina Vaduva) catapulted him to international stardom.

Alagna opened the 2006/07 season at La Scala on 7 December 2006 in the new production of Aïda by Franco Zeffirelli. During the second performance on 10 December, Alagna, whose opening performance was considered ill-at-ease, was booed and whistled from the loggione (the least expensive seats at the very back of La Scala), and he walked off the stage. The tenor's reaction to his public criticism was denounced as immature and unprofessional by La Scala management and Zeffirelli, who said, “A professional should never behave in this way. Alagna is too sensitive, it is too easy to hurt his feelings. He does not know how to act like a true star.” The role of Radames was taken over successfully for the rest of the performance by his understudy Antonello Palombi, who entered on stage wearing jeans and a black shirt. In 2007 while at the Metropolitan Opera singing the role of Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly, Alagna replaced the indisposed Rolando Villazon as Romeo in Roméo et Juliette opposite Anna Netrebko for two performances in September and two performances in December. His wife had flown to New York to be with him for the September engagements, and as a result was fired from the Lyric Opera of Chicago for missing her rehearsal dates for La Bohème. Alagna was also engaged by the Metropolitan Opera at the last minute to cover for the indisposed Marco Berti in a 16 October 2007 performance of Aida. After the performance, the audience gave him a standing ovation. The December 15 performance of Roméo et Juliette starring Alagna and Netrebko was broadcast by the Met into 447 theaters worldwide in high definition and seen by about 97,000 people.

Personal life

Alagna's first wife, Florence Lancien, died of a brain tumor in 1994; they had one daughter, Ornella, who was born in 1992. In 1996 he married Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu. The couple have sung together often onstage and have made many recordings together both of duets and arias and complete operas. The two singers also starred in a film version of Puccini's Tosca directed by French film director Benoît Jacquot. In October 2009, Alagna said in an interview in Le Figaro that he and Angela Gheorghiu had separated. Following the separation, Gheorghiu declined to appear opposite him in Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera in December 2009.

References

Metropolitan Opera, Alagna, Roberto (Tenor), performance record from MetOpera database

External links

Reviews, articles, photos and future schedules from The Opera Critic

Discography at SonyBMG Masterworks

Concert photos

Roberto Alagna in an excerpt from Tosca.

Category:1963 births Category:Living people Category:People from Clichy-sous-Bois Category:French male singers Category:French opera singers Category:French tenors Category:Operatic tenors Category:French buskers Category:French people of Italian descent Category:French people of Sicilian descent

opening night.]] Renée Fleming (born February 14, 1959) is an American soprano specializing in opera and lieder. Fleming has a full lyric soprano voice.

Fleming has performed coloratura, lyric, and lighter spinto soprano repertoires. She has sung roles in Italian, German, French, Czech, and Russian, aside from her native English. She also speaks fluent German and French, along with limited Italian. Her signature roles include Countess Almaviva in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, Desdemona in Verdi's Otello, Violetta in Verdi's La traviata, the title role in Dvořák's Rusalka, the title role in Massenet's Manon, the title role in Massenet's Thaïs, the Marschallin in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, and the title role in Arabella.

A Richard Tucker Award winner, she regularly performs in opera houses and concert halls worldwide. In 2008 she was awarded the Swedish Polar Music Prize for her services in music. On December 9, 2010, the Lyric Opera of Chicago announced that she had been appointed to the newly created position of Creative Consultant for a period of five years, effective immediately.

Renowned conductor Sir Georg Solti said of Fleming, "In my long life, I have met maybe two sopranos with this quality of singing, the other was Renata Tebaldi." While at Juilliard she sang in roles with the Juilliard Opera Center, appearing as Musetta in Puccini's La bohème and the Wife in Menotti's Tamu-Tamu, among others.

Career

1980s to 1990s

Fleming first began performing professionally in smaller concerts and with small opera companies while still a graduate student at Juilliard. She sang frequently in the Musica Viva concert series sponsored by the New York Unitarian Church of All Souls during the 1980s. In 1984 she sang nine songs by Hugo Wolf in the world premiere of Eliot Feld's ballet Adieu, which she again performed in 1987 and 1989 at the Joyce Theater. In 1986 she sang her first major operatic role, Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, at the Salzburg Landestheater. Two years later she portrayed Thalie, Clarine and La Folie in Jean-Philippe Rameau's Platée with the Piccolo Teatro Dell Opera.

Fleming's first major break came in 1988 when she won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions at age 29. That same year she sang the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro in her debut with Houston Grand Opera. She reprised the role the following year in her debut at the Spoleto Festival. Also in 1989, Fleming made her debut with the New York City Opera as Mimi in La Bohème and her debut with the Royal Opera at Covent Garden as Dirce in Cherubini's Médée. She also was awarded a Richard Tucker Career Grant and won the George London Competition.

In 1990 she was once again honored by the Richard Tucker Music Foundation but this time with the highly coveted Richard Tucker Award. That same year she made her debut with Seattle Opera in her first portrayal of the title role in Rusalka, a role that she has since recorded and reprised at many of the world's great opera houses. She also sang for the 50th anniversary of the American Ballet Theatre in their production of Eliot Feld's Les Noces and returned to the New York City Opera to sing both the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro and Micaela in Bizet's Carmen. In addition, she sang the title role in Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia with the Opera Orchestra of New York.

