- Mado Robin
Madeleine Marie Robin, known as Mado Robin (
December 29 ,1918 -December 10 ,1960 ), was a French singer who was born inYzeures-sur-Creuse ,Touraine .A
coloratura soprano , she had an exceptionally wide vocal range; she hit D4 above high-C in live performance in Vichy (D7 in "scientific pitch notation " or about 2349 HzFact|date=March 2008. Amongst her roles standLakmé , which she recorded forDecca Records in 1952 (withGeorges Sébastian conducting, "Lucia di Lammermoor ", Olympia in "Les contes d'Hoffmann ", Gilda in "Rigoletto ", Rosina in "Il barbiere di Siviglia ", and Leyla in "Les pêcheurs de perles .A star of television and radio in the nineteen-fifties, she was well known in France. In 1954 she went to
San Francisco to sing Lucia and Gilda, and had a successful tour of theSoviet Union with 16 concerts over a few weeks.At 17 she married Alan Smith, an Englishman, who died shortly after
World War II in a car crash. She had one daughter. Mado died inParis in 1960 fromcancer (some sources stateliver cancer , othersleukaemia ) a few days before the 1500th performance of "Lakmé" at theOpéra-Comique , which had organized the event for her birthday. Her colleagues and relatives remember her as the sweetest and least diva-behaved of women.Videography
In 1994, the Bel Canto Society released a video-cassette of her performances, entitled "Mado Robin Live!": Included are excerpts from "Lakmé", "Mireille", "Rigoletto", "Hamlet", "Il barbiere di Siviglia" and "Lucia di Lammermoor".
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