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The Opera Quarterly 20.4 (2004) 540-569



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Luisa Tetrazzini

Coloratura Secrets

As many readers of The Opera Quarterly will already know, Luisa Tetrazzini was born in Florence on 29 June 1871 and first studied voice under her sister, Eva Tetrazzini-Campanini, a successful opera singer. Later she studied with Professor Ceccherini at the Liceo Musicale in Florence. In 1892, at the age of twenty-one, she made her operatic debut in Florence as Inez in Meyerbeer's L'Africaine. Her rise to stardom was slow; after many performances in the smaller Italian opera houses, she decided to tour South America in 1898 and later appeared in San Francisco in 1903. Her first great success was a debut at Covent Garden on 2 November 1907 as Violetta in La traviata, when she was thirty-six. She earned twenty curtain calls from a house only half-full—it was off-season—but the reviews in newspapers the next day insured that did not happen again. She sang nine more performances that season and from 1908 to 1912 sang every summer season at Covent Garden, in such roles as Lakmé, Rosina, Violetta, Amina, Lucia, Leila, and Gilda.

In January 1908 she made her New York operatic debut, again as Violetta, with Oscar Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera Company, singing with that company until it folded in 1910. With Mary Garden she was one of Oscar Hammerstein's greatest attractions, drawing full houses whenever she appeared. Her roles included Dinorah, Lucia, Marie (Fille du régiment), Elvira (I Puritani), and Anetta (Crispino e la comare). On 27 December 1911 she made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Lucia. She sang only eight performances with the company that season, but all her performances were sold out. More than two thousand people had to be turned away from the box office for her final appearance as Gilda.

During her career, she appeared in Russia, Mexico, Spain, Italy, North America, South America, Austria, and England. In 1921 she wrote her memoirs, My Life of Song (with the help of Fred Gaisberg), and in 1923 published a treatise called How to Sing.1 Concise but astute, it proves the lady knew exactly what [End Page 540] she was doing. After her retirement in 1934, she taught voice in Rome and Milan (her most famous pupil was Lina Pagliughi, whom Tetrazzini considered her protégée), making occasional appearances in order to earn money. Although she earned over five million dollars during her thirty-two-year career, most of it was lost through unwise investments and because of her trusting nature. Tetrazzini married three times but was unlucky in her choice of men.

Critics and Admirers

In the pantheon of coloratura sopranos who have committed their art to discs, Luisa Tetrazzini remains unique. Her florid technique was governed by a strong, active imagination and an exuberant, rhythmically potent delivery. She sang coloratura with the grace of a florid specialist and the natural thrust of a dramatic soprano. Chronologically, Tetrazzini fit neatly between Nellie Melba (who was in her decline) and Amelita Galli-Curci (who made her operatic debut in 1916). After the placidity of Melba's perfected coloratura, Tetrazzini's vibrant, almost reckless abandon was like a shot in the arm. Her charming personality and naïveté quickly endeared her to audiences wherever she sang.

She was an irresistible performer. As Edward C. Moore wrote,

She came and laid everyone low. With the most disdainful ease she made the art of coloratura to glow as it never has since. Physical illusion was not in her line at all; she was the size of three or four Maggie Teytes. But what a voice!

Even after all these years one can recall the warm reediness of its qualities, the joyous certainty with which it swooped into all the cascades and fireworks of coloratura display, the piercing intensity which somehow or other never became shrill.2

At the time, critics spent gallons of ink describing this coloratura's allure and criticizing her faults. John Pitts Sanborn, an eminent critic, wrote several descriptive articles about...

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