In 1991, Fleming made her Metropolitan Opera and San Francisco Opera debut portraying Countess Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro. Fleming was originally not scheduled to make her Met debut until the next season, but ended up making it earlier than expected by stepping into replace Felicity Lott who had become ill. She returned to the Met later that year to sing Rosina in the world premiere of John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles. That same year she made her Carnegie Hall debut performing music by Ravel with the New York City Opera Orchestra, sang Rusalka with Houston Grand Opera, and made her debut at the Tanglewood Music Festival as Ilia in Mozart's Idomeneo with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

In 1992, Fleming made her debut with Grand Théâtre de Genève as Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte. She also sang the role of Anna in Boieldieu's La dame blanche at Carnegie Hall with the Opera Orchestra of New York and the role of Fortuna in Mozart's Il sogno di Scipione at Alice Tully Hall, as part of Lincoln Center's Festival of Mozart Operas in Concert.

In 1993, Fleming sang the role of Alaide in Bellini's La straniera with the Opera Orchestra of New York, made her debut at the Rossini Opera Festival in the title role of Rossini's Armida, and her debut with the Lyric Opera of Chicago in the title role of Carlisle Floyd's Susannah. She also gave her New York City solo recital debut at Alice Tully Hall to great acclaim. She also sang her first Pamina in Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera and performed Berg's Lulu with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and James Levine. She also sang the world premiere of Joan Tower's Fanfare with Pinchas Zukerman and the Aspen Chamber Symphony and the world premiere of John Kander's Letter From Sullivan Ballou at the Richard Tucker Awards ceremony.

In 1994, Fleming sang her first Desdemona in Verdi's Otello and her first Ellen Orford in Britten's Peter Grimes with the Metropolitan Opera. She also made her debut at the Glyndebourne Festival as the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro. She also performed the role of Madame de Tourvel in the world premiere of Conrad Susa's The Dangerous Liaisons and sang the role of Salome in Massenet's Hérodiade with the San Francisco Opera.

In 1995 Fleming portrayed the role of the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier with Houston Grand Opera, sang Hérodiade with the Opera Orchestra of New York at Carnegie Hall, and sang Rusalka with the San Francisco Opera. She also sang Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte with Solti at Royal Festival Hall and gave a lauded recital at the Morgan Library. She further signed an exclusive recording contract with the London/Decca label, making her the first American singer in 31 years to do so (Marilyn Horne was the last).

In 1996, Fleming sang the title role in Rossini's Armida and the role of Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte at the Met and performed the soprano solos in the Verdi Requiem with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. She also sang her first Marguerite in Gounod's Faust with Chicago Lyric Opera and sang the role of Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni with the Paris Opera at the reopening of the Palais Garnier with Sir Georg Solti. She was also chosen by Solti to be the first recipient of the Solti Prize, to be given to an outstanding younger singer. The award is given by the Académie du disque lyrique in a ceremony equivalent to the Grammy Awards. Fleming also made debut at the Bayreuth Festival as Eva in Wagner's Meistersinger. Her other performances that year included recitals at the Edinburgh International Festival and at Alice Tully Hall.

In 1997, Fleming portrayed the Marschallin in Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier and her first Manon at the Opéra Bastille, receiving glowing reviews. She reprised the role at the Metropolitan Opera along with singing Marguerite in Faust and Rusalka. She also performed in concert twice with the New York Philharmonic, first under the baton of Zubin Mehta performing a selection of opera arias, and second singing Mozart's Exsultate Jubilate and three songs of Richard Strauss with Kurt Masur. She also performed at the Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and performed Samuel Barber's with the Orchestra of St. Luke's under André Previn. She gave several recitals as well at such notable places as the Salzburg Festival.

In 1998, Fleming sang the title role in Richard Strauss' Arabella with Houston Grand Opera and the Countess with Lyric Opera of Chicago. She sang the title role in Carlisle Floyd's Susannah and Countess Almaviva in a landmark production of Le nozze di Figaro at the Met; the Mozart production also starred Cecilia Bartoli, Susanne Mentzer, Dwayne Croft, Danielle de Niese, and Bryn Terfel and was broadcast on PBS' Great Performances. She made her Carnegie Hall recital debut. She sang Richard Strauss's Death and Transfiguration and Four Last Songs with Claudio Abbado and the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra at the Salzburg Festival. She originated the roles of Blanche DuBois in the world première André Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire with the San Francisco Opera. Fleming also performed Strauss' Four Last Songs with the Berlin Philharmonic. In what Fleming has described as "the worst night of her operatic life" she was roundly booed on the opening night of Lucretia Borgia by Donizetti in July, 1998 at La Scala.

In 1999, Fleming appeared at the Bavarian State Opera as the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier. She returned to Carnegie Hall to great success with a concert of German lieder. She also performed in recital with André Previn and made her debut at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival. She also won a Grammy Award for her CD ''The Beautiful Voice. She also performed the title role in Handel's Alcina with Les Arts Florissants and conductor William Christie and with the Lyric Opera of Chicago. She also sang the title role in Charpentier's Louise with San Francisco Opera and Théâtre du Capitole. Fleming closed out the year by performing for President Bill Clinton at the White House for a Christmas celebration.

