Word: mirella
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Several major singers, among them Mirella Freni, Joan Sutherland, Von Stade and Alfredo Kraus, are too rarely heard at the Met, although all four are appearing this season. And British Soprano Margaret Price, who sings in the major international houses, has never sung there. Somewhat ingenuously, Levine blames their absence partly on the Met's distance from Europe. Even in the Concorde age, he contends, they prefer to work closer to home, no more than a couple of hours' flight from Covent Garden, the Paris Opéra or Milan's La Scala, rather than take...
...When my daughter was a little girl, I try to stay in Europa, to stay home with her," says the reluctant diva in her own Italo-English. Indeed, Freni temporarily quit the stage after the birth in 1956 of her daughter Micaela, born the year after Mirella's professional operatic debut and named for her role in Bizet's Carmen. It took two years of appeals by her husband, Pianist Leone Magiera, her coach and accompanist, to persuade her to resume her career. "Later, I am singing with La Scala, Covent Garden, Paris, Vienna, and it is difficult...
...Scala that she came to international attention, singing Mimi in Franco Zeffirelli's 1963 production of La Bohème, and it has been with Karajan at his Salzburg Festival that she premiered some of her weightier roles, like Aida in 1979. "He said to me, 'Mirella, I want you to sing Aida. You can do the line I want. I don't like Aida screaming.' " After the first rehearsal, the orchestra broke into applause, and Karajan embraced her. He told her, "Mirella, if I could be a singer I would sing just like...
People have been applauding Freni since she was five years old. First to recognize her talent was her uncle, who noticed that little Mirella could sing along with his recording of Lucia di Lammermoor. Later, Freni recalls: "When I was 10½, my uncle remembered that I could do this, and he put on the record for my father. He said, 'Please, Mirella,' and they discovered I had the voice." Two years later, she won a national competition with her singing of Puccini's Un bel di. One of the judges, Tenor Beniamino Gigli, advised...
...very happy for Luciano, he is like a brother to me. But it is not my character. I like my privacy. I enjoy singing, I enjoy creating something with my voice. But when it is finished, it is finished." The great American hype machine is wasted on Mirella Freni...