Giulietta Simionato the Greatest 1910 - 2010 Rest-In-Peace

In March, with the 100th birthday of the great Italian soprano, Magda Olivero, knowing that the birthday of another of the greatest of all operatic voices, Giulietta Simionato, the majestic Italian mezzo-soprano, was alive, also born in 1910, with her centennial in May, I had so hoped this year for a celebratory "duet." Not a literal duet between these true operatic LEGENDS -- that term is used for many, but these two women are/were textbook definitions of musical legnds -- but a near-concurrent fete of their long lives.

Alas, the great Simionato, one of only a handful of not my favorite singers, but my operatic idols, did not see her big day (May 12). She left our world today instead. It seems almost impossible--one thought that Simionato was invincible. Go back a little over a decade to when, at age 88, this greatest and most versatile of Italian vocal artists made an appearance in the eccentric documentary, "Opera Fanatic: Stefan and the Divas." The documentary centered around the unique person of Stefan Zucker -- someone hard to pigeonhole into a single category -- and his personal quest to interview the great singers of the past generations of the Italian style. Some of these divas seemed spry, others frail, but none as regal, powerful and youthful for her respective age -- ranging from their late 60s to nearly 100 (i.e. Gina Cigna and Iris Adami Corradetti) at the time that Zucker spoke with them for the documentary -- as La Simionato. When she also illustrated a musical point with her own grand mezzo soprano voice -- which had notes as low and dark as a contralto as well as a ringing, soprano-timbred High-C! -- the freshness and power of the sound, especially for a woman her age, gave viewers a true and unexpected thrill.

I won't get biographical. There is much to be read about this unique artist in print and on the web. (Do take time to do so.) Suffice to say that I first heard her as Azucena on the 1956 Decca recording of Verdi's "Il Trovatore," with co-stars, Renata Tebaldi and Mario del Monaco (conducted by Alberto Erede), and I listened to the entire recording over and over again mouth agape. I was hooked on the first listening and followed this with her Amneris, her Rosina in "Il barbiere di siviglia," her Cenerentola, her Giovanna Seymour, her Carmen, and her unsurpassed Valentine in Meyerbeer's "Les Huguenots" and Princess Eboli in Verdi's "Don Carlo," and her PEERLESS Santuzza, among many others. (How's THAT for range?!?!)

I had seen Simionato in interviews into her late nineties. She looked fit as a fiddle and was still conducting master classes and judging vocal competitions until just a year or so ago. As I said, I thought she would defy the odds and live to be a supercentenarian. It was not to be but we were truly blessed with her 99 years.

Rest-In-Peace truly grand DIVA. I loved and still love you.

Giulietta Simionato sings "O Don Fatale" from Verdi's Don Carlo--from YouTube: