Celebrated Spanish opera star
20 SOLO ALBUMS
Teresa Berganza, a Spanish mezzo-soprano admired for her lithe, radiant, immaculately crafted performances in the operas of Mozart and Rossini, died May 13 at her home in the ancient city of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, now part of greater Madrid. She was 89.
The cultural ministry of Spain announced the death but did not provide further details. Her daughter Cecilia Lavilla Berganza, a soprano, wrote in a Facebook post that her mother requested as little fuss as possible. “I came into the world and no one found out,” she quoted her mother saying, “so I wish the same when I leave.”
Berganza was best known in North America through her many recordings, including more than 20 solo albums, as well as a dozen complete operas.
She appeared in several films, the most famous of which was the director Joseph Losey's adaptation of Mozart's “Don Giovanni,” a surprise box office hit in 1979, in which she sang the role of Zerlina.
Her personal appearances in America were few, beginning at the Dallas Opera in 1958, continuing in Chicago, San Francisco and eventually a single season at the Metropolitan Opera in 1967-1968.
Nobody has ever explained the brevity of Berganza's career at the Met. But her voice was never a large one, and it is possible that the 3,700-seat house was simply too gigantic for her. She was also already very busy in Britain, where she was revered, and throughout Europe. Whenever she came back to the United States thereafter, it was almost always as a recitalist.
Of a performance at New York's Carnegie Hall in 1982, Donal Henahan, then the chief music critic of the New York Times, wrote that “this was by no means a mere recital of notes and words, but a recital in the best musical sense.”
Berganza was always an individualist and spoke her mind. She refused to sing any opera in translation (“it seems like an absolute betrayal of the composer,” she told Chicago radio host Bruce Duffie in 1984), and she developed a reputation for cancelling performances at the last minute.
“I will never permit myself to sing under bad conditions when my voice is not ready to sing,” she said in the Duffie interview.
Teresa Berganza was born in Madrid on March 16, 1933. She was married twice and had three children.