Renata Tebaldi OMRI was born on February 1, 1922, and passed away on December 19, 2004. She was an Italian soprano singer who became well-known after World War II. She was especially famous for performing at La Scala, San Carlo, and the Metropolitan Opera. Renata was known for singing roles that required both lyrical and dramatic styles, often called verismo roles. Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini praised her voice as "the voice of an angel." Riccardo Muti, who led the music at La Scala, called her "one of the greatest performers with one of the most extraordinary voices in opera."

Early years and education

Tebaldi was born in Pesaro, in the northern region of Marche. She was the daughter of Teobaldo Tebaldi, a cellist, and Giuseppina Barbieri, a nurse. Her parents separated before she was born, and Tebaldi lived with her mother in her maternal grandparents' home in Langhirano, near Parma in Emilia-Romagna.

At the age of three, Tebaldi developed polio. This experience led her to become interested in music, and she began singing with the church choir in Langhirano. At 13, her mother sent her to take piano lessons with Giuseppina Passani in Parma. Passani encouraged Tebaldi to study voice with Italo Brancucci at the Parma Conservatory. She was accepted into the conservatory at 17, where she studied with Brancucci and Ettore Campogalliani. Later, she moved to the Liceo musicale Rossini in Pesaro, where she took lessons with Carmen Melis. Melis also recommended that she study with Giuseppe Pais. Afterward, Tebaldi studied with Beverley Peck Johnson in New York City.

Italian career

Tebaldi began performing on stage as Elena in Boito's Mefistofele in Rovigo in 1944. Traveling during wartime was difficult, and she partially traveled by horse cart to Rovigo. Her return journey was dangerous, as she faced machine-gun fire. In her early career, she performed in Parma in La bohème, L'amico Fritz, and Andrea Chénier. In 1946, she made her debut as Desdemona in Verdi's Otello in Trieste, performing alongside Francesco Merli as the title character.

Her major success came in 1946 when she auditioned for Arturo Toscanini, who praised her voice as "la voce d'angelo" ("voice of an angel"). That same year, she performed at La Scala during a concert celebrating the theater's reopening after World War II. She sang the "Prayer" ("Dal tuo stellato soglio") from Rossini's Mosè in Egitto and the soprano part in Verdi's Te Deum.

In 1946, she performed the roles of Margherita and Elena in Mefistofele and Elsa in Lohengrin. The next year, she appeared in La bohème and as Eva in Die Meistersinger. Toscanini encouraged her to perform the role of Aida and invited her to rehearse it in his studio. Although she believed the role was meant for a dramatic soprano, Toscanini convinced her otherwise. She debuted as Aida at La Scala in 1950 with Mario del Monaco and Fedora Barbieri, conducted by Antonino Votto. This performance was a major success and led to international opportunities.

During the first decade of her career, Tebaldi performed roles from composers such as Rossini, Spontini, Handel, Mozart, Wagner, Gounod, Mascagni, Tchaikovsky, and contemporary composers like Refice, Casavola, and Cilea.

In 1953, Tebaldi provided the singing voice for Sophia Loren in the film version of Aida.

International career

Tebaldi joined the La Scala ensemble on a concert tour in 1950. She first performed at the Edinburgh Festival and later in London, where she made her debut as Desdemona in two performances of Otello at the Royal Opera House and in the Verdi Requiem. Both events were conducted by Victor de Sabata.

In 1950, Tebaldi made her American debut as Aida at the San Francisco Opera. Her first performance at the Metropolitan Opera (Met) was on January 31, 1955, when she sang the role of Desdemona opposite Mario Del Monaco’s Otello. For about 20 years, the Met became the center of her career. In the 1962–1963 season, she persuaded Met director Rudolf Bing to stage a revival of Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, an opera Bing claimed he disliked. Tebaldi was not in her best condition and canceled some performances. Bing later said, “We had to do the wretched thing without her.” However, her performance of Lecouvreur was important for the Met, as she was “the greatest box-office draw since Flagstad,” according to Francis Robinson, then assistant manager of ticket sales. Tebaldi later returned to the role of Adriana for the opening night of the 1968–69 season. The Met earned a box office record of $126,000 for that event.

One of the public’s favorite roles for Tebaldi was Minnie in Puccini’s La fanciulla del West. She performed this role only five times in February and March 1970. When she first performed Minnie at the Met, she was told she would have to enter the third act on horseback, as is traditional for the role. Tebaldi, who had a lifelong fear of horses, refused to approach the animal until she was certain it was safe. At her first rehearsal, she approached the horse, patted its mane, and said, “Well, Mr. Horse, I am Tebaldi. You and I are going to be friends, eh?” She overcame her fear, and the performances were successful.

