Magda Olivero facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Magda Olivero
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| Born |
Maria Maddalena Olivero
25 March 1910 Saluzzo, Piedmont, Italy
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| Died | 8 September 2014 (aged 104) Milan, Italy
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| Occupation | Opera singer (soprano) |
| Years active | 1932–1981 |
Magda Olivero (born Maria Maddalena Olivero) was a famous Italian opera singer. She was a soprano, which means she sang the highest parts. Her career began in 1932 when she was 22 years old. She sang for almost 50 years, becoming a very important link between old opera styles and modern ones. Many people think she was "one of the greatest singers of the twentieth century." She was born on March 25, 1910, and passed away on September 8, 2014, at the age of 104.
Contents
Life as an Opera Star
Early Life and First Performances
Magda Olivero was born in Saluzzo, Italy. She studied music, including piano, and graduated from a music school in Turin. She later learned to sing and had her first performance on the radio in 1932. She sang in a special musical story called an oratorio.
Magda became more and more successful in her singing career. But in 1941, she got married and decided to stop performing on stage. For almost ten years, she only sang sometimes for charity events.
Returning to the Stage
Magda really wanted to have children, but she couldn't. So, in 1951, she decided to return to her singing career. A famous composer named Francesco Cilea asked her to sing the main role in his opera Adriana Lecouvreur again. She performed this role on February 3, 1951. Sadly, Cilea had passed away a few months before, so he never saw her perform it.
From 1951 until she finally retired, Magda Olivero sang in opera houses all over Italy. In the 1960s and 1970s, she also performed around the world, including Europe, Egypt, the U.S., and Latin America. However, she rarely sang in very famous places like the Royal Opera House in London or the Paris Opera. She performed only once at the Vienna State Opera and very rarely at La Scala, a famous opera house in Milan.
Famous Roles and International Debuts
Magda Olivero was known for her amazing performances in many operas. Some of her most famous roles were in Adriana Lecouvreur, Tosca, La Bohème, Madama Butterfly, and La Traviata. She also performed in La Voix Humaine, an opera where only one singer performs. She was the first to sing the Italian version of this opera in 1968.
In 1967, she made her first successful performance in the United States. She sang the role of Medea in an opera called Médée at the Dallas Opera. She returned to Dallas several times, singing in other operas like Fedora and Tosca.
Singing at the Metropolitan Opera
In 1975, when she was 65 years old, Magda Olivero finally performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. She sang the main role in Tosca. She was a last-minute replacement for another singer. Her three performances there were incredibly popular. People cheered loudly, and these shows are still called "legendary."
A book about the Metropolitan Opera describes her last performance there:
On April 18, her third and last Met performance... Olivero showed what made her unique: she sang and acted as if her life depended on it.
—Charles and Mirella Jona Affron (2014), Grand Opera: The Story of the Met, p. 266.
Retirement and Later Years
Magda Olivero's last performances on stage were in March 1981, in the opera La Voix Humaine. She was 71 years old, and her stage career had lasted almost 50 years. Even after retiring from the opera stage, she continued to sing sacred music (religious songs) and made occasional appearances well into her nineties.
Magda Olivero passed away in Milan at the age of 104. She believed that her long life was due to her vegetarian diet and practicing yoga. She is buried in the famous people's memorial chapel in the Monumental Cemetery of Milan.
Recordings and What Made Her Special
Her Recordings
Even though many people loved Magda Olivero, she wasn't a huge "star" in the recording world. She mostly sang in smaller Italian theaters, and big record companies didn't record her very often. There are only two official studio recordings of her singing full operas: Turandot (from 1938) and Fedora (from 1969). There's also a film of her singing Tosca from a TV broadcast in 1960.
She also made a few studio recordings of individual songs. One of these was from La Traviata, which one critic called "the most fascinating performance of this scene and aria ever committed to the phonograph."
In 1993, long after she stopped performing on stage, Magda Olivero recorded parts of Adriana Lecouvreur with just a piano. When she was 86, she even performed a famous speech from Adriana in a film called Opera Fanatic.
Why She Was So Admired
Even without many official recordings, there are many live recordings of her performances. These recordings show how incredibly talented she was. The famous singer Marilyn Horne was a big fan of Magda Olivero. In 1975, she insisted that the Met hire Olivero, saying: "She practically gave acting and singing lessons while onstage; honestly, you could learn more from watching an Olivero performance than from reading most books on those very subjects." This means Magda was an amazing actress as well as a singer.
Stefan Zucker, who interviewed old opera singers for the film Opera Fanatic, said that Magda Olivero was the last singer who had learned from the old "verismo" composers. He said she could use her voice to show the music's tension and calm. He also said her singing was "sensed in the soul."
While many people loved her, some critics in America didn't always like her style. They sometimes thought her singing was exaggerated. However, in Italy, her reviews were almost always positive.
When she passed away, many newspapers around the world wrote kind tributes about her. Emmanuel Villaume, a music director, said that Magda Olivero was a "unique artist." He admired how she used her natural voice, great technique, and musical knowledge to create performances where "Drama, magic and music just fed each other perfectly."
