María Galvany

Maria Galvany or María Galvany (1878? - 1949?) was a Spanish coloratura soprano notable for her virtuoso singing technique.

Biography

Very little is known about the life and career of this extraordinary singer. It is generally accepted that she was born in 1878 in Granada, Spain, though the exact year and date of her birth are disputed (some sources claim 1874 or 1876). She studied at the Madrid Conservatory under renowned singing teachers Lázaro María Puig and Napoleone Verger, and made her operatic debut in the title role of Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, at Cartagena around 1896.

While in Spain, her repertoire included operas such as La Sonnambula, La Traviata, Hamlet, Lakmé and Les Huguenots (all sung in Italian). After becoming a favorite of the Spanish public she went on to sing in Italy. Apparently she never sang at La Scala; instead, she performed at Milan's Teatro Dal Verme in 1901. Two years later she sang La Sonnambula along Piero Schiavazzi in Parma, with great success. During 1905 she went on tour throughout Europe, singing in Holland, Belgium and France as part of the Castellano Company, which also included tenor Nicola Zerola and soprano Adelina Agostinelli.

Her 1908 Venice performance of Ophelia in Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet was particularly successful, as were her appearances in London. Although there is no historical evidence that she ever appeared at the Covent Garden Theatre, she sang in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1901, performing Dinorah, Il Barbiere di Siviglia and La Sonnambula. Later, she appeared at the Coliseum Theatre with Antonia Sabellico and Elvino Ventura as singing parters. Several other appearances in Lisbon, Nice and various Russian cities are also recorded.

After this successful period in Europe, she embarked to South America, where she became especially popular in Brazil and Argentina. She allegedly performed only once in the United States, singing vaudeville in San Francisco during 1918, and it is remarkable that she never managed to sing at New York's Metropolitan Opera House.

At this point, information about her career becomes obscure. It is claimed that she settled in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she probably became a singing teacher and gave occasional concerts. By the time of her death she was almost forgotten and the news of her passing never appeared in the press.

Until the 1990s it was commonly believed that she had died on November 2, 1949, in the San Luis Asylum, an old people's retirement home in Rio de Janeiro. However, Brazilian doctor Jacques Alain León claims that she was in fact killed by influenza in 1918, and that it was dramatic soprano Fanny Maria Rollas Galvani who actually died in 1949 in Rio.

Recordings

Galvany made records for four different companies. Her earliest recordings date back to 1903 and were made for G&T. Later on, she recorded for Pathé Records and came back to G&T in 1906, where she made her most popular records, including well known duets with major stars of her time, such as Fernando de Lucia, Titta Ruffo, Aristodemo Giorgini, Remo Andreini and Andrea Perelló de Segurola. She also made several records for Edison around 1911. Her repertoire consisted mainly of Italian opera arias, zarzuela and concert songs. Sadly, only a few of her recordings are preserved or have been reissued for the general public, so no exact account of her recorded output exists.

Nevertheless, the surviving recordings are today as controversial as they first were 100 years ago. This is due to her staggering use of intricate coloratura passages mined with machine-gun-like staccato and other equally shocking vocal tricks that often give an infamously comic impression of her musicianship. The rapidity of her executions may lead first-time listeners to believe that the record is being played at double speed. This has caused many listeners to think of Galvany as nothing more than an unusually gifted vocal technician and overlook her true interpretative merits. Critical voices have gone as far as to compare her high E flats to a whistling kettle.

This negative view is supported to some extent by her repeated interpolation of flute/voice cadenzas, sometimes twice during the same aria, that often have no relation to the original piece. Such practices were common at the time, however. In addition, the natural timbre of Galvany's upper register did not record well, which often results in an irritating wiry sound that is unappealing to most modern ears. In addition, her interpretations are burdened with excessively rapid tempi, hard vibrato, unexpected register shifts, throat clearing sounds and section cuts.

On the other hand, Galvany is still admired for the sweetness of her middle register, for possessing a remarkable sense of pitch and for her outrageous ability to tackle on incredibly complicated fioriture . Her virtuosity remains unparalled in the history of recorded singing and her duets, particularly opposite Titta Ruffo, are still counted among the finest early renditions made; this suggests that she could probably have had a more successful career if she had not lacked the appropriate guidance.

Now that her recordings have reached CD format thanks to new transfer technologies, one is able to better judge the artistry of this extraordinary singer, or her ultimate lack of it, though initial approaches may not be satisfactory.

Media

listen
filename = Galvany_-_L'incantatrice_(Arditi_-_1907).ogg
title = L'incantatrice
description = Maria Galvany's breath-taking vocal virtuosity is evident in this 1907 recorded version of Luigi Arditi's "L'incantatrice" |

ources

*Nicholas E. Limansky. "Oxford's Opera Quarterly Journal". #20: 505-512. 2004.
*Leo Riemens. "Notes to the Maria Galvany's Lebendige Vergangenheit CD". Historic Recordings, Austro Mechana. 2003.

External links

* [http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr%201=1016&query=Maria%20Galvany&num=1&start=1&sortBy=&sortOrder=id: The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project: Maria Galvany] – Maria Galvany's 1910 rendition in Italian of "Der Hölle Rache" from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. Downloadable mp3 file.