Great Opera Stars

Luciano Pavarotti, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (Italian pronunciation: [luˈtʃaːno pavaˈrɔtti]; 12 October 1935 – 6 September 2007) was an Italian operatic tenor who also crossed over into popular music, eventually becoming one of the most commercially successful tenors of all time. He made numerous recordings of complete operas and individual arias, gaining worldwide fame for the quality of his tone, and eventually established himself as one of the finest tenors of the 20th century.[1][2]
As one of the Three Tenors, Pavarotti became well known for his televised concerts and media appearances. From the beginning of his professional career as a tenor in 1961 in Italy to his final performance of “Nessun dorma” at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin,[3] Pavarotti was at his best in bel canto operas, pre-Aida Verdi roles, and Puccini works such as La bohème, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly. Pavarotti was also noted for his charity work on behalf of refugees and the Red Cross, amongst others. He died from pancreatic cancer on 6 September 2007.

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Wilhelm Richard Wagner (/ˈvɑːɡnər/; German: [ˈʁiçaʁt ˈvaːɡnɐ] (About this sound listen); 22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is primarily known for his operas (or, as some of his later works were later known, “music dramas”). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Weber and Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung).

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Andrea Bocelli, born 22 September 1958) is an Italian classical crossover tenor, recording artist, and singer-songwriter. Born with poor eyesight, he became permanently blind at the age of 12 following a football accident.

Bocelli has recorded fifteen solo studio albums, of both pop and classical music, three greatest hits albums, and nine complete operas, selling over 80 million records worldwide. He has had success as a crossover performer bringing classical music to the top of international pop charts.
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Jan Peerce was born Jacob Pincus Perelmuth. His parents, Louis and Henya Perelmuth, came from the village of Horodetz, formerly in Poland, now Belarus. Their first child, a daughter, died in an epidemic. In 1903 they emigrated to America along with their second child, a boy named Mottel. A year later, on June 3, 1904, their third child, Joshua Pincus was born in a cold water flat in the Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York. He was nicknamed “Pinky” by his neighborhood friends. When he was three years old, his older brother Mottel was killed in an accident as he hitched a ride on an ice wagon. Jan remained on the Lower East Side until his 1930 marriage to Alice Kalmanovitz (1907-1994), a childhood friend. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School and Columbia University. At his mother’s urging he took violin lessons, and gave public performances, including dance band work as Jack “Pinky” Pearl. Sometimes he also sang and it was soon discovered he was an exceptional lyric tenor.

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Lily Pons (April 12, 1898 – February 13, 1976) was a French-American operatic soprano and actress who had an active career from the late 1920s through the early 1970s. As an opera singer she specialized in the coloratura soprano repertoire and was particularly associated with the title roles in Lakmé and Lucia di Lammermoor. In addition to appearing as a guest artist with many opera houses internationally, Pons enjoyed a long association with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, where she performed nearly 300 times between 1931 and 1960.

She also had a successful and lucrative career as a concert singer which continued until her retirement from performance in 1973. From 1935–37 she made three musical films for RKO Pictures. She also made numerous appearances on radio and on television, performing on variety programs like The Ed Sullivan Show, The Colgate Comedy Hour, and The Dave Garroway Show among others. In 1955 she topped the bill for the first broadcast of what became an iconic television series, Sunday Night at the London Palladium. She made dozens of records; recording both classical and popular music. She was awarded the Croix de Lorraine and the Légion d’honneur by the Government of France.

Pons was also savvy at making herself into a marketable cultural icon. Her opinions on fashion and home decorating were frequently reported in women’s magazines, and she appeared as the face for Lockheed airplanes, Knox gelatin and Libby’s tomato juice advertisements. A town in Maryland named itself after her, and thereafter the singer contrived to have all her Christmas cards posted from Lilypons, Maryland. Opera News wrote, “Pons promoted herself with a kind of marketing savvy that no singer ever had shown before, and very few have since; only Luciano Pavarotti was quite so successful at exploiting the mass media.”

Beverly Sills (May 25, 1929 – July 2, 2007) was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s.
Although she sang a repertoire from Handel and Mozart to Puccini, Massenet and Verdi, she was known for her performances in coloratura soprano roles in live opera and recordings. Sills was largely associated with the operas of Donizetti, of which she performed and recorded many roles. Her signature roles include the title role in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, the title role in Massenet’s Manon, Marie in Donizetti’s La fille du régiment, the three heroines in Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann, Rosina in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata, and most notably Elisabetta in Roberto Devereux.

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Licia Albanese (July 22, 1909[1] – August 15, 2014) was an Italian-born American operatic soprano. Noted especially for her portrayals of the lyric heroines of Verdi and Puccini, Albanese was a leading artist with the Metropolitan Opera from 1940 to 1966. She also made many recordings and was chairwoman of The Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation, which is dedicated to assisting young artists and singers.

Felicia Albanese was born in Noicàttaro, today part of Torre a Mare, a quarter of Bari, Italy, in 1909.[2][3] She made her unofficial debut in Milan in 1934, when she replaced another soprano in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, the role for which she would be celebrated. Over 40 years, she sang more than 300 performances of Cio-Cio-San. Although she has been praised for many of her roles, including Mimì, Violetta, Liù and Manon Lescaut, it is her portrayal of the geisha which has remained her best known.

She realized great success all over the world, especially for her performances in Carmen, L’amico Fritz and Madama Butterfly in Italy, France and England.

