Lucrezia Bori

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Lucrezia Bori
Lucrezia Bori

Lucrezia Bori (born December 24, 1887 in Valencia as Lucrezia y Borja Gonzales de Riancho , † May 14, 1960 in New York City ) was a Spanish opera singer ( soprano ).

Life

Bori studied piano and music theory at the Valencia Conservatory. Her voice was discovered during a trip to Italy in 1908, and she received vocal training there, including with Melchiorre Vidal in Milan. In 1908 she made her stage debut as Micaëla in Bizet's Carmen at the Teatro Adriano in Rome . Appearances at various Italian theaters (including the Teatro San Carlo in Naples) followed. In 1910 she was hired as Manon Lescaut for a guest performance at the New York Metropolitan Opera in Paris and then engaged at La Scala in Milan at the request of Arturo Toscanini . There she made her debut as Carolina in Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto and sang Octavian in the Italian premiere of Richard Strauss ' Rosenkavalier . In the same year she made her debut at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, where other guest appearances should follow.

On November 11, 1912, she made her debut at the New York Metropolitan Opera again in the title role of Puccini's Manon Lescaut as a stage partner of Enrico Caruso . There she sang numerous leading roles in the Italian field and received critical acclaim. She was also enthusiastically acclaimed as Madama Butterfly in Boston .

After nodules formed on her vocal cords, she had to retire from the stage after an unsuccessful operation in 1915. After another operation, a long period of rest (she said herself that she didn't say a word for a year) and then intensive studies, she celebrated her comeback in 1919 at the Opéra de Monte Carlo as Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni .

In 1919 she returned to the Metropolitan Opera as Mimi alongside Beniamino Gigli , where she sang the great roles of the Italian and French repertoire for another 17 years, including many US premieres (including Così fan tutte , La vida breve , L'heure espagnole and La Rondine ). In addition, she gave guest performances and concerts worldwide. She was a regular guest at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park near Chicago.

She celebrated her stage farewell on March 29, 1936 with a gala performance at the Metropolitan Opera, after more than 600 performances in 29 roles at this theater. Bori himself sang scenes from Manon and La traviata , and Kirsten Flagstad , Lauritz Melchior , Elisabeth Rethberg , Ezio Pinza , Rosa Ponselle , Giovanni Martinelli , Lawrence Tibbett and Richard Crooks also performed in her honor. After the end of her stage career, she was accepted as the first woman to the board of directors of the New York Met and was chairman of the Metropolitan Opera Guild. She performed in concerts for a few years, and some sound recordings followed her stage farewell.

Although she sang the great roles of verismo in the heyday of this style, her singing style was based on classical models, and her rather small and delicate voice also differs significantly from that of other verismo divas. The critic Jürgen Kesting sees Lucrezia Boris achievement in the fact that she “trusted the nuances, the subtleties, the lyricism of singing in an era in which most divas succumbed to the loud, garish and crude effects”.

Stage roles

(Selection)

Recordings

literature

Web links

Commons : Lucrezia Bori  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Bori, Lucrezia . In: Kutsch / Riemens: Großes Sängerlexikon . 3rd expanded edition. Vol. 1, 1997, p. 394.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Jürgen Kesting: Lucrezia Bori , in: The great singers . 1st edition. Volume 1. Claasen, Düsseldorf 1986, ISBN 3-546-45387-5 , pp. 512-519
  3. ↑ According to Kesting; according to Kutsch / Riemens it was Mimi in La Bohème .
  4. ↑ a b biography on the Cantabile-Subito page
  5. ↑ according to Kutsch / Riemens; 448 performances took place in the Metropolitan Opera in New York itself, the rest on tours by the ensemble.
  6. ↑ Program and criticism
  7. ^ Roles at the Metropolitan Opera
personal data
SURNAME Bori, Lucrezia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Borja y Gonzales de Riancho, Lucrecia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish opera singer (soprano)
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Valencia
DATE OF DEATH May 14, 1960
Place of death New York City