Rosanna Carteri
Soprano who provoked dismay when she retired in her thirties
ROSANNA CARTERI, who has died aged 89, was an Italian lyric soprano who achieved international fame in the 1950s with operatic performances that were shaped by her distinctive voice, her firm technique and her elegant sense of style and grace.
Her career took her from Salzburg to San Francisco, while in Britain she was seen at the 1957 Edinburgh Festival as Adina in Donizetti’s L’elisir D’amore with Giuseppe Di Stefano and the Piccolo Scala company.
Three years later she appeared in La bohème at Covent Garden, where she was described by one critic as “an accomplished singer who gave verisimilitude and charm to Mimi”, although the age difference between her and Jussi Björling, the Swedish tenor who sang Rudolfo, made him seem more like her father than her lover.
Rosanna Carteri had an exceptionally large repertoire, playing the leading lady in operas by Mozart, Puccini and Massenet. She was also heard in more modern works, including the world premiere in 1953 of the revised version of Prokofiev’s War and Peace in Florence with Franco Corelli, a production that can be heard among her small but glorious legacy of recordings.
She especially cherished her relationship with Francis Poulenc, describing the French composer as “the gentlest and most considerate – the most vulnerable” of all the composers with whom she worked. He had first heard her singing Blanche in early Italian performances of his opera Dialogues des Carmélites and in 1961 chose her for the world premiere in Paris of his sacred work, Gloria.
To the dismay of many opera lovers Rosanna Carteri effectively retired in 1965, abruptly cancelling all but a handful of her future engagements. There was a brief and unhappy return to the stage in 1971, but thereafter the glorious voice of this aristocratic-looking soprano was never again heard in a live performance.
Rosanna Carteri was born on December 14 1930 in Verona. She was raised in Padua, where she learnt the piano and studied singing with Ferruccio Cusinati. He also coached Maria Callas who, according to Rosanna
Carteri’s biographer, would pretend not to recognise her.
Things moved quickly: at 14 Rosanna Carteri was singing for German soldiers; at 16 she was engaged by the Italian radio network RAI for a series of opera performances; and at 18 she won a singing competition that led to her debut as Elsa in Wagner’s Lohengrin at the outdoor Baths of Caracalla in Rome.
Two years later she made her first appearance at La Scala in Niccolò Piccinni’s little-known opera buffa
La buona figliuola, after which her career exploded across Europe, leading to engagements at the Salzburg Festival, Paris Opera and eventually Covent Garden.
In 1954 she was introduced to American audiences singing Mimi at a gala performance in San Francisco of Act I of La bohème; a month later she sang the full role in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s inaugural season. While travelling back to Italy she stopped in New York to be featured on Ed Sullivan’s television show Toast of the Town.
An Italian biography, Rosanna Carteri: il fascino di una voca (the charm of a voice), by Paolo Padoan, was published in 2013 with an accompanying CD featuring her in works by Verdi, Bizet and Puccini. At its launch she sat listening intently to her old recordings before graciously acknowledging the applause of the audience.
Rosanna Carteri married Franco Grosoli, an industrialist who ran an Italian meat-processing empire, in 1959. The marriage effectively put an end to two careers: his as playboy and hers as a soprano. They moved to Monte Carlo after Grosoli was alerted to a kidnapping threat by the Italian police.
He died in 2014; they had a daughter and a son.
Rosanna Carteri born December 14 1930, died October 25 2020