Antonietta Stella

Antonietta Stella (March 15, 1929, Perugia, Italy) is an Italian operatic soprano, one of the finest Italian spinto sopranos of the 1950s and 1960s, possessing a beautiful and ample voice, and particularly associated with Verdi and Puccini roles.

Stella studied at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, and made her debut in Spoleto, as Leonora in "Il trovatore", in 1950, and appeared at the Rome Opera in 1951, as Leonora in "La forza del destino". She quickly sang throughout Italy, Florence, Naples, Parma, Turin, Catania, Verona, Venice, etc, and made her debut at La Scala in Milan, as Desdemona in Verdi's "Otello", in 1954, where she sang regularly to great acclaim until 1963, in roles such as Violetta in "La traviata", Elisabetta in "Don Carlo", Amelia in "Un ballo in maschera", the title role in "Aida" and "Tosca", Mimi in "La bohème", Maddalena in "Andrea Chenier", Cio-Cio-San in "Madama Butterfly", etc.

In 1955, she made her debuts at the Vienna State Opera, the Royal Opera House in London, the Palais Garnier in Paris, La Monnaie in Brussels, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the following year, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where she successfully sang until 1960.

Stella, like so many notable artists of the 1950s and 60s, was somewhat eclipsed by the competition between Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi, but she did have a notable career and left several very worthwhile recordings, including works such as "Linda di Chamounix", "La battaglia di Legnano", "L'Africaine", "Simon Boccanegra", which is more than can be said for some other singers of the time. She appeared in an Italian televison production of "Andrea Chenier", opposite Mario del Monaco and Giuseppe Taddei in 1955, recently released on DVD. She can also be heard on an Italian radio broadcast of Spontini's rarely performed work "Agnes von Hohenstaufen", opposite Montserrat Caballé, released on CD.

elected recordings

* Donizetti - "Linda di Chamounix" - Tullio Serafin (Philips, 1956)
* Verdi - "Il trovatore" - Tullio Serafin (DG, 1962)
* Verdi - "La traviata" - Tullio Serafin (EMI, 1955)
* Verdi - "Un ballo in maschera" - Gianandrea Gavazzeni (DG, 1960)
* Verdi - "Don Carlo" - Gabriele Santini (DG, 1961)
* Verdi - "Simon Boccanegra" - Francesco Molinari-Pradelli (Cetra, 1951)
* Giordano - "Andrea Chenier" - Gabriele Santini (EMI, 1963)
* Puccini - "La boheme" - Francesco Molinari-Pradelli (Philips, 1957)
* Puccini - "Tosca" - Tullio Serafin (Philips, 1957)

ources

* [http://www.operissimo.com Operissimo.com]