Tebaldi performed more frequently at the Met and less often elsewhere. She formed a strong connection with Met audiences and became known as “Miss Sold Out,” because her name on the marquee was considered a performance that was hard to match. She sang at the Met about 270 times in roles such as La bohème, Madama Butterfly, Tosca, Manon Lescaut, La fanciulla del West, Otello, La forza del destino, Simon Boccanegra, Falstaff, Andrea Chénier, Adriana Lecouvreur, La Gioconda, and as Violetta in a La Traviata production created especially for her. Tosca was her most frequent role at the Met, with 45 performances. She performed as Leonora in La forza del destino on the night in 1960 when Leonard Warren died mid-performance. She also performed as Adriana Lecouvreur on the night Plácido Domingo made his Met debut in 1968. Her final performance at the Met was on January 8, 1973, as Desdemona in Otello—the same role in which she made her Met debut 18 years earlier.

Tebaldi was admired by many American opera fans. She did not act like a typical temperamental diva but trusted her artistic instincts. Rudolf Bing once said of her, “She has dimples of iron,” referring to her strong, determined personality.

In the early 1950s, some people talked about a rivalry between Tebaldi and the Greek-American soprano Maria Callas.

The difference between Callas’s unusual vocal style and Tebaldi’s traditional, beautiful sound brought up an old debate in opera: whether sound beauty or expressive use of sound is more important.

In 1951, Tebaldi and Callas were both scheduled to perform in a vocal recital in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. They agreed not to perform encores, but Tebaldi did so anyway, and Callas reportedly became angry. This event started the rivalry, which became very intense in the mid-1950s. Some fans said the two women exchanged harsh words. Tebaldi was quoted as saying, “I have one thing that Callas doesn’t have: a heart.” Callas was quoted in Time magazine as saying that comparing her with Tebaldi was like “comparing Champagne with Coca-Cola.” However, witnesses said Callas only said “Champagne with Cognac,” and a bystander added, “No, with Coca-Cola.” The Time reporter attributed the last comment to Callas.

According to John Ardoin, the two singers should not have been compared. Tebaldi was trained by Carmen Melis, a specialist in verismo, and she followed the early 20th-century Italian singing style as firmly as Callas followed the 19th-century bel canto tradition.

Callas was a dramatic soprano, while Tebaldi considered herself a lyric soprano. They generally performed different types of roles: Callas focused on heavy dramatic roles early in her career and later on bel canto roles, while Tebaldi focused on late Verdi and verismo roles. They shared a few roles, including Tosca in Puccini’s opera and La Gioconda, which Tebaldi performed only late in her career.

Despite the rivalry, both singers made kind remarks about each other. Callas once said, “I admire Tebaldi’s tone; it’s beautiful—also some beautiful phrasing. Sometimes, I actually wish I had her voice.” Francis Robinson of the Met wrote about a time when Tebaldi asked him to recommend a recording of La Gioconda to help her learn the role. Knowing about the rivalry, he suggested Zinka Milanov’s version. A few days later, he visited Tebaldi and found her listening to Callas’s recording. She looked up and asked, “Why didn’t you tell me Maria’s was the best?” According to Time magazine, when Callas left La Scala, Tebaldi said she would not perform there without Callas. “I sing only for artistic reasons; it is not my custom to sing against anybody,” she said.

Callas visited Tebaldi after a performance of Adriana Lecouvreur at the Met in 1968, and the two women were reunited. In 1978, Tebaldi spoke warmly about her late colleague and summarized the rivalry.

Voice

Tebaldi's voice was known to be one of the most beautiful of her time, with rich and perfectly produced tones. At the start of her career, her performance during the reopening of La Scala, which had been damaged by bombs, was noted for Arturo Toscanini praising her. He called her "la Voce d'Angelo" and gave enthusiastic "Brava!"s and applause.

British musicologist Alan Blyth suggested that in later years, Tebaldi was considered one of the last and best spinto sopranos of the past 50 years. This was because her successors in the fach lacked the proper vocal tools for her roles. Blyth said this was partly due to Tebaldi's recordings and her live performances onstage. Her voice added a sense of urgency when she sang in an opera house. This was seen in two of her performances as Leonora in Verdi's La forza del destino, one recorded at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 1953, where conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos encouraged her to reach high levels of vocal and dramatic skill, and another in a live video recording in Naples.

Montserrat Caballe said in an interview that Tebaldi was "our Aida, our Traviata, our Manon Lescaut. She was all the roles, and she was the most perfect human voice we ever heard." Robert Merrill and Licia Albanese also spoke about the rich and beautiful quality of Tebaldi's voice.

