Profile of Mirella Freni on Famous Like Me

The Italian soprano Mirella Freni (born 27 February 1935) is a famous opera singer much admired for the youthful quality of her voice and her acting skills. Her repertoire encompasses some forty roles, Verdi and Puccini in particular but also Mozart and Tchaikovsky. Freni was married many years to the Bulgarian basso Nicolai Ghiaurov, with whom she performed and recorded frequently.

Freni was born Mirella Fregni into a working class family in Modena (both her mother and tenor Luciano Pavarotti's mother worked in the same cigarette factory in that city). She was a musically gifted child and sang "Un bel dì vedremo" in a radio competition at age ten. The tenor Beniamino Gigli warned her, however, that she risked ruining her voice and advised her to give up singing until she was older. She resumed singing at age 17.

Mirella made her operatic debut in Modena at 1955, at age 19, as Micaëla in Bizet's Carmen. She was offered many roles after this, but she decided to put her career aside and marry her singing teacher, Leone Magiera, and have a child.

She resumed her career in 1958 by winning a singing competition and singing Mimì in Puccini's La Bohème at the Teatro Regio in Turin. She then sang with the Netherlands Opera during the 1959-60 season. Her international breakthrough came when she sang Adina in Franco Zeffirelli's staging of Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore at Glyndebourne, where she also sang the Mozart comic roles of Susanna and Zerlina during the 1960-62 seasons.

In 1961, Freni made her Royal Opera House debut as Nannetta in Verdi's Falstaff. In 1963, she made her debut at La Scala, in a production staged by Zeffirelli and conducted by Herbert von Karajan (Freni went on to become one of Karajan's favourite singers, and she collaborated with him in numerous operas and concerts). In 1965, Freni made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Mimì, and later appeared there as Liù in Puccini's Turandot, as well as Marguerite in Faust and Juliette in Romeo and Juliette.

From the early 1970s into the 1980s, Freni began singing heavier Verdi roles, notably Elisabetta in Don Carlo, Desdemona in Otello, and Amelia in Simon Boccanegra, Elvira in Ernani, Leonora in La forza del destino, and the title role of Aida. She also added the Puccini heroines of Manon Lescaut and Tosca to her repertory, and recorded Madama Butterfly as well as all three roles of Il trittico.

In 1981, she married Ghiaurov, one of the leading operatic basses of the post-war period. Together they helped establish the Centro Universale del Bel Canto in Vignola, where they taught master classes since 2002. Following Ghiaurov's death in 2004, Freni continues their committment to education by passing on the Bel Canto tradition to young singers through her teaching.

Freni published a memoir, Mio Caro Teatro in 1990. She was also awarded the order Cavaliere della Gran Croce della Repubblica Italiana that year and the French Légion d'Honneur in March 1993. The University of Pisa awarded her an honorary degree in 2002 for "her great contribution to European culture."

Freni continued to add to expand her repertory well into the 1990s with Italian verismo, taking on the title roles of Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur in Milan, Paris and New York and Giordano's Fedora in Milan, New York, Torino and Zürich. In 1998, she performed the latter's Madame Sans-Gêne in Catania. During this time she also ventured into the Russian operas of Tchaikovsky, appearing as Tatiana in Yevgeny Onegin, Lisa in Pikovaya Dama, and Ioanna in Orleanskaya Deva. In 2005, the Metropolitan Opera celebrated the 40th anniversary of her Met debut and her 50th anniversary on the stage with a special gala concert conducted by James Levine.

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