2000s

In 2000, Fleming appeared at the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera and at Covent Garden as the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier and sang the title role in Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia with the Opera Orchestra of New York. She also appeared as Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Salzburg Festival and the Met. She performed with the Orchestra of St. Luke's, under Mark Elder as part of the PBS series Live From Lincoln Center and with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Haydn's Creation under James Levine.

In 2001, Fleming sang Desdemona in Otello with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Manon with the Paris Opera, the Marschallin with both the San Francisco Opera and the Met, and Arabella at both the Bavarian State Opera and the Met. She also sang Verdi's Requiem twice, once with the London Symphony Orchestra and once with the New York Philharmonic. Flemming also sang at World Trade Center site shortly after the September 11 attacks.

In 2007, Fleming sang Violetta with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Tatyana in Eugene Onegin at the Metropolitan Opera, Arabella with Zurich Opera, and Thaïs at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Royal Opera, Vienna State Opera, and the Liceu. She also performed with over a dozen orchestras including the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra,the National Symphony Orchestra, the Vancouver Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, the China Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic among others, and performed at numerous music festivals including the Salzburg Festival and the Lincoln Center Festival. She also gave recitals throughout Southeast Asia, Germany, and Switzerland.

In 2008, Fleming sang Violetta and Desdemona at the Metropolitan Opera, the Gräfin in Capriccio at the Vienna State Opera, Tatyana at the Tanglewood Music Festival, and Lucrezia Borgia at the Washington National Opera.

In 2009, Fleming created the complete version of Le temps L'horloge, the latest work of famous French composer Henri Dutilleux. She sang Violetta at Covent Garden and Thaïs and Rusalka at the Metropolitan Opera, the Marschallin at the Baden-Baden Festival, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the Metropolitan Opera. She sang a variety of short pieces at Napa Valley's Festival del Sole in California.

During the 2009/2010 Metropolitan Opera season Fleming sang the Marschallin and in Mary Zimmerman's new production, the first at the Met, of Rossini's Armida, a role and production she will return to during the Met's 2010/2011 Season along with the Gräfin in Richard Strauss's Capriccio.

In an April 15, 2010, Wall Street Journal article, Fleming talked about her view of the battle between opera traditionalists and those who want to reinterpret the standards, siding – with some reservations – with the latter. "I'm not a reactionary. I've loved some of [these productions] when they've been well thought out", she said. "I have no problem with edgy, as long as it's not vulgar or disrespectful of the piece." Still, she said her "classic" image meant that she was unlikely to be asked to perform in such productions.

In the same Wall Street Journal interview, Fleming explained her increasing preference for performing in concerts, rather than opera productions, and said, having learned more than 50 operas, that she is unlikely to learn many more.

Fleming appeared on Good Morning America on June 8, 2010, performing a cover of Muse's "Endlessly" from their album Absolution.

On December 9, 2010, the Board of Directors of Lyric Opera of Chicago announced that Fleming has been named Creative Consultant, a first in the company’s history.

Personal life

Fleming married actor Rick Ross in 1989, and they have two daughters together; Amelia, born in 1993, and Sage, born in 1995. The couple divorced in 2000, and Fleming has raised their children as a single mother.

Popular recordings

on January 18, 2009.]] Fleming has released a number of music recordings on the Decca label. In 2000 she was a guest artist alongside the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber and the violinist Gil Shaham on the album Two Worlds by Dave Grusin and Lee Ritenour. She recorded a jazz album in 2005 entitled Haunted Heart. She appears on the soundtrack of the 2003 film in which she sings in the imagined language Sindarin. Renée Fleming recorded the duet "O soave fanciulla" with Michael Bolton. Her album Dark Hope, released in June 2010, features covers of songs by Leonard Cohen, Band of Horses, Jefferson Airplane and others.

TV, radio and record guest appearances

Fleming has a notable sense of humor. She appeared on the children's show Sesame Street singing a lively rendition of "Caro nome" from Rigoletto, replacing the traditional Italian text with lyrics intended to aid children learning to count.

She has performed several times on Garrison Keillor's popular public radio program A Prairie Home Companion.

Fleming appeared as a "Special Guest Vocalist" on Joe Jackson's 1994 album Night Music on the song "Lullaby."

Fleming performed "I'll Be Home For Christmas" on ABC's The View on December 18, 2008.

She performed on January 18, 2009 at , singing the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic "You'll Never Walk Alone" with the combined choirs of the United States Naval Academy.

