Profile of Conchita Supervia on Famous Like Me

Conchita Supervia (1895–1936), Spanish mezzo-soprano, was born on 8th or 9th of December 1895 in Barcelona to an old Andalusian family and given the baptismal name of Concepcion Supervía Pascual. She was educated at the local convent but at the age of twelve entered the Conservatory of the Liceo in Barcelona to study singing. She made her stage debut in 1910 in Buenos Aires in Tomás Bretón’s opera Los amantes de Teruel.

In 1911 she sang the role of Oktavian in the first Italian production of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier at the Teatro Constanzi, Rome. In 1912 she appeared as Carmen at the Teatro Liceo in her native city, a role with which she would be associated for the rest of her career.

She made her American debut in 1915 as Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther at Chicago Opera where she also sang in Mignon and Carmen. Back in Europe by the end of the First World War she was invited to Rome where she appeared in the Rossini operas that made her famous – as Angelina in La Cenerentola, Isabella in L’Italiana in Algeri and Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia in the original key. Conchita Supervia had exactly the type of voice for which Rossini wrote these works – a coloratura mezzo-soprano. A powerful chest register linked to a flexible upper voice that could cope easily with florid passages, allied to a musicianship of great taste and refinement – she could fine a note to a mere thread of sound – and with impeccable diction. Her voice is instantly recognisable though it was not without its critics; a pronounced vibrato that in the lower part of the voice became almost a rattle, ‘as strong as the rattle of dice in a box’, is a comment attributed to the British critic, Philip Hope-Wallace. Many of those lucky enough to have heard her in the flesh have said that this vibrato was more evident on records than on the stage. An example of the microphone exaggerating a singer’s faults. It was her vibrant personality and sense of humour that delighted her audiences as much as her artistry. In 1924 Supervia made her debut at La Scala as Hänsel in Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel and Gretel but, strangely she never sang the Rossini roles or Carmen at La Scala though she sang there in every season until 1929.

In 1930 she sang Carmen in Paris and it was in this year that she made the recordings of the role that are so much admired today. All in all, she made more than two hundred recordings mostly for the Fonotipia and Odeon labels, not only her famous roles in opera but songs in Italian, Spanish and English and zarzuela.

In 1930 she made her London debut at the Queen’s Hall and the following year she married a London businessman, Mr Ben Rubenstein, and settled in London. Her Covent Garden debut was in 1934 in La Cenerentola and in 1935 she repeated the role plus L’Italiana in Algeri. Pregnancy forced her to cancel her planned appearances in the autumn of 1935. On March 29th 1936 she entered a London nursing home to await the birth of her baby, which was stillborn on March 30th; a few hours later she herself died.

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