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Rosa Ponselle
Note by Norman White |
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| 'Miss Ponselle has a voice of pure gold'.
So said the music critic of the New York Times after her début at the Metropolitan Opera, a twenty-one year old soprano making her first appearance on any operatic stage, alongside the legendary Enrico Caruso.
Rosa Ponselle, whose real name was Ponzillo, was born to Italian immigrant parents in Connecticut on January 22nd 1897. She was taking piano lessons and singing by the age of ten, and was prevented from singing in the school choir because her voice was too strong! Her parents were interested enough in opera to christen her Rosa Melba Ponzillo. She made her professional singing début in a local picture house at the age of fourteen and for the next six years, appeared in Vaudeville together with her elder sister Carmella. Early in 1918 a friend of Caruso's arranged an audition at which Rosa sang for the great tenor. At the same time the Metropolitan Opera was searching for a dramatic soprano to perform the role of Leonora in its first ever staging of Verdi's La Forza del destino. After the audition Caruso told Ponselle that she would be singing with him at the Met. within a few months. Many years later she recalled that first performance on November 15th 1918 and how nervous she was. She was to suffer severe nervousness throughout her career. The next major work to be staged for her, after her sensational début, was another Met. premier, Spontini's La Vestale. In this production she formed a partnership with the conductor Tullio Serafin, whose influence on the great singers was to span more than fifty years and include in more recent times Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland. La Vestale was a stepping stone in the vocal development of Ponselle, leading towards Bellini's masterpiece Norma, not seen in New York since the previous century. On the first night of Norma, November 16th 1927, Ponselle's singing of the famous aria Casta Diva halted the performance for several minutes. The role was also used for her Covent Garden début in 1929. She sang three seasons at Covent Garden and one in Florence. These were her only performances outside the Metropolitan Opera. In all she sang twenty-one roles, but at the height of her career at the age of forty, after the last performance of the 1937 Met. tour of Carmen, Ponselle retired from the stage. This was certainly not due to any vocal failings, but possibly because her most recent role, Carmen, was not well received, and the Met. had refused to stage Adriana Lecouvreur for her. Also, she had recently married and wanted to spend more time with her husband. On top of this was the nervous strain that had always afflicted her. After her retirement she became a director of the Baltimore Opera and taught a few selected pupils. Special guests at her Baltimore home 'Villa Pace' sometimes heard her accompany herself at the piano and the occasional private recording was made. RCA finally persuaded her to record a series of songs in 1954. Ponselle died on the 25th May 1981. Through her recorded legacy we can follow her complete career and enjoy one of the greatest soprano voices of all time. |
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