Showing posts with label Renata Tebaldi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Renata Tebaldi. Show all posts

18 January 2019

Katia Ricciarelli - operatic soprano

Star whose peak years were in ‘70s and ‘80s


Katia Ricciarelli was at her peak
for about two decades
The opera singer Katia Ricciarelli, who at her peak was seen as soprano who combined a voice of sweet timbre with engaging stage presence, was born on this day in 1946 at Rovigo in the Veneto.

She rose to fame quickly after making her professional debut as Mimi in Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème in Mantua in 1969 and in the 1970s was in demand for the major soprano roles.

Between 1972 and 1975, Ricciarelli sang at all the major European and American opera houses, including Lyric Opera of Chicago (1972), Teatro alla Scala in Milan (1973), the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (1974) and the Metropolitan Opera (1975).

In 1981, she began an association with the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro that she maintained throughout the ‘80s.

In addition to her opera performances, Ricciarelli also appeared in a number of films.

Ricciarelli performed at most of Europe and America's major opera houses
Ricciarelli performed at most of Europe and
America's major opera houses
She was Desdemona in Franco Zeffirelli's film version of Giuseppe Verdi's Otello in 1986, alongside Plácido Domingo. In 2005 she won the best actress prize Nastro d'Argento, awarded by the Italian film journalists, for her role in Pupi Avati's La seconda notte di nozze (2005).

During her peak years, Desdemona was one of her signature roles, while she was also lauded for her Giulietta in Vincenzo Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi and for her interpretations of Gaetano Donizetti’s Anna Bolena.

Ricciarelli’s most well received Rossini roles were Bianca in Bianca e Falliero, Elena in La donna del lago and and Amenaide in Tancredi.

As her career progressed, however, critics felt her voice became weaker and without some of its former lustre, which some have attributed to her being pushed into heavy, highly dramatic roles, such as Puccini’s Tosca or Verdi’s Aida, which were not suited to her voice.

Ricciarelli often performed alongside José
Carreras, with whom she enjoyed a romance
Some opera audiences are notoriously unforgiving. Her Aida at the Royal Opera House in 1983 was greeted with whistles, while in 1986 in Trieste her debut as Bellini’s Norma provoked a similar reaction.

Her career as a singer at the top level ended in the early 1990s. She made her last appearance at the Metropolitan Opera in 1990 alongside Domingo in Otello.

Born Catiuscia Mariastella Ricciarelli to a poor family in Rovigo, she was brought up by her mother after her father died while she was very young.

She loved singing as a child and, once she was old enough to work, began to save money so that she could enrol at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory of Venice, where she had the opportunity to study with the soprano Iris Adami Corradetti.

Essentially a lyric soprano, following her operatic debut in 1969 she won the Voci Verdiane competition, organised by Italy’s national broadcaster Rai, and established herself as a superb Verdi singer, hailed as the “new Tebaldi” after Renata Tebaldi, a soprano popular in the postwar years who, coincidentally, had made her stage debut in Rovigo in 1944, two years before Ricciarelli was born.

Katia Ricciarelli has appeared regularly on Italian TV since she ended her career in opera
Katia Ricciarelli has appeared regularly on Italian TV
since she ended her career in opera
Although her operatic prowess began to wane, Ricciarelli’s career did not. She took up the position of artistic director of the Teatro Politeama di Lecce in 1998 and in the first decade of the new century turned increasingly to acting and appeared in television dramas such as Don Matteo alongside Terence Hill.

In 2005, after being nominated artistic director of the Sferisterio Opera Festival in Macerata, she began her professional relationship with the director Pupi Avati, who would later cast her in his film The Friends of the Margherita Bar (2009).

The following years brought a brief flirtation with politics as a centre-left candidate for the municipal council elections in Rodi Garganico, a beach resort near Foggia where she spent many summer holidays, more television work, an autobiography published in 2008 and a performance at La Fenice in Venice to mark her 40 years in music, in which she performed duets with pop singers Massimo Ranieri and Michael Bolton, among others.

A regular guest on variety and talk shows on Italian television, in 2006 she participated in the reality show La fattoria (Italian version of The Farm) on Canale 5.

Ricciarelli was married for 18 years to the TV presenter Pippo Baudo, the couple divorcing in 2004. She had previously had a relationship with her fellow opera star José Carreras that spanned 13 years.