Repertory

Partial discography

CD

Donizetti: Rosmonda d'Inghilterra Opera Rara 1994

Strauss Four Last Songs RCA 1996

Visions of Love – Mozart Arias Decca 1996

Schubert Lieder Decca 1997

Signatures Opera arias By Mozart, Verdi, Britten, Strauss, w. Georg Solti, Decca 1997

Elijah (Mendelssohn) Decca 1997

The Beautiful Voice Decca 1998

I Want Magic American Opera Arias, Decca 1998

Star Crossed Lovers Duets with Plácido Domingo, Decca 1999

Strauss Heroines Decca 1999

Requiem (Verdi) with Andrea Bocelli, Olga Borodina and Ildebrando D'Arcangelo, conducted by Valery Gergiev, Philips 2001

Renée Fleming Decca 2001

Night Songs Lieder by Debussy, Fauré, Marx, Strauss, Rachmaninov, Decca 2001

Bel Canto Arias by Donizetti, Bellini, Rossini, Decca 2002

Under the Stars Broadway Duets with Bryn Terfel, Decca 2003

By Request Decca 2003

Mozart: Così fan tutte Decca

Handel: Alcina Erato

Rossini: Armida Sony (live)

Mozart: Don Giovanni Decca (CD)

Massenet: Hérodiade Sont (live)

Handel Arias Decca 2003/2004

Requiem (Verdi) Philips 2004

Haunted Heart Decca 2005

Sacred Songs Decca 2005

Homage – The Age of the Diva Decca 2006

Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss Decca 2008

Verismo – Arias of Puccini, Mascagni, Cilea, Giordano, Leoncavallo Decca 2009

Dark Hope Decca Records 2010

DVD

Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin Decca 2007

Strauss, R: Arabella Decca 2008

Verdi: La traviata Decca

Mozart: Don Giovanni

Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro

Massenet: Manon

Strauss, R: Arabella Decca

Strauss, R: Der Rosenkavalier Decca

Strauss, R: Capriccio Decca

Verdi: Otello

Dvořák: Rusalka Decca

Massenet: Thaïs Decca

Metropolitan Opera: The Audition (documentary)

Honors

In 2000, Chef Daniel Boulud named a dessert, La Diva Renée, after her.

References

Sources

Fleming, Renée. The Inner Voice: the Making of a Singer. Paperback ed. New York: Penguin Group, 2004. ISBN 9780143035947

External links

Interview with Renée Fleming at MusicalCriticism.com

Renée Fleming – Fansite

Renée Fleming Fansite with interview and performance videos

[ Allmusic pop music entry – Renée Fleming] [ Allmusic classical music entry: Renée Fleming]

NPR interview: Renée Fleming

Renée Fleming Topic at The New York Times

Category:1959 births Category:Living people Category:American female singers Category:American opera singers Category:American sopranos Category:Eastman School of Music alumni Category:Fulbright Scholars Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music Category:Juilliard School of Music alumni Category:Musicians from Pennsylvania Category:Operatic sopranos Category:People from Rochester, New York

Francisco Araiza (born October 4, 1950 in Mexico City), is a Mexican operatic tenor. As one of the leading tenors of his generation he was named Kammersänger of the Wiener Staatsoper in 1988 and has been a permanent member of the Opernhaus Zürich since 1977. He made an international operatic career starting with the great Mozart and Rossini tenor roles. Already known as one the best interpreters in the lyric repertory he developed later on into the heavier lirico spinto, the French and heavier German repertory with roles like Edgardo, Alfredo, Duke of Mantua, Riccardo III, Don Alvaro, Don Carlo, Cavaradossi, Pinkerton, Rodolfo, Calaf, Andrea Chénier, Des Grieux, Faust, Hoffmann, Werther, Romeo, Don José, Lenski and the young Wagnerian heroes Lohengrin, Stolzing, Loge, Parsifal and Siegmund.

Professional development

Born and educated in Mexico City Francisco Araiza studied voice with Irma Gonzalez in the Conservatorio Nacional de Musica and German repertory with Erika Kubacsek. At the same time he made his degree in Business Administration at the University of Mexico City UNAM. In 1970 he made his professional debut in Mexico City as Jaquino in Beethoven's Fidelio. In 1974 he went to Europe and took masterclasses with Richard Holm and Erik Werba at the Munich Hochschule für Musik after having won in the Bavarian Broadcasting Voice Competition. After three years at the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe from 1974 to 1977 he became a permanent member of the Zurich Opera House. Herbert von Karajan chose him for his recording of Die Zauberflöte (the first digital opera recording) and invited him to the Salzburg Festival to sing the Mozart Requiem in 1980 enhancing the international career of the upcoming star.

Stations

For over thirty years he has performed in all the main opera houses of the world i.e. Munich, Hamburg, Berlin (Deutsche Oper and Deutsche Staatsoper Unter den Linden), Leipzig, Dresden, Vienna, La Scala Milan, Florence, Parma, Rome, Naples, Covent Garden London, Bastille Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Madrid, Barcelona, Santander, San Francisco, Houston, Chicago Lyric Opera, Metropolitan Opera New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, allover in Japan and has as well participated in all great international festivals like Bayreuther Festspiele, Salzburger Festspiele, Bregenzer Festspiele, Tiroler Festspiele Erl, the Richard-Strauss-Tage Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Aix-en-Provence, Edinburgh, the Prague Spring Festival, Verona, Macerata, Rossini Festival Pesaro, the Schubertiade Hohenems and the Festival Cervantino Guanajuato, Mexico.

