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)
- Georges Bizet: Carmen - Micaëla
- Domenico Cimarosa: Il matrimonio segreto - Carolina
- Claude Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande - Melisande
- Gaetano Donizetti: L'elisir d'amore - Norina
- Manuel de Falla: La vida breve - Salud
- Charles Gounod: Roméo et Juliette - Juliette
- Engelbert Humperdinck: King's Children - Goose Girl
- Ruggero Leoncavallo: Pagliacci - Nedda
- Franco Leoni: L'Oracolo - Ah-Yoe
- Carlos López Buchardo : El Sueño d'Alma - Alma (world premiere)
- Pietro Mascagni: Iris - Iris
- Pietro Mascagni: L'amico Fritz - Suzel
- Jules Massenet: Manon - Manon
- Italo Montemezzi : L'amore di tre re - Fiora
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Così fan tutte - Despina
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Don Giovanni - Zerlina
- Jacques Offenbach: Les Contes d'Hoffmann - Antonia, Giulietta
- Giacomo Puccini: La Bohème - Mimì
- Giacomo Puccini: Madama Butterfly - Cio-Cio San
- Giacomo Puccini: Manon Lescaut - Manon Lescaut
- Giacomo Puccini: La rondine - Magda
- Maurice Ravel: L'Heure espagnole - Concepción
- Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Snegurochka - Snegurochka
- Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier - Octavian
- Deems Taylor : Peter Ibbetson - Mary (World Premiere)
- Giuseppe Verdi: Falstaff - Alice Ford
- Giuseppe Verdi: Rigoletto - Gilda
- Giuseppe Verdi: La traviata - Violetta
- Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari: L'amore medico - Lucinda
- Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari: Il segreto di Susanna - Susanna
Recordings
- The Complete Victor Recordings , Volume 1: 1914–1925, Volume 2: 1925–1937 (Romophone, 4 CDs in total)
- Duets with Lawrence Tibbett , Tito Schipa , John McCormack , Beniamino Gigli
- Mascagni: Iris (IRCC)
literature
- Jürgen Kesting: Lucrezia Bori. In: The great singers . 1st edition. Volume 1. Claasen, Düsseldorf 1986, ISBN 3-546-45387-5 , pp. 512-519
- Bori, Lucrezia . In: Karl-Josef Kutsch , Leo Riemens : Large singer lexicon . 3rd expanded edition. Vol. 1, 1997, p. 394
- Lanfranco Rasponi: The last prima donnas . Limelight Editions, 1982, ISBN 0-394-52153-6 (contains an interview with Lucrezia Bori)
Web links
- Literature on Lucrezia Bori at musicsack.com
- Biography on the Cantabile-Subito page
- Roles at the Metropolitan Opera
- Giuseppe Verdi's La traviata, sung by Lucrezia Bori in 1910, Edison Records. , from
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f Bori, Lucrezia . In: Kutsch / Riemens: Großes Sängerlexikon . 3rd expanded edition. Vol. 1, 1997, p. 394.
- ↑ 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
- ↑ According to Kesting; according to Kutsch / Riemens it was Mimi in La Bohème .
- ↑ a b biography on the Cantabile-Subito page
- ↑ according to Kutsch / Riemens; 448 performances took place in the Metropolitan Opera in New York itself, the rest on tours by the ensemble.
- ↑ Program and criticism
- ^ Roles at the Metropolitan Opera
personal data | |
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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 |