Piazza Vittorio Emanuele is Rovigo's main square
Travel tip:

Rovigo is a town of around 52,000 people in the Veneto, which stands on the plain between the Po and the Adige rivers, about 80km (50 miles) southwest of Venice and 40km (25 miles) northeast of Ferrara, on the Adigetto Canal.  The architecture of the town has both Venetian and Ferrarese influences. The main sights include a Duomo dedicated to the  Martyr Pope Steven I, originally built before the 11th century, but rebuilt in 1461 and again in 1696, and the Madonna del Soccorso, a church best known as La Rotonda, built between 1594 and 1606 by Francesco Zamberlan of Bassano, a pupil of Palladio, to an octagonal plan, and with a  campanile, standing at 57m (187ft), that was built according to plans by Baldassarre Longhena (1655–1673). The walls of the interior of the church are covered by 17th centuries paintings by prominent provincial and Venetian artists, including Francesco Maffei, Domenico Stella, Pietro Liberi, Antonio Zanchi and Andrea Celesti. There are the ruins of a 10th century castle, of which two towers remain.

The beach at Roci Garganico is famed for  its soft sand and shallow waters
The beach at Roci Garganico is famed for
its soft sand and shallow waters
Travel tip:

Rodi Garganico is a seaside resort in the Apulia region, a 100km (62 miles) drive northeast from Foggia on a promontory east of the Lago di Varano lagoon. It part of the Gargano National Park.  It has for centuries been a major centre for the production of citrus fruits such us Arance del Gargano (Gargano Oranges) and the Limone Femminiello del Gargano (Gargano Lemons), both with DOP (Protected Designation of Origin) status under European Union regulations.  As well as its many kilometres of sandy beaches, Rodi Garganico attracts visitors for the local cuisine, which features orange salad, salad with wild onions, many fish dishes and a good variety of local wines.

More reading:

Alessandro Safina - the pop-opera star who made his stage debut alongside Katia Ricciarelli

Why Renata Tebaldi was said to have 'the voice of an angel'



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8 September 2018

Magda Olivero - soprano

Singer who performed into her 80s and lived to 104


Magda Olivero made her debut in an opera broadcast for radio in 1932
Magda Olivero made her debut in an opera
broadcast for radio in 1932
The opera singer Magda Olivero, who became known as the last verismo soprano, died on this day in 2014. She was almost halfway through her 105th year, having been born in 1910.

Olivero became associated with the works among others of Francesco Cilea, Pietro Mascagni, Umberto Giordano and Franco Alfano, all of whom she actually worked with in person, her longevity providing a 21st century link with the world of 19th century Italian opera. She missed the chance to know and work with Giacomo Puccini only narrowly, the composer passing away at the age of 66 when Olivero was 14.

Born in Saluzzo in Piedmont, Olivero made her operatic debut eight years after Puccini’s death in a radio production in Turin in 1932. She gave her last stage performance 49 years later in 1981, although even that was not the end of her career. Her last recording of her signature role - Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur - did not come until 1994, when she was still able to control her pitch and tone at the age of 83.

Born as Maria Maddalena Olivero to a well-to-do family who gave her a good education, she built on her radio debut - singing Nino Cattozzo's oratorio, I misteri dolorosi - to establish a successful career, performing alongside pre-War stars such as Ebe Stignani, Beniamino Gigli and Francesco Merli.

Olivero with Mario del Monaco appearing in Giordano's Fedora in Naples in 1965
Olivero with Mario del Monaco appearing in
Giordano's Fedora in Naples in 1965
In addition to Adriana, her most famous roles included Minnie in Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West, Mascagni's Iris, Riccardo Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini, and Giordano's Fedora. She sang Jules Massenet's Manon at Verona with Giuseppe di Stefano as Des Grieux, and Margherita in Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele to the Faust of Ferruccio Tagliavini.

The conductor Tullio Serafin helped her with her technique, although he was less helpful, she later claimed, after she refused his amorous advances. She said that her relationship with the tenor, Tito Schipa, also became strained after he became similarly enamoured with her.

In fact, in 1940 she decided to retire from the stage at the age of only 30 after she married Aldo Busch, an industrialist, hoping they would raise a large family. One of her last performances was of Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur in Ravenna and it was Cilea, almost a decade later, who would persuade her to make a comeback, telling her that she was the only singer who could do justice to the character.  She performed the role again in Brescia in 1951, shortly before the composer died.

That work was to become her calling card, and she sang it many times, as well as featuring often in leading roles in Puccini’s La Bohème, Madame Butterfly and Manon Lescaut, and in Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata.

Magda Olivero at the age of 95 in 2005
Magda Olivero at the age of 95 in 2005
She made her London debut at the Stoll Theatre, in 1952 and in 1963 she substituted for Renata Tebaldi at the Edinburgh Festival in Adriana Lecouvreur, its first performance in Britain for 60 years.

Her first appearance in the United States came in Dallas in 1967, followed by Kansas and San Francisco. By now her fame as an interpreter of the verismo genre, in which the characters are ordinary people and the singers are adept at bringing dramatic expression to the roles, was established and her New York debut as Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera in 1975 was a much-hyped sensation, even though by then she was 65.

According to the New York Times report, when she made her first entrance, the audience began screaming and cheering, forcing the conductor Jan Behr to stop the music; arias were interrupted by bursts of spontaneous applause and at the end she was given a 20-minute ovation, one of the longest in the theatre's history. She reprised her Tosca for the Met in 1979, opposite Luciano Pavarotti. 

For all her success, though, she never really escaped the shadow of Maria Callas or Renata Tebaldi, who were always seen as more marketable and therefore enjoyed more recording contracts than Olivero, whose only complete opera recordings are Turandot and Fedora (1969), in which she was partnered by Mario del Monaco and Tito Gobbi.

After her second retirement, she settled in Milan, telling visitors to her home that the secret of her long life was yoga and a vegetarian diet. She lived for 31 years following the death of her husband in 1983, her wish for a family having never come to pass.

The early 15th century Cathedral of the Assumption in Piazza Risorgimento in Saluzzo
The early 15th century Cathedral of the Assumption in
Piazza Risorgimento in Saluzzo
Travel tip:

Saluzzo, where Olivero was born, is a hill town about 33km (20 miles) north of Cuneo and 61km (38 miles) south of Turin, in Piedmont. Most of its 15th century old town is intact, with numerous cobbled streets, steep staircases, churches and elegant palaces to explore. In the Piazza Risorgimento is Cathedral of the Assumption, built between 1491 and 1511 in the Lombard-Gothic style. Another attraction is the Castiglia, a castle built at the summit of the town in the 13th century by the Marquis Tommaso I and renovated in 1492 by Ludovico II of Saluzzo, at the time when the town was a powerful city-state.

The Teatro degli Arcimboldi, which was built in a converted Pirelli tyre factory in Milan
The Teatro degli Arcimboldi, which was built in a
converted Pirelli tyre factory in Milan
Travel tip:

Milan’s best-known theatre is the opera house and ballet theatre Teatro alla Scala, inaugurated in 1778, but it is not the only theatre. Other respected venues are Teatro Sala Fontana, set within the beautiful cloisters of the church of Santa Maria alla Fontana in the northern part of the city, the Teatro Manzoni in Via Alessandro Manzoni, not far from Porta Nuova, and the ultra-modern Teatro degli Arcimboldi, which was built in 2001 in anticipation of the closure and renovation of La Scala opera house, in a converted Pirelli tyre factory about 7km (4.5 miles) from the city centre, in an area known as Bicocca.

More reading:

The beautiful work of Francesco Cilea

Giacomo Puccini - the musical genius who took the baton from Verdi

Pietro Mascagni and a career built on one great opera

Also on this day:

1474: The birth of poet Ludovico Ariosto

1504: The unveiling of Michelangelo's David in Florence


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28 March 2018

Anselmo Colzani - opera star

Baritone who had 16 seasons at the New York Met


Anselmo Colzani in his signature role, Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca
Anselmo Colzani in his signature role,
Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca
Anselmo Colzani, an operatic baritone who was a fixture at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as La Scala in his home country, was born on this day in 1918 in Budrio, a town not far from Bologna.

His stage career continued until 1980, when he made his final stage appearance in one of his signature roles as Scarpia in Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca.

Although his repertoire was much wider, his reputation became strongly associated with the works of Puccini and Giuseppe Verdi, with Jack Rance in Puccini's Fanciulla del West and the title role of Verdi's Falstaff, as well a Amonasro in Aida and Iago in Otello among his most famous roles.