Some highlights

Among his roles, he has sung Belmonte at the Bayerische Staatsoper Munich under the baton of legendary conductor Karl Böhm in his last operatic appearance. He has starred together with Frederica von Stade in the Unitel film version of Rossini's La Cenerentola. One of his greatest successes was singing the reole of Des Grieux in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's production of Manon (available on DVD) at the Vienna State Opera in 1983 which marked the first step into the heavier repertory. In 1985 he sang the title role in Faust directed by Ken Russell also in Vienna (available on DVD) followed by the Philips recording under Sir Colin Davis. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in New York as Belmonte, later on singing Tamino in the new production of The Magic Flute during the Mozart Anniversary Year 1991 (a performance telecast on PBS and available on DVD) and he had an especially great success with his role debut as Walter von Stolzing in the new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in 1993, both conducted by James Levine, which highlighted his vocal and artistic development.

Awards

Besides his operatic engagements, Francisco Araiza is also a highly esteemed concert and Lieder-singer: in 1984 he received the famous Deutscher Schallplattenpreis for his recording of Schubert Lieder, as well as the Mainichi Award for «Best musical event of the year» for his Tokyo recital in 1988. He was awarded twice with the Orphée d'Or by the Académie Nationale du Disque Lyrique Paris in 1984, for his interpretation as Count Almaviva in the opera recording of The Barber of Seville and for the live recording of the Salzburg Festival production of Così fan tutte. Further awards include the Mozart Medal of the University of Mexico City UNAM in 1991, the Mario-del-Monaco-Medal Otello d'Oro in 1995, the Golden Mercure as Best Performing Opera Singer (Munich 1996) and lately the FAOT- Medal by the Cultural Institute of Sonora, Mexico in 2008 honouring his artistic achievement.

Conductors & directors, recordings & publications

Francisco Araiza has worked with all great conductors and stage directors of the century like Karl Böhm, Herbert von Karajan, Carlo Maria Giulini, Carlos Kleiber, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Neville Marriner, James Levine, Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Giuseppe Patane, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Seiji Ozawa, Zubin Metha, Daniel Barenboim and Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, Harry Kupfer, August Everding, Otto Schenk, Giorgio Strehler, Franco Zeffirelli, John Dexter, Roman Polanski and David Pountney which has been documented in over hundred recordings for labels as Philips, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, RCA, CBS, Teldec, Orfeo and Atlantis as well as in lots of TV- and DVD-productions. Several solo recordings were released with Operas Arias and Lieder, but also popular repertory like The Romantic Tenor by RCA Red Seal and even crossover titles with popsinger Daniela Simmons or Rapper Nana. An illustrated monograph called was published by Atlantis in 1988 as well as Great Interpreters published by Westermann, Bravo written by Helena Matheopoulous and Divo published by Harper & Row, Great Singers published by Kremayr & Scheriau (Vienna 1989) and Portrats of Musicians by prestigious author Joachim Kaiser and photographer Walter Schels (Mosaik Verlag 1997). In 1992 the German television station ZDF presented a personal TV-Documentary with the title Francisco Araiza - I am a Romantic directed by Jochen Richter. In 2000 he appeared for the first time as an actor in the German TV movie Almost a Gentleman.

Society

Francisco Araiza had the honour to be invited to appear during official state visits mainly in Germany: he was invited to sing for statesmen like Michail Gorbatschow, Helmut Kohl, former Mexican Presidents Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Ernesto Zedillo, His Majesty King Juan Carlos of Spain, Richard von Weizäcker, Roman Herzog, Gerhard Schröder and His Highness The Aga Khan. He also sang on many special occasions like anniversaries of famous companies like Rosenthal, Wempe, Swarovski, Sixt, Deutsche Post AG, Bulgari or Rolex and of course charity events all over the world.

Professor, juror and Artistic Director

Since 1988 Francisco Araiza sponsors the Francisco Araiza Voice Competition Award of the Escuela Nacional de Musica de la UNAM Mexico City. In 1996 he gave his first Masterclass at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, later on at the Richard-Strauss-Tage in Garmisch, at the Munich Singschul' and the UNAM Mexico City. In 2003 he was nominated Professor by the Ministry of Baden-Württemberg, Germany, to teach at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart and three years later he joined the Board of Directors of the International Opernstudio Zurich IOS teaching now Vocal Technique and Style. Frequently he is asked to participate in the juries of all international Singing Contests, for instance the ARD Voice Competition in Munich and the most renowned Bertelsmann Voice Competition Neue Stimmen in Gütersloh, Germany. Furthermore he is member of the Managing Board of the Liz Mohn Kultur- und Musikstiftung (Bertelsmann) and the Europäische Kulturstiftung Europamusicale. From November 2007 till June 2009 he was the Artistic Director of the International Hugo Wolf Akademie.

External links

Homepage

Category:1950 births Category:Living people Category:Mexican opera singers Category:Mexican people of Basque descent Category:Operatic tenors

Name	Anna Netrebko
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Anna Yuryevna Netrebko
Birth date	September 18, 1971
Birth place	Krasnodar, Soviet Union(now Krasnodar, Russia)
Instrument	Vocals
Genre	Opera
Occupation	Opera singer (soprano)
Years active	1993–present
Url

Anna Yuryevna Netrebko (; born 18 September 1971) is an operatic soprano. She now holds dual Russian and Austrian citizenship and currently resides in Vienna.