Albanese made her Metropolitan Opera debut on February 9, 1940, in the first of 72 performances as Madama Butterfly at the old Metropolitan Opera House. Her success was instantaneous, and Albanese remained at the Met for 26 seasons, performing a total of 427 performances of 17 roles in 16 operas. She left the company in 1966 in a dispute with General Manager Sir Rudolf Bing, without a grand farewell. After performing in four productions during 1965/66, she was scheduled for only one performance the next season. She returned her contract unsigned.

Arturo Toscanini invited Albanese to join his broadcast concert performances of La bohème and La traviata with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in NBC’s Studio 8H in 1946. Both performances were later issued on LP and CD by RCA Victor.

She was also a mainstay at the San Francisco Opera where she sang between 1941 and 1961, performing 22 roles in 120 performances over 20 seasons, remaining in part because of her admiration for its director, Gaetano Merola. Throughout her career, she continued to perform widely in recital, concert, and opera, she was heard throughout the country; she participated in benefits, entertained the troops, had her own weekly radio show, was a guest on other broadcasts and telecasts, and recorded frequently.

Even after a career spanning seven decades, Albanese continued to perform occasionally. After hearing her sing the national anthem during a Met opening, Stephen Sondheim and Thomas Z. Shepard cast her as operetta diva Heidi Schiller in Sondheim’s Follies in concert with the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall in 1985. During the 1987 spring season of the Theatre Under the Stars in Houston, Texas, Albanese starred in a stage revival of Follies, which was a great success.

Albanese died on August 15, 2014, at the age of 105 in her home in Manhattan.[4]

Her popularity in La traviata was such that she sang more performances of that opera at the Met and the San Francisco Opera than any other singer in either company’s history. Schuyler Chapin describes her as “a splendid former prima donna of the Italian repertoire, remembered by old-timers as the frailest Mimì, the tenderest Butterfly, and perhaps the most haunting of modern Violettas.”

Her voice had a distinctive character which the Italians call a lirico spinto, marked by its quick vibrato, incisive diction, intensity of attack and unwavering emotional impact. During her career she performed with many of the contemporary greats of opera—Beniamino Gigli, Claudia Muzio, Jussi Björling, and Franco Corelli. She worked with some of the best conductors of her time, but it is her work with Toscanini that has endured. Despite her talent and numerous performances, she was not the best known of her contemporaries, overshadowed in her day by Zinka Milanov, Maria Callas, Victoria de los Ángeles and Renata Tebaldi.

To all of her work, Albanese brought passion and commitment, with her rich soprano voice, equalized throughout its range, thrilling in its climaxes. However, despite her repeated performances, she never fell into routine. As she explained in a 2004 interview with Allan Ulrich of the San Francisco Chronicle, “I always changed every performance. I was never boring, and I am against copying. What I learned from the great singers was not to copy, but that the drama is in the music.”[6]

Recordings and legacy[edit]
Albanese appeared in the very first live telecast from the Metropolitan Opera, Verdi’s Otello, opposite Ramón Vinay and Leonard Warren, conducted by Fritz Busch. One of the first generation of opera singers to appear widely in recordings and on the radio, her performances, now reappearing on both compact disc and video, have provided a lasting testament to her ability.

Albanese was chairman of The Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation, founded in 1974 and dedicated to assisting young artists and singers. She also served as a trustee of the Bagby Foundation. She worked with the Juilliard School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and Marymount Manhattan College, and conducted master classes throughout the world.

National and international honors[edit]
Albanese became a United States citizen in 1945. On October 5, 1995, President Bill Clinton presented her with the National Medal of Honor for the Arts.

She received awards and honorary degrees from Marymount Manhattan College, Montclair State Teachers College, Saint Peter’s College, New Jersey, Seton Hall University, University of South Florida, Fairfield University, Siena College, Caldwell College, and Fairleigh Dickinson University.

She was awarded the prestigious Handel Medallion, the highest official honor given by the City of New York and presented to individuals for their contributions to the city’s cultural life, from Rudolph Giuliani in 2000. At the ceremony, Mayor Giuliani commemorated the career of a woman who is “without question [one] of the most loved and respected performers in the world.”[8]

Mary Violet Leontyne Price (born February 10, 1927) is an American soprano. Born and raised in Laurel, Mississippi,[1] she rose to international acclaim in the 1950s and 1960s, and was one of the first African Americans to become a leading artist at the Metropolitan Opera.
One critic characterized Price’s voice as “vibrant”, “soaring” and “a Price beyond pearls”, as well as “genuinely buttery, carefully produced but firmly under control”, with phrases that “took on a seductive sinuousness.”Time magazine called her voice “Rich, supple and shining, it was in its prime capable of effortlessly soaring from a smoky mezzo to the pure soprano gold of a perfectly spun high C.
A lirico spinto (Italian for “pushed lyric”) soprano, she was considered especially well suited to the roles of Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini, as well as several in operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
After her retirement from the opera stage in 1985, she continued to appear in recitals and orchestral concerts until 1997.
Among her many honors are the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964), the Spingarn Medal (1965),[6] the Kennedy Center Honors (1980), the National Medal of Arts (1985), numerous honorary degrees, and 19 Grammy Awards for operatic and song recitals and full operas, and a special Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989, more than any other classical singer. In October 2008, she was one of the recipients of the first Opera Honors given by the National Endowment for the Arts.