Leyla Gencer | Opera soprano, 79
Soprano Leyla Gencer, 79, who made her career at Italy's famed La Scala opera house, died of respiratory problems and heart failure at home Friday in Milan, officials said.
Soprano Leyla Gencer, 79, who made her career at Italy's famed La Scala opera house, died of respiratory problems and heart failure at home Friday in Milan, officials said.
La Scala expressed "immense sorrow" over Miss Gencer's death and said the singer had "one of the most emotional voices of any time."
Miss Gencer was born in Istanbul in 1928 to a Polish mother and a Turkish father.
She studied privately in Ankara, the Turkish capital, with Italian opera singer Giannina Arangi Lombardi and made her operatic debut there in 1950, cast as Santuzza in Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana (Rustic Chivalry) - a role she would later reprise on world stages.
Miss Gencer, a contemporary of opera legends Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi, made her La Scala debut in 1957, playing Madame Lidoine in the premiere of Francis Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites. She moved to the Milanese opera house after successful performances in Madame Butterfly and Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin in Naples.
At La Scala, she was cast as the first woman of Canterbury in the world premiere of Pizzeti's L'Assassinio nella Cattedralle (Murder in the Cathedral). A debut at London's Royal Opera House came in 1962, when she performed Elisabetta in Don Giovanni.
- AP