Maria Caniglia

Мария Канилья (1905 - 1979) - оперная певица (сопрано).

Maria Caniglia studied music under Agostino Roche at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella in her home town of Naples.
She graduated in 1929 and soon began a splendid career, singing the part of Crisostemide in Richard Strauss"s Elektra in Turin on 1st January 1930. She immediately won engagements in Rome, Florence, Bergamo and Genoa (where she triumphed in the role of Magda in Ottorino Respighi"s La Campana Sommersa) and then made her first appearance at La Scala in I931, singing in Ildebrando Pizzetti"s Straniero.

Celebrity came in the 1934-35 season, thanks especially to her memorable performance as Rosaura in Pietro Mascagni"s le Maschere, again at La Scala.
In the course of her long career she moved from the lyrical repertoire (Faust, Otello, Werther, Falstaff) to that of the dramatic soprano (Luisa Miller, Un Ballo in Maschera, Don Carlos and, particularly, Aida, a role of which she was specially fond). She also loved Wagner and won authentic triumphs even in Germany (a rare feat for an ltalian singer) as Elsa in Lohengrin and as Eva in Die Meistersinger.

She made an important contribution to the rediscovery of rare, forgotten operas such as Gluck"s Ifigenia in Aulide (1937), Donizetti"s Poliuto (1940) and Oberto, conte di Bonifacio by Verdi (1951). She sang in several world premières (Cirano di Bergerac by Alfano, 1936; Respighi"s Lucrezia, I937) and gave a fundamental impulse to contemporary compositions to which she was particularly attached thanks to the composer Pino Donati, whom she married in 1939, whilst he was the Superintendent of the Verona Arena where she often sang.
The Paris Opera, the New York Metropolitan, the London Covent Garden, the Colon in Buenos Aires, the Salzburg Festival where she sang in the famous edition of Falstaff conducted by Arturo Toscanini in I935: all the great opera houses in the world vied for her, considering her an exceptional soprano for the works of Verdi where the "spinto" roles suited her so admirably; she was, however, also a splendid impassioned performer in Tosca, Andrea Chénier and Adriana Lecouvreur.

She retired from the stage with a final, moving Tosca at the Cairo Opera in 1959, her voice now not so fresh as it had once been and beginning to show signs of the strain of a career which had perhaps been overtaxing.
She then devoted herself heart and soul to teaching, continuing in this activity until she died in Rome in 1979.
From the very beginning of her brilliant career Caniglia made numerous recordings (her first contract with Columbia dates back the 1930) and on several occasions her recordings were used in cinema (Follie per l"opera, Manon Lescaut, etc.).

She was an ideal partner for Giacomo Lauri Volpi and, especially, for Beniarnino Gigli with whom she recorded many operas (Un Ballo in Maschera, Aida, Tosca, Andrea Chénier) which are featured in a number of arias which offers us a precious testimony of the singer who was unquestionably the most popolar and best known ltalian soprano of the Thirties and Forties.

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