Colzani’s association with the Met began in March 1960 after he was approached by Rudolf Bing, the opera house’s general manager, following the sudden death of Leonard Warren onstage during a performance of La Forza del Destino.

A few weeks later, Colzani took over Warren's role in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra. It was not only the first time he had sung at the Met, but the first time he had sung the role, which he had to learn it in a matter of days.

Yet so impressive was he that he returned to the Met for the next 16 seasons, making 272 appearances either in New York or on tour. A measure of the stature he achieved there in a short space of time was that he was the baritone chosen for the title role in the first performance of Franco Zeffirelli’s acclaimed production of Falstaff in 1964, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

Colzani with the soprano Renata Tebaldi, with whom he starred many times
Colzani with the soprano Renata Tebaldi, with
whom he starred many times
Brought up in a musical family, Colzani joined the Italian Army before beginning to study singing formally, signing up as an 18-year-old in 1936. His service required him to fight in the Second World War. Thankfully he survived and in 1945 began attending the Bologna Conservatory under the tutelage of Corrado Zambelli.

He made his debut at the Teatro Comunale in Bologna in 1947 in the small role of the Herald in Wagner's Lohengrin. Also in the cast and making her house debut was the  soprano Renata Tebaldi, with whom he would later be reunited in New York.

Colzani made his bow at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, in 1952, as the murderous Alfio in Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, and he continued to sing there until 1970, his last appearance being also as Alfio.

He was soon in demand throughout Italy for the dramatic baritone roles of Verdi in particular, becoming a major draw  in Naples, Verona and in Rome, where he enjoyed several seasons at the Baths of Caracalla.

He made his United States debut at the San Francisco Opera in 1956, but it was at the Met that he established an enduring foothold, appearing there with many of the major stars of the day, including Maria Callas, Franco Corelli and Carlo Bergonzi.

Colzani's last Met performance was as Michonnet in Adriana Lecouvreur, by Francesco Cilea, in 1978. He continued singing until 1980, when he gave his final performance in Tosca, reprising the Scarpia role in which he most frequently appeared during his years at the Met.

Married twice - his first wife died young - Colzani died in 2006, a few days before what would have been his 88th birthday. He was survived by his second wife, Ada, and his two children, Bianca and Miriam.

One of the towers that formed part of
Budrio's medieval 
Travel tip:

Colzani’s home town, Budrio, is 15km (9 miles) east of Bologna. A former Roman settlement, it is notable for the remains of the four corner towers of a castle rebuilt in the 14th century, inside which the original village was contained. Each year, the town stages an international opera competition in Colzani’s memory.

Travel tip:

Bologna has a tradition of presenting opera that goes back to the early 17th century. The Teatro Comunale, where Colzani made his debut, came into being in 1763 as the Nuovo Teatro Pubblico, designed by Antonio Galli Bibiena, who won a competition to design a new theatre for the city after another one, Teatro Mavezzi, had been destroyed by fire.  Arturo Toscanini, who went on to be musical director at La Scala, the Met and the New York Philharmonic, conducted there many times in the early part of his career.

More reading:

Why Renata Tebaldi was said to have the 'voice of an angel'

How Arturo Toscanini became a conductor by chance

Tito Gobbi - the baritone who enjoyed a movie career

Also on this day:

1472: The birth of the great Renaissance painter Fra Bartolommeo

1925: The birth of legendary film producer Alberto Grimaldi


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4 January 2018

Gaetano Merola – conductor and impresario

Neapolitan who founded the San Francisco Opera


Gaetano Merola ran the San Francisco Opera Company for 30 years
Gaetano Merola ran the San Francisco Opera
Company for 30 years
Gaetano Merola, a musician from Naples who emigrated to the United States and ultimately founded the San Francisco Opera, was born on this day in 1881.

Merola directed the company and conducted many performances for 30 years from its opening night in September 1923 until his death in August 1953.

He literally died doing what he loved, collapsing in the orchestra pit while conducting the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra during a concert at an outdoor amphitheatre in the city.

The son of a violinist at the Royal Court in Naples, Merola studied piano and conducting at the Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella in Naples, graduating with honours at the age of 16.

Three years later he was invited to New York to work as assistant to Luigi Mancinelli, another Italian emigrant, born in Orvieto, who was a noted composer and cellist who was lead conductor of the New York Metropolitan Opera.

