The Spanish diva who wowed as the ideal Carmen

Teresa Berganza 1933–2022

Opera star Teresa Berganza often redefined the characters she inhabited, and she utterly owned the titular role in Georges Bizet’s Carmen.

A mezzosoprano, Berganza was acclaimed for her rich vocal register—warm at its lower end, supple when higher— and for her charisma and sensuality on stage. A champion of Spanish zarzuelas and arias, the dramatic, darkeyed Berganza floored critics in Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte, Rossini’s Le Comte Ory and

Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and particularly in Bizet’s Carmen, first taking the role in 1977 at the King’s Theater in Edinburgh. Conductor Herbert von Karajan declared her “the Carmen of the century.”

“Encouraged by her mother,” said The New York Times, the Madrid-born Berganza “aspired to become a nun.” She studied piano, organ, cello, and singing at Madrid’s Royal Conservatory of Music, where a teacher told her “she was too talented to retreat from a secular life.” Berganza made her debut in 1957 in France and performed at the Metropolitan Opera a decade later as Cherubino in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. For years, though, she avoided Carmen, saying she found the character’s complexity too daunting.

Berganza “needed to establish herself in authenticity to undertake any project,” said El Pais (Spain). When she finally tackled Carmen, she spent weeks in southern Spain interviewing women who lived in caves. Rejecting the traditional portrayal of Carmen as a prostitute, Berganza played her as a rebel artist who “speaks with her heart, her body, her guts,” she said. Her last opera performance, at 57, was also as Carmen.

“If you ask Teresa how she feels singing Carmen,” said Spanish singer Luz Casal, “She will say: I am Carmen.”