In 1963, Tebaldi stopped performing to restudy her voice, partly because of the emotional stress from singing for eighteen years. After thirteen months of retraining, her voice developed a clear, metallic quality that grew stronger over time. In her mid-to-later career, she shifted from being a spinto soprano to one with a near-dramatic sound. She added La Gioconda to her repertoire, where her chest notes reached high registers with strength but less of the usual beauty in her tone. Similarly, in her recorded Puccini roles during this time, her high notes were not always easy to produce or perfectly pitched.

Some critics pointed out that Tebaldi's technique was not always complete. She sometimes used strong, full-voiced high notes when singing above a high B-flat and had occasional mistakes in pitch. However, most audiences appreciated the deep richness of her voice, her smooth, flowing phrases, her expressive but never overly emotional singing style, her soft, high notes, and her emotional depth during dramatic moments. Tebaldi's known rival, Maria Callas, said in an interview, "I admire Tebaldi's tone; it's beautiful—also some beautiful phrasing. Sometimes, I actually wish I had her voice."

Tebaldi mentioned that recording was challenging for her because she missed the energy of an audience. Her powerful voice often caused sound engineers to ask her to move away from the microphone during intense moments.

Personal life

Tebaldi had a loved relationship with her mother, who helped care for her and worked hard to support her career and health from a young age. Her mother's death in 1957 was a big loss for Tebaldi, and she felt very sad. It was hard for her to return to performing on stage after this loss.

Tebaldi never married. In a 1995 interview with The Times, she said she did not regret being single. "I was in love many times," she said. "This is good for a woman." She also said, "How could I have been a wife, a mother, and a singer? Who would take care of the children when I travel around the world? Your children would not call you Mama, but Renata." She wrote, "I started my career at 22 and finished it at 54. Thirty-two years of success, happiness, and hard work. Singing was my main goal to the point that I could never have a family."

Tebaldi had a short relationship with bass singer Nicola Rossi-Lemeni. A longer relationship with conductor Arturo Basile began in 1958. It was reported that Tebaldi ended their plans to marry in 1962 because of Basile's behavior.

Later years

By the end of her career, Tebaldi performed in 1,262 shows: 1,048 full operas and 214 concerts. She retired from the opera stage in 1973 after singing the role of Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello at the Metropolitan Opera, the same role she first performed there almost 20 years earlier. She gave recitals in many countries around the world. During one recital in Manila with her frequent singing partner Franco Corelli, Tebaldi’s voice cracked while singing an aria from Manon Lescaut. She then massaged her throat and bowed deeply, receiving loud applause from the audience. In January 1976, she performed her final recital at New York’s Carnegie Hall. The audience gave her six curtain calls and stood to applaud. She then moved out of her New York apartment, where she had lived for many years during her time at the Met, and returned to Italy. Her last public performance was a vocal recital at La Scala in May 1976. Tebaldi explained that she stopped singing while she still had a strong voice to avoid "the embarrassing time when her voice weakened."

In her later years, she spent most of her time in Milan. She died on December 19, 2004, at age 82 in her home in San Marino. She is buried in the Tebaldi family chapel at Mattaleto cemetery in Langhirano. At the time of her death, audiences at Venice’s La Fenice observed a moment of silence in her memory. Luciano Pavarotti said, "Farewell, Renata, your memory and your voice will always remain in my heart."

Honours

Tebaldi won the first Grammy Award for Best Classical Performance – Vocal Soloist in 1959 for her album Operatic Recital. Her joint recording of Puccini’s Turandot, conducted by Erich Leinsdorf and featuring Birgit Nilsson as Turandot, Jussi Björling as Calaf, Tebaldi as Liù, and Giorgio Tozzi as Timur with the Rome Opera Orchestra, won the Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording in 1961.

She received the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic as a Grand Officer in 1968 and was later named a Knight Grand Cross in 1992. She was also named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France.

A proclamation naming "Tebaldi Day" was made in her honor on December 11, 1995, by Rudy Giuliani, then Mayor of New York City.

Legacy

From February 2010 to 2013, the 15th-century Castle of Torrechiara – Langhirano – had an exhibition in its rooms that celebrated Renata Tebaldi. This exhibition, called “Castle for a Queen,” showed many aspects of this famous singer’s life, including her artistic and personal history. The items on display followed her journey through time, highlighting her role in spreading the tradition of Italian lyrical art from the start of her career to her greatest achievements. The exhibition was organized by the Renata Tebaldi Committee, with support from the Superintendence of Environmental Heritage and Landscape of the provinces of Parma and Piacenza, the Regio Theatre Foundation of Parma, and the Municipality of Langhirano. It also received support from the province of Parma. On June 7, 2014, a museum dedicated to Renata Tebaldi was opened in the stables of Villa Pallavicino in Busseto. In 1960, Tebaldi was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6628 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, California.