Demand for his services grew and he made regular guest appearances with companies across America and beyond, including a stint at Oscar Hammerstein’s London Opera House on the site of what is now the Peacock Theatre in Holborn.

Merola in action with the baton
He became a regular visitor to San Francisco with Fortune Gallo’s San Carlo Opera Company – named after the Naples opera house – and it was after becoming acquainted with many opera enthusiasts there that he identified the city as potentially one to rival New York as a centre that could attract the world’s top stars.

Merola noted how much the city was prepared to pay to have such illustrious companies as the Chicago Opera and the Scotti Company as well as the San Carlo to perform there and determined that he would be the man to give San Francisco its own company and make it as prestigious as any across the country.

Invited to make his home there by a philanthropic patron of the arts who set Merola and his wife up in an apartment, he immersed himself in the city’s large Italian community, where there was much enthusiasm about his ambition to bring the world's finest opera stars to the city.

When, in 1922, he hit upon the idea of a two-week season of open air concerts at Stanford Stadium, where he had noted during a football game how much the half-time marching band benefitted from the venue’s acoustics, they were all for it and there was no shortage of businessmen and wealthy professionals from the community willing to offer financial support, investing between $500 and $1,000 each in the venture.

Beniamino Gigli was one of the big names Merola was able to attract to perform in San Francisco
Beniamino Gigli was one of the big names Merola
was able to attract to perform in San Francisco
Merola signed up many stars of the day, including the Italian tenor Giovanni Martinelli, the American soprano Bianca Soraya and the Spanish baritone Vincente Ballester. The audiences were large and enthusiastic, rising from around 6,000 for the opening performance of I Pagliacci to 10,000 for Faust on the closing night.

Yet it made no money.  Indeed, once the costs were reckoned up, Merola had to tell his backers they were liable to a $19,000 shortfall.  He feared his dream was over until Giulio Stradi, a produce retailer who was one of the bigger investors, spoke up for the rest of the group by putting an arm round Merola’s shoulder and telling him the experience had been worth every penny.

They paid his dues in full and encouraged him to pursue another funding scheme, this time not relying on the largesse of a small number of wealthy patrons but by finding 750 individuals willing to pay $100 each, which included a $50 season ticket.

In the event, Merola attracted more than 2,400 investors and comfortably hit his funding target. His San Francisco Opera Company was born and made its debut at the city’s Civic Auditorium with Martinelli and soprano Queena Mario starring in Puccini’s La bohème.

The War Memorial Opera House opened in 1932
The War Memorial Opera House opened in 1932
More productions followed, with headline stars including Beniamino Gigli and Giuseppe de Luca, and by the end of the 1923-24 season he was able to pay his investors a dividend.

The San Francisco Opera was now established and its continued success in spite of the financial Depression led in 1931 to the construction of a permanent home, the grand Palladian-style War Memorial Opera House, designed by the architect Arthur Brown Jr.  It opened in October 1932 with a performance of Puccini’s Tosca, with the Italian soprano Claudia Muzio in the title role.

Merola began to wind down in the 1940s, bringing in Arturo Toscanini’s assistant Kurt Herbert Adler to serve as conductor, choral director and his deputy.  Merola, meanwhile, continued to use his contacts to attract the biggest names to San Francisco, including Tito Gobbi, Renata Tebaldi and Mario del Monaco.

After Merola’s death, which came as he conducted an excerpt from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at the Sigmund Stern Grove amphitheatre, Adler established in his honour the Merola Opera Program to provide training for young singers.

The San Francisco Opera still thrives to this day.  In 2002, when it celebrated its 80th anniversary, the guests included 98-year-old Louise Dana – the former Louise Stradi, daughter of Giulio, who had helped Merola with the organisation of his first season.

The Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella
The Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella
Travel tip:

The Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella – often known as the Naples Conservatory – can be found a short distance from Piazza Dante in the centre of Naples. Along with the adjacent church, it is part of the former San Pietro a Majella monastic complex, built at the end of the 13th century. The conservatory houses an impressive library of manuscripts giving an insight into the life and work of many great composers who spent time there, including Scarlatti, Pergolesi, Cimarosa, Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti. The museum has a display of rare antique musical instruments.