Biography

While a student at the Saint Petersburg conservatoire, Netrebko worked as a janitor at Saint Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre. Later, she auditioned for the Mariinsky Theatre, where conductor Valery Gergiev recognized her from her prior work in the theater. He subsequently became her vocal mentor. Under Gergiev's guidance, Netrebko made her operatic stage debut at the Mariinsky at age 22, as Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro. She went on to sing many prominent roles with the Kirov Opera, including Amina in La sonnambula, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor.

In 1994, she sang the Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte with the Riga Independent Opera Avangarda Akadēmija under conductor David Milnes.

In March 2006, Netrebko applied to become an Austrian citizen, receiving her citizenship in late July. According to an interview in the Austrian weekly news, she will live in Vienna and Salzburg. This has led to some backlash in Russia. Netrebko cites the cumbersome and humiliating process of obtaining visas (as a Russian citizen) for her many performances abroad as the main reason for obtaining Austrian citizenship.

In March 2007, Netrebko announced that she would be an ambassador for SOS Children's Village in Austria, and be a sponsor for the Tomilino village in Russia.

In April 2008, Netrebko announced that she and her fiancé, Uruguayan baritone Erwin Schrott, had married. Her son Tiago Aruã Schrott was born on 5 September 2008 in Vienna.

Performances

In 1995, at the age of 24, Netrebko made her American debut as Lyudmila in Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila at the San Francisco Opera. Following this successful performance, she became a frequent guest singer in San Francisco. She is known as an acclaimed interpreter of other Russian operatic roles, such as Natasha in Prokofiev's War and Peace, Louisa in Betrothal in a Monastery and Marfa in The Tsar's Bride. Netrebko has also made successful forays into bel canto and romantic roles such as Gilda in Rigoletto, Mimi in La bohème, Giulietta in I Capuleti e i Montecchi, and Elvira in Bellini's I puritani.

In 2002, Netrebko made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Natasha in the Met premiere of War and Peace. In the same year, she sang her first Donna Anna at the Salzburg Festival's production of Don Giovanni, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. She also performed at the Russian Children's Welfare Society's major fund raiser, the "Petroushka Ball". She returned to the Ball in 2003 and 2006 and is an honorary director of the charity.

In 2003, Netrebko performed as Violetta in Verdi's La traviata in Munich, the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor at the Los Angeles Opera, and Donna Anna at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Her second album, Sempre Libera, was released the following year. She later appeared as Violetta Valéry in La traviata at the Salzburg Festival, conducted by Carlo Rizzi and in 2008 she performed the same role at Covent Garden to triumphant acclaim on the opening night, opposite Jonas Kaufmann and Dmitri Hvorostovsky in performances conducted by Maurizio Benini. However, she cancelled three subsequent performances due to suffering a bronchial condition. This was the second time she had cancelled her performances at the Royal Opera House, having withdrawn from some performances of Don Giovanni the previous summer due to illness.

On 30 May 2007, Netrebko made her Carnegie Hall debut with Dmitri Hvorostovsky and the Orchestra of St. Luke's. Originally scheduled for 2 March 2006, Netrebko postponed the recital because she did not feel artistically ready.

Netrebko appeared at the Last Night of the Proms on 8 September 2007 where she performed "Ah! Se una volta … Ah! Non credea mirarti … Ah! Non giunge" from La sonnambula, "Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiß" (Giuditta) and the song "Morgen!" by Richard Strauss (with violinist Joshua Bell). In the fall of 2007 she reprised her role as Juliette in Roméo et Juliette at the Metropolitan Opera. In December 2007, Netrebko performed for Martin Scorsese, a 2007 Honoree, at the Kennedy Center Honors, and in May 2008 she made a much-awaited debut at the Paris Opera in I Capuleti e i Montecchi, with Joyce DiDonato as her Romeo.

Netrebko was scheduled to sing Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor in October 2008 at the Metropolitan Opera, but due to her pregnancy she decided to drop out of the role.

In her first performance after her maternity leave, Netrebko sang Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor when it opened at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg on 14 January 2009, in a production from the Scottish Opera led by John Doyle. She then sang the same role in January and February 2009 at the Metropolitan Opera. Netrebko appeared as Giulietta in I Capuleti e i Montecchi at the Royal Opera House in Spring 2009, and as Violetta in La Traviata in June 2009 at the San Francisco Opera. On November 13, 2010 in a matinee performance broadcast nationally by PBS, she sang the role of Norina in Don Pasquale at New York's Metropolitan Opera House under conductor James Levine.

Recorded works

In 2003, Netrebko released her first studio album, Opera Arias. The Russian Album was released in 2006, accompanied by the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, conducted by Valery Gergiev. In November 2008, she released her fourth album for Deutsche Grammophon, a collection of songs entitled Souvenirs.

Discography

after receiving the honorary title of People's Artist of Russia.]]

