Miraculous mezzo-soprano coupled elegant brightness with beautiful earthly lowness

As the ultimate interpreter of the role of Carmen, the Spanish mezzo-soprano Teresa Berganza combined an elegant brightness with a beautiful, earthy low. When she sang about love “like a rebellious bird” you could feel that sigh, because she gave those words a credible, artless air with her timing, life experience and timbre. Berganza “was the Carmen of the century,” summarized conductor Herbert von Karajan. Berganza passed away on Friday, who already said goodbye to the concert stage in 2008. She was 89 years old.

Teresa Berganza, born in Madrid in 1933, was one of the great opera stars of the twentieth century. She sang in all the major opera houses of Europe and the United States for half a century. Besides her exemplary interpretation of the title role from Bizet’s opera, she was especially popular for her interpretation of roles in the operas of Rossini and Mozart. “Mozart is my Messiah,” she said herself. “Just call me a mystic, I don’t mind. My name is Teresa for a reason.”

Berganza made his debut in Madrid in 1955 and was internationally acclaimed in 1957 and 1958 at the festivals in Aix-en-Provence and Glyndebourne with renditions of Dorabella in Mozart’s Così fan tutte and Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro† She sang the latter part with “a charming mix of childish confusion and tingling desires, in her eyes a promise of danger,” noted one reviewer.

Performances in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands she also sang the role of Cherubini with great acclaim: at the Holland Festival in 1961 (in The Hague, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini). In that same festival summer she also went to the Amsterdam Concertgebouw for a recital with Spanish songs – according to the reviewer of the General trade magazine it produced such a show that the audience “would have loved to devour her out of sheer happiness.” The following year Berganza was back in the Holland Festival, this time for the role of Rosina in Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Sivigliafollowed by several recitals in the 1970s and 1980s.

“A loyal crowd of admirers handed her a turban and a bottle of wine,” noted NRC at her recital in the Amsterdam Beurs van Berlange (1988). Berganza, now 55, was still “fantastic” vocally. And in 1995 it was no different: the hall “reacted frantically to the musical seduction skills of this wonderful mezzo-soprano, who still has the spontaneous, vital and sensual aura of a young woman”, signaled NRC† Her voice, “which seemed to combine the scent of licorice, cloves, and wildflowers,” was not a trace of fatigue.

Highlights

Berganza’s career had many highlights. She sang at the opening ceremony of the Seville World’s Fair in 1992, with Placido Domingo, and at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Barcelona (also in 1992).

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After her retirement from the stage in 2008, she still taught, in 2011, 2014 and 2018 she was a jury member of the Elisabeth Competition (those years for singing) in Brussels. Berganza recorded numerous records, including Handels Alcina with Joan Sutherland (1960), Bizets carmen (from 1977) and the other operas in which she gloryed, as well as recital albums of Spanish songs and zarzuelas.

Berganza married twice (the second time to the priest she had consulted before her divorce) and had three children.