Discography

• Lohengrin (Richard Wagner): conducted by Franco Capuana, with Giacinto Prandelli and Elena Nicolai. (1947). Performed in Italian.
• Andrea Chénier (Umberto Giordano): Victor de Sabata conducting the Teatro alla Scala, with Mario Del Monaco and Paolo Silveri. (1949).
• Giulio Cesare (George Frideric Handel): Herbert Albert conducting the Orchestra del Teatro San Carlo, with Cesare Siepi and Elena Nicolai. (1950).
• Tannhäuser (Richard Wagner): Karl Boehm conducting the Orchestra del Teatro San Carlo, with Hans Beirer and Carlo Tagliabue. (1950). Performed in Italian.
• La traviata (Giuseppe Verdi): Antonino Votto conducting the Orchestra-Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro, with Giuseppe Campora and Paolo Silveri. (1950) (Gramophone Company).
• Andrea Chénier (Umberto Giordano): Gabriele Santini conducting the Orchestra del Teatro San Carlo, with Mario Filippeschi and Carlo Tagliabue. (1951).
• La bohème (Giacomo Puccini): Gabriele Santini conducting the Orchestra del Teatro San Carlo, with Giacomo Lauri-Volpi and Tito Gobbi. (1951).
• Falstaff (opera) (Giuseppe Verdi): Victor de Sabata conducting the Teatro alla Scala, with Mariano Stabile and Cesare Valletti. (1951) (Urania Records).
• Fernand Cortez (Gaspare Spontini): Gabriele Santini conducting the Orchestra del Teatro San Carlo, with Gino Penno and Italo Tajo. (1951). Performed in Italian.
• Giovanna d'Arco (Giuseppe Verdi): Gabriele Santini conducting the Orchestra del Teatro San Carlo, with Gino Penno and Ugo Savarese. (1951).
• Giovanna d'Arco (Giuseppe Verdi): Alfredo Simonetto conducting the RAI Milano Orchestra, with Carlo Bergonzi and Rolando Panerai. (1951).
• La bohème (Giacomo Puccini): Alberto Erede conducting the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, with Giacinto Prandelli and Fernando Corena. (1951) (Decca Records).
• Madama Butterfly (Giacomo Puccini): Alberto Erede conducting the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, with Giuseppe Campora, Giovanni Inghilleri and Nell Rankin. (1951) (London Records).
• Adriana Lecouvreur (Francesco Cilea): Gabriele Santini conducting the Orchestra del Teatro San Carlo, with Gianni Poggi and Augosto Romani. (1952).
• Falstaff (opera) (Giuseppe Verdi): Victor de Sabata conducting the Teatro alla Scala, with Mariano Stabile and Cesare Valletti. (1952).
• Otello (Giuseppe Verdi): Gabriele Santini conducting the Orchestra del Teatro San Carlo, with Ramón Vinay and Gino Bechi. (1952).
• Le siège de Corinthe (Gioachino Rossini): Gabriele Santini conducting the Orchestra del Teatro San Carlo, with Miriam Pirazzini and Mario Petri. (1952). Performed in Italian.
• La traviata (Giuseppe Verdi): Gabriele Santini conducting the Orchestra del Teatro San Carlo, with Giuseppe Campora and Pina Angelici. (1952).
• La traviata (Giuseppe Verdi): Carlo Maria Giulini conducting the RAI Milano Orchestra, with Giacinto Prandelli and Liliana Pellegrino. (1952).
• Aida (Giuseppe Verdi): Alberto Erede conducting the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, with Mario del Monaco and Ebe Stignani. (1952) (Decca Records).
• Tosca (Giacomo Puccini): Alberto Erede conducting the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, with Giuseppe Campora and Enzo Mascherini. (1952) (Decca Records).
• Aida (Giuseppe Verdi): Giuseppe Morelli conducting the RAI Milano Orchestra, with Giuseppe Campora and Ebe Stignani. (1953).
• Aida (Giuseppe Verdi): Tullio Serafin conducting the Orchestra del Teatro San Carlo, with Gino Penno and Ebe Stignani. (1953).
• Cecilia (Licinio Refice): Licinio Refice conducting the Orchestra del Teatro San Carlo, with Pina Ulisse and Alvino Tajo. (1953).
• La bohème (Giacomo Puccini): Tullio Serafin conducting the Orchestra del Teatro San Carlo, with Giacomo Lauri-Volpi and Tito Gobbi. (1953).
• Le nozze di Figaro (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart): Herbert von Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. (1953) (Decca).
• La bohème (Giacomo Puccini): Herbert von Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, with Peter Schreier and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. (1953) (Decca).
• La bohème (Giacomo Puccini): Herbert von Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. (1953) (Decca).
• La bohème (Giacomo Puccini): Herbert von Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, with Peter Schreier and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. (1953) (Decca).
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