Opera Arias

Opera

Duets (With Villazon)

Sempre Libera

Russian Album

Le nozze di Figaro (Mozart) Recorded live from the Salzburg Festival

La Bohème (Puccini) Recorded in Concert

La traviata (Verdi) Live from the Salzburg Festival

I Capuleti e I Montecchi (Bellini) Live concert performance

Le nozze di Figaro DVD

La Bohème DVD

La traviata DVD

I Puritani (Bellini) DVD

L'elisir d'amore (Donizetti) DVD

Betrothal in a Monastery (Prokofiev) DVD

Ruslan and Lyudmila (Glinka) DVD

Manon (Massenet) DVD

Lucia di Lammermoor (Donizetti) DVD

Souvenirs

In the Still of Night

Rossini: Stabat Mater

Recognitions and awards

Time magazine placed her on its Time 100 list in 2007. She was identified by the journal Musical America as "a genuine superstar for the 21st century" and was named 'Musician of the Year' for 2008. She has also been described by Associated Press as "the reigning new diva of the 21st century".

She was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation (2004) and was made a People's Artist of Russia by President Putin in 2008.

Playboy magazine placed her in their "sexiest babes of classical music" list.

Netrebko has also won two prestigious Classical BRIT Awards: the 2007 Singer of the Year Award and the 2008 Female of the Year.

References

External links

Reviews, articles, photos and future schedules for Anna Netrebko from The Opera Critic

Profile of Netrebko in the New York Times

Anna Netrebko on YouTube

Unofficial site of Anna Netrebko

Category:1971 births Category:Living people Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:Operatic sopranos Category:People from Krasnodar Category:People's Artists of Russia Category:Russian expatriates in Austria Category:Russian female singers Category:Russian opera singers Category:Russian people of Ukrainian descent Category:Russian sopranos Category:Saint Petersburg Conservatory alumni Category:State Prize of the Russian Federation laureates

, 2009]] Angela Gheorghiu (; born Angela Burlacu) (born September 7, 1965) is a Romanian soprano opera singer. Since her professional debut in 1990, she has sung as soprano leading roles at New York's Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden's Royal Opera House, the Vienna State Opera, Milan's La Scala, and many other opera houses in Europe and the United States. She has a substantial discography primarily with EMI Classics and Decca.

Biography

Gheorghiu was born in 1965 in Adjud, Romania. Along with her sister Elena Dan, she sang opera music from an early age. At age 14, Gheorghiu began to study singing at the National University of Music Bucharest, primarily under Mia Barbu. Her graduation in 1990 coincided with the overthrow and assassination of Nicolae Ceauşescu the previous year, enabling her to seek an international career immediately. Her professional opera debut took place at the Cluj Opera as Mimì in La bohème in 1990, the same year she won the Belvedere International Competition.

Gheorghiu made her international debut in 1992 at the Royal Opera House as Zerlina in Don Giovanni. She debuted at the Vienna State Opera as Adina in L'elisir d'amore and at the Metropolitan Opera as Mimi in La bohème. In 1994, she was auditioned by the conductor Sir Georg Solti for a new production of La traviata at the Royal Opera House. Her debut as Violetta led her to international stardom.

Gheorghiu has concentrated her repertoire on several different roles: Violetta, Mimì, Magda, Adina, and Juliette. In 2003, she debuted as Nedda in Pagliacci and as Marguerite in Faust. A soprano with a large range and a dark coloured voice, Gheorghiu is also able to sing spinto roles. She has recorded Tosca (also made into a film directed by the French Benoît Jacquot) and Leonora in Il trovatore for EMI and sang in her first Tosca at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 2006. Her performance was an overall success, although because the famous Zeffirelli production of 1964 was replaced by a new production (which premiered with her), there was comparison between the Toscas of Gheorghiu and Maria Callas, for whom the Zeffirelli production was designed.

She has recorded many recital albums and complete opera recordings and often appears on television and in concerts. The EMI recording of Massenet's Manon with Angela Georghiu in the title role won the 2001 Gramophone Award for "Best Opera Recording", was nominated for "Best Opera Recording" in the 2002 Grammy Awards.

Gheorghiu at the Met and elsewhere

On occasion, Gheorghiu has had difficult relationships with opera house managements and directors. Some, but not all, of them have stemmed from her opposition to directors who, as she put it in an interview with ABC "want to express their own fantasies, forgetting about the characters. At times, she says, what they put on stage goes against both the story and the music." She has attributed her outspokenness to her upbringing in Romania under the totalitarian regime of Nicolae Ceausescu:

"Because I grew up in a country where there was no possibility of having an opinion, it makes me stronger now. Lots of singers are frightened about not getting invited back to an opera house if they speak out. But I have the courage to be, in a way, revolutionary. I want to fight for opera, for it to be taken seriously. Pop music is for the body, but opera is for the soul.".