The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples is the oldest continuously  active opera venue in the world
The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples is the oldest continuously
 active opera venue in the world 
Travel tip:

The Teatro di San Carlo, the opera house of Naples, was opened in 1737 after the Bourbon king Charles III of Naples commissioned its construction as a replacement for the small and somewhat dilapidated Teatro San Bartolomeo, which was no longer big enough to satisfy demand in the city after the popular composer Alessandro Scarlatti had decided to base himself there and was establishing Naples as a major centre for opera.  Although it was partly destroyed by a fire in 1816, the theatre was rebuilt on the orders of Charles III’s son, King Ferdinand IV, and is regarded as the oldest continuously active public venue for opera in the world, predating Milan’s Teatro alla Scala and Venice’s Fenice by several decades.








  

1 February 2016

Renata Tebaldi – opera singer

Performer with a beautiful lirico soprano voice


Renata Tebaldi was born on February 1 1922
Renata Tebaldi pictured in 1961

Opera singer Renata Tebaldi was born on this day in 1922 in Pesaro.

Said by the conductor Arturo Toscanini to possess ‘the voice of an angel’, Tebaldi had a long stage career and made numerous recordings.

Her parents had separated before her birth and she grew up in the home of her maternal grandparents in Langhirano in the province of Parma in Emilia-Romagna.

Tebaldi was stricken with polio at the age of three but later became interested in music and sang in the church choir. She was sent to have piano lessons but the teacher decided she should study singing instead and arranged for her to attend the conservatory in Parma. She later transferred to Liceo Musicale Rossini in Pesaro.

Tebaldi made her stage debut in 1944, while Italy was still at war, in Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele at the Teatro Sociale in Rovigo but her beautiful voice first began to attract attention in 1946 when she appeared as Desdemona in Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello in Trieste.

She auditioned for Toscanini who was immediately impressed by her and she made her debut at Teatro alla Scala in 1946 singing in a concert to mark the reopening of the theatre after the Second World War.


Mario Del Monaco was famous for his  portrayal of Giuseppe Verdi's Otello
Mario Del Monaco was famous for his
portrayal of Giuseppe Verdi's Otello
The following year, she played her first operatic role - Eva in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - at the same opera house.

Toscanini encouraged her to learn to sing the part of Aida and to rehearse in his own studio.

She made her debut in the role at La Scala in 1950 alongside Mario Del Monaco, which helped launch her international career.

In 1950 Maria Callas was taken on at La Scala as a substitute Aida when Tebaldi was indisposed.

There were rumours of rivalry between them for the rest of their careers although Tebaldi considered herself to be a lyric soprano and Callas considered herself to be a dramatic coloratura soprano.

Nonetheless, partly for the sake of peace, Tebaldi decided to spend a lot of time in the United States. She made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1955, where she sang regularly until her last appearance in 1973, signing off as she had begun with a performance as Desdemona in Otello.

She retired from singing completely in 1976 and died at the age of 82 at her home in San Marino.

A small museum dedicated to Tebaldi has been opened in the stables of the Villa Pallavicino in Busseto - Verdi's home town - which is also the home of the National Giuseppe Verdi Museum. Among the exhibits are many costumes and mementoes from her personal life, including letters from John F Kennedy and Rudy Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York.


The Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi in Trieste, where Renata Tebaldi enjoyed her first success
The Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi in Trieste, where
Renata Tebaldi enjoyed her first success
Travel tip:

Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi in Trieste, where Tebaldi had her first big stage success, was built to replace a smaller theatre and inaugurated as Teatro Nuovo in 1801. It was the site of the premiere of Verdi’s opera Il Corsaro in 1848 featuring soprano Giuseppina Strepponi, who Verdi later married. Within hours of Verdi’s death in 1901 the theatre had been renamed in honour of the composer.



The Castle of Torrechiara towers above the town of Langhirano, near the city of Parma
The Castle of Torrechiara towers above the town
of Langhirano, near the city of Parma
Travel tip:

Langhirano, Renata Tebaldi’s home town, is situated about about 90km (56 miles) west of Bologna and about 20km (12 miles) south of Parma in Emilia-Romagna. It is known for the big 15th century Castle of Torrechiara, perched on high ground overlooking a valley, where a music festival dedicated to Renata Tebaldi is held each summer. Although Tebaldi died in San Marino, she was buried at Langhirano Cemetery.