Life and Career
Licia Albanese was born in Bari, Italy in 1913. She made her unofficial singing debut in Milan in 1934, when she replaced an absent performer in Puccini's Madama Butterfly, the opera with which she would forever be connected. Over 40 years, she sang more than 300 performances of Cio-Cio San. Although she has been praised for many of her roles, including Mimì, Violetta, Liù and Manon Lescaut, it is her portrayal of the doomed geisha which has remained her best loved. Her connection with that work began early with her teacher, Giuseppina Baldassare-Tedeschi, a contemporary of the composer and an important exponent of the title role in the previous generation.
There is some controversy regarding when she made her formal debut. It was either in that same year (1934) at the Teatro Municipale in Bari, singing in La bohème, or in Parma, or in Milan in 1935 in Madama Butterfly. By the end of that year, she had debuted at La Scala as Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi. She soon realized great success all over the world, especially for her performances in Carmen, L'amico Fritz and Madama Butterfly in Italy, France and England.
Following her considerable success in Italy, France, England, and Malta, Albanese made her Metropolitan Opera debut on February 9, 1940, in the first of 72 performances as Madama Butterfly at the old Metropolitan Opera House. Her success was instantaneous, and Albanese remained at the Met for 26 seasons, performing a total of 427 performances of 17 roles in 16 operas. She left the company in 1966 in a dispute with General Manager Sir Rudolf Bing without a grand farewell. After performing in four productions during 1965/66, she was scheduled for only one performance the next season. She returned her contract unsigned.
Arturo Toscanini invited Albanese to join his broadcast concert performances of La bohème and La traviata with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in NBC's Studio 8-H in 1946. Both complete performances were later issued on LP and CD by RCA Victor.
She was also a mainstay at the San Francisco Opera where she sang between 1941 and 1961, performing 22 roles in 120 performances over 20 seasons, remaining in part because of her admiration for its famed director, Gaetano Merola. Throughout her career, she continued to perform widely. In recital, concert, and opera, she was heard throughout the country; she participated in benefits, entertained the troops, had her own weekly radio show, was a guest on other broadcasts and telecasts, and recorded frequently.
Albanese came to San Francisco in the summer of 1972 for the special gala concert at Sigmund Stern Grove celebrating the 50th anniversary of the San Francisco Opera. Joining numerous colleagues who had sung with the company, Albanese sang the love duet from Madama Butterfly with tenor Frederick Jagel, accompanied by the San Francisco Opera Orchestra conducted by longtime director Kurt Herbert Adler. Then, in September 1973, she returned to San Francisco to participate in a special concert at the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park with Luciano Pavarotti and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, again conducted by Adler; this time the concert was televised live on KQED-TV. It was a cold, windy, overcast day and, at one point, Pavarotti took part of the long, heavy scarf he was wearing around his neck and shared it with Albanese.
Even after a career spanning seven decades, Albanese continued to perform occasionally. After hearing her sing the national anthem during a Met opening, Stephen Sondheim and Thomas Z. Shepard cast her as operetta diva Heidi Schiller in Sondheim's Follies in concert with the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall in 1985. During the 1987 spring season of the Theatre Under the Stars in Houston, Texas, Albanese starred in a stage revival of Follies, which was a great success.
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