Gheorghiu had a problematic relationship with former Metropolitan Opera General Manager Joseph Volpe after her debut there as Mimi in 1993. In 1996, Gheorghiu was cast as Micaela in a new production of Carmen, opposite Waltraud Meier and Plácido Domingo. The production by Franco Zeffirelli called for Micaela to wear a blonde wig, a nuance to which the soprano refused to wear it. Volpe famously declared, "The wig is going on, with you or without you". Gheorghiu eventually accepted and appeared in ten performances of Carmen that season, including the Met's tour to Japan, although she kept the hood of her cloak up to cover the wig as much as possible. She appeared at the Met again in 1998 for six performances of Roméo et Juliette with her husband, tenor Roberto Alagna as Roméo. Volpe had planned to engage Gheorghiu in Violetta Valery for a new production of La traviata, to premiere in November 1998 and directed by Zeffirelli. Alagna was to sing the role of Violetta's lover, Alfredo Germont. According to Volpe, Gheorghiu and Alagna argued with the staff and the director over production details and continually delayed signing the contract. They eventually signed their contracts, and faxed them to the Met one day past their deadline. Volpe refused to accept them. The production opened with Patricia Racette and Marcelo Álvarez as the lovers.

In September 2007, Gheorghiu was dismissed from Lyric Opera of Chicago's production of La bohème by General Manager William Mason, for missing rehearsals and costume fittings, and generally "unprofessional" behavior. Gheorghiu said in a statement that she had missed some rehearsals to spend time with her husband, who was singing at the Met in Roméo et Juliette and rehearsing for Puccini's Madama Butterfly and added "I have sung 'Boheme' hundreds of times, and thought missing a few rehearsals wouldn't be a tragedy. It was impossible to do the costume fitting at the same time I was in New York.

Six weeks later, Gheorghiu made her debut at San Francisco Opera receiving favorable reviews for her Magda in that company's new production of La rondine. The San Francisco Opera production originated with London's Royal Opera House, where it premiered on May 7, 2002 with Gheorghiu and Alagna as Magda and her lover Ruggero. It is one which she particularly admires:

"When the curtain opened on La rondine at Covent Garden, the audience gasped and applauded. People want to dream. If directors want to do something new with operas, why not do something beautiful?"

Despite these issues, Gheorghiu and Alagna returned to the Metropolitan Opera for five performances of L'elisir d'amore in 1999 and for four performances of Faust in 2003. Gheorghiu also performed at the Met as Liù in Turandot in 2000; as Violetta in La traviata opposite Jonas Kaufmann in 2006 and 2007; as Amelia in Simon Boccanegra in 2007; as Mimì in La bohème in 2008; as Magda in the 2008-09 season in the ROH/SFO production of La rondine, the Met's first performance of the opera since 1936; and for the 2009-10 season she appeared as Violetta, replacing her previous engagement as Marie Antoinette in a rare revival of John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles which was replaced due to the recession.

In August, 2009, Gheorghiu canceled all her scheduled 2010 Met performances of Carmen, for "personal reasons". It was to be her first public performance of the title role (normally sung by mezzo-sopranos). She also cancelled other Met performances scheduled near the end of 2010.

Personal life

Divorced from her first husband, from whom she retained her surname, Gheorghiu married tenor Roberto Alagna in 1996. The couple have sung together often on stage and on studio recordings. She was once chosen the 74th "most beautiful" woman in the world by the magazine FHM. In October 2009, Alagna said in an interview in Le Figaro that he and Angela Gheorghiu had separated. This has been confirmed on Gheorghiu's website where she has made it clear that she and Alagna have not been in a relationship for over two years. Following the separation, she declined to appear opposite Alagna in Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera in December 2009.

Recordings

La traviata (Verdi) Decca 1994 CD/DVD

The Puccini Experience RCA 1995

L'elisir d'amore (Donizetti) Decca 1996 CD/DVD

Arias Decca 1996

La rondine (Puccini) EMI 1996

Carmen (Bizet) Teldec 1996

Duets and Arias EMI 1996

Roméo et Juliette (Gounod) EMI 1998

My World Decca 1998

Verdi per Due EMI 1998

La bohème (Puccini) Decca 1999

Il trittico (Puccini) EMI 1999

Werther (Massenet) EMI 1999

Verdi Heroines Decca 2000

Manon (Massenet) EMI 2000

Verdi: Messa da Requiem (Verdi) EMI 2001 CD/DVD

Casta Diva EMI 2001

Mysterium - Sacred Arias Decca 2001

Tosca soundtrack (Puccini) EMI 2001 CD/DVD

Live From Covent Garden EMI 2002 CD/DVD

Il trovatore (Verdi) EMI 2002

Proms at the Palace Opus Arte 2002 DVD

Roméo et Juliette (Gounod) Arthaus Musik 2003

Carmen (Bizet) EMI 2003

The Essential Angela Gheorghiu Decca 2004

Diva EMI 2004

Puccini EMI 2005

Art of Angela Gheorghiu Decca 2004 DVDx2

Live From La Scala EMI 2007

La traviata (Verdi) Arthaus Musik 2007 DVD/Blu-ray

Marius et Fanny Larghetto 2008

''Angela & Roberto Forever" EMI 2008

My Puccini EMI 2008

Madama Butterfly (Puccini) EMI 2009

La traviata (Live from La Scala) (Verdi) Arthaus-musik 2007 DVD

La bohème (Live from the Met) (Puccini) EMI 2008 DVD

References

External links

Angela Gheorghiu: Official website

Official Angela Gheorghiu page on EMI Classics (Biography, discography, schedule)

Category:1965 births Category:Living people Category:People from Adjud Category:Romanian female singers Category:Romanian opera singers Category:Romanian sopranos Category:Operatic sopranos