Magda Olivero's career started in 1932 when she was 22, and spanned five decades, establishing her "as an important link between the era of the verismo composers and the modern opera stage".
16 Facts About Magda Olivero
2.
Magda Olivero has been regarded as "one of the greatest singers of the twentieth century".
3.
Magda Olivero later studied singing outside the Conservatory and made her singing debut in 1932 on radio performing Nino Cattozzo's oratorio, I Misteri Dolorosi.
4.
Magda Olivero performed widely and increasingly successfully until 1941, when she married the industrialist Aldo Busch and retired from the stage, only taking part thereafter in sporadic charity events.
5.
Magda Olivero performed this role at the Teatro Grande in Brescia on 3 February 1951, but Cilea did not see his wish come true as he had died less than three months earlier.
6.
From 1951 until her final retirement, Magda Olivero appeared in opera houses throughout Italy and, mainly in the 1960s and 1970s, all around the world, but never in such premier venues as the Royal Opera House or the Paris Opera.
7.
Magda Olivero performed just once at the Vienna State Opera, and exceedingly rarely at La Scala.
8.
Magda Olivero debuted successfully in the United States in 1967 as Medea in the Italian version of Cherubini's Medee, at the Dallas Opera, where she subsequently appeared in 1969 as Fedora, in 1970 as Giorgetta in Il Tabarro and in a gala concert featuring Poulenc's La Voix Humaine, sung for the first time in French; and finally as Tosca in 1974.
9.
Magda Olivero continued to sing sacred music locally and made occasional singing appearances well into her nineties.
10.
Magda Olivero died at the Istituto Auxologico di Milano aged 104.
11.
Magda Olivero attributed her longevity to her vegetarian diet and practicing yoga.
12.
Magda Olivero is buried in the Famedio of the Monumental Cemetery of Milan.
13.
In 1993, when her stage career had been over for many years, Magda Olivero recorded, with piano accompaniment, Adriana Lecouvreur : excerpts from this recording were published on the Bongiovanni label.
14.
Magda Olivero was coached by Cilea and a number of now-obscure verismo composers and is the last singer with such background.
15.
Unlike Magda Olivero, few were consummate musicians able through rubato to convey the music's tension and repose.
16.
Magda Olivero admits that an exceptional theatrical personality is evidenced by each of her recordings and that how to evaluate her performances is bound to remain open to debate, fundamentally depending on one's own subjective sensitivity.