This Friday, in her beloved San Lorenzo de El Escorial (Madrid), the legendary Madrid mezzo-soprano Teresa Berganza, considered one of the most important singers of the 20th century. Born in March 1933, she began her musical studies at the Vázquez de Mella Foundation School, which she deepened at the Madrid Conservatory (piano, organ, composition, harmony, chamber music, history of music and orchestral conducting) and at the chair of singing and vocal technique of Lola Rodríguez Aragón. From very early on he stood out for his virtuosity in the classical repertoire and belcantista, becoming one of the most important interpreters of Mozart and Rossini. She graduated in 1954 (End of Career Award for Singing) and was awarded a scholarship by the Ministry of Education to perfect herself in Austria.
He made his debut in 1956 at the Ateneo de Madrid with Schumann’s lieder cycle ‘Frauenliebe und Leben’ and with songs by Reger and Montsalvatge and that same year he appeared in Paris. In 1957 she began her international breakthrough at the Aix-en-Provence Festival (France) as Dorabella in Mozart’s opera ‘Così fan tutte’. On that same stage she would offer a large part of her repertoire, such as Cherubino (‘Nozze di Figaro’, Mozart), Rosina (‘Barbiere di Siviglia’, Rossini) or Ruggiero (‘Alcina’, Händel). Before her triumph in Aix she had offered a concert with RAI in Milan with ‘Dido and Aeneas’ (Purcell) as well as participating in a film as the protagonist of ‘L’Italiana in Algeri’ (Rossini). At Glyndebourne she made an impact with Cherubino and, also in 1957, she made her debut at La Scala in Milan in Le Comte Ory.
With Maria Callas
His debut in the United States came the following year in Dallas alongside Maria Callas as Neris in ‘Medea’. From then on she began to develop an important recording career, with over 200 recordings between recitals, complete operas, oratorios and operettas.
In 1960 he made his debut in London and in 1967 he sang for the first time at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (Cherubino), the city in which he had performed at Carnegie Hall in 1964. At the Colón in Buenos Aires he made his debut with ‘La Cenerentola’ ( Rossini), where he would offer practically all of his repertoire. Her already unstoppable trajectory would lead her to work with directors of the stature of Von Karajan, Böhm, Solti, Giulini, Abbado, Zeffirelli, Ponnelle, Strehler or Faggioni.
Another of her fetish roles was the protagonist of ‘Carmen’, by Bizet, a character to whom she gave new interpretative edges, making it her own from her first performance at the Edinburgh Festival, in 1977, with Placido Domingo. She would also become one of her emblematic characters, the Charlotte of ‘Werther’ (Massenet), which she would incorporate in 1979 at the Zurich Opera.
Due to her motherhood, she balanced her operatic schedule very early with recitals and concerts, becoming a specialist in the Spanish, German, Latin American, Russian and French repertoire. She participated in various film operatic projects, such as ‘Il Barbiere di Siviglia’ (1972), ‘Don Giovanni, Mozart’ (1979), ‘Werther’ and ‘Carmen’ (1980).
The Seville Expo
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In 1992 it was one of the protagonists of the inaugural gala of the Teatro de La Maestranza and the Seville Expo singing ‘Carmen’ together with Josep Carreras and directed by Plácido Domingo. Since 1995 she was part of the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts. She was professor of singing at the Escuela Superior de Canto Reina Sofía in Madrid and in recent years she dedicated herself to teaching giving master classes all over the world.
Among other recognitions, he had the Lazo de Isabel la Católica, the Gold Medal of Fine Arts in 1982, the Gold Medal of the Community of Madrid, the Rossini Grand Prize, the World Critics Award, several times the Grand Prize of the Disco , the 1993 Woman of the Year in the United States, the 1996 National Music Award, the 1991 Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts and the Current Opera Award. She is also the Adoptive Daughter of San Lorenzo de El Escorial and Commander of Arts and Letters of the French Republic. She is named after her a Conservatory in Madrid, an Auditorium in Villaviciosa de Odón (Madrid) and a street in San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Her autobiography is titled ‘Flower of Solitude and Silence: Meditations of a Singer’ (2000).