Janine Micheau

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Janine Micheau , also Jeanine Micheau, (born April 17, 1914 in Toulouse , † October 18, 1976 in Paris ) was a French lyric soprano and coloratura soprano . She sang mainly in the French subject and at the Paris Opera and the Comical Opera in Paris.

Micheau studied singing in Toulouse and at the Paris Conservatory . In 1933 she made her debut as Cherubino in the Marriage of Figaro at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. This was followed by the Olympia from Hoffmann's stories , Rosina from the barber of Seville , Leila from the pearl fishermen from Georges Bizet and Micaela from Carmen . From the mid-1930s, her reputation was so solid that she was also in demand outside Paris, including Marseille (title role in Lakmé ), Amsterdam and Florence (Mélisande from Pelléas et Mélisande, one of her star roles, guest performance of the Opéra Comique at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino 1937), London ( Royal Opera House , Covent Garden 1937), Buenos Aires (Sophie im Rosenkavalier under Erich Kleiber ) and Rio de Janeiro (1939).

In 1938 she sang Creuse in the world premiere of Médée by Darius Milhaud at the Paris Komische Oper and she was also the first Manuela in the world premiere of Milhaud's Bolivar . Milhaud also wrote solo pieces for her, with which she performed in concert. Other roles during this time were Gilda in Rigoletto , Violetta in La traviata and Sophie from the Rosenkavalier . She was the first Caroline in the world premiere of Comme ils s'aiment by André Lavagne .

After the Second World War, she appeared at Scala in Milan (1948 in the Italian premiere of L'enfant et les sortilèges by Ravel), at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in London and in Brussels, mainly with French opera (Margarete from Gounod's Faust and Juliette from Roméo et Juliette by Charles Gounod , Manon from Massenet's Manon , the Melisande and others). She sang Anne Truelove in the French premiere of The Rake's Progress by Igor Stravinsky .

There are many recordings of her. She sang operettas for French radio recordings (such as Madame Chrysanthème by André Messager ) and appeared in baroque works such as Jean-Philippe Rameau's Les Indes galantes (Paris Opera 1952) and Platée (Aix en Provence Festival 1956, at which she also appeared in 1955 with Gluck's Orphée et Euridice ). She recorded the Shéhérazade by Maurice Ravel , Le martyre de Saint Sébastien and La Damoiselle élue by Claude Debussy and Á la musique by Emmanuel Chabrier . In the USA it occurred relatively rarely; first as Margarete in Gounod's Faust in Chicago in 1946 and as Micaela in Carmen , later also at the San Francisco Opera . She also went on a successful concert tour of South America.

Her farewell concert at the Opéra Comique was in 1960, but she performed again in May 1968 in Rouen (as Pamina from the Magic Flute ).

From 1961 she taught singing at the Conservatory in Paris and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.

Selected recordings

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Review by Janine Micheau, Operatic Recital, Decca at Opera News 2015
personal data
SURNAME Micheau, Janine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French soprano
DATE OF BIRTH April 17, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Toulouse
DATE OF DEATH October 18, 1976
Place of death Paris