One of the widespread and pre-eminent sopranos of the Sixties and 70s, Renata Scotto, who has died aged 89, was a singer who relished the function of a diva each on and off stage. The title of her 1984 autobiography, Extra Than a Diva (a sourcebook of her acerbic put-downs of colleagues), implicitly acknowledged the persona for which she was famend.
Not afraid to slap Giuseppe di Stefano throughout the face mid-performance (he had wandered off the stage to eat an apple throughout a duet together with her), she knew her personal value and demanded it’s recognised. Early in her profession she was perceived as a rival to that different nice diva, Maria Callas, and was additionally subjected to invidious comparisons with singers akin to Renata Tebaldi and Joan Sutherland.
The chief supply of Scotto’s enchantment lay in her feeling for the internal which means of the textual content, the dramatic depth with which she invested her supply, and her stage presence. When it comes to pure tone she was arguably not the equal of Tebaldi; nor might she rival Sutherland for approach. Like Callas, her power lay within the spine-tingling conviction with which she inhabited a job and the thrillingly charged tone generated to challenge the character’s emotional state.
To expertise Scotto’s voice at full throttle was like holding up a diamond to the sunshine: it scintillated, however, as most diamonds are, it was flawed. Her tone had a particular metallic edge, and though she might use that to profoundly expressive impact within the center vary, there have been many events on which the voice hardened because it sailed into the stratosphere.
Intonation was usually compromised in that vary too. As her colleague Sherrill Milnes, whereas admiring her vary of tonal color, instructed: “She may also sacrifice vocal magnificence to get the phrase or the emotional intention throughout.” Or as Scotto herself extra optimistically put it: “I want to have one unbeautiful word in my voice than perfection that doesn’t imply something.”
Her perceived rivalry with Callas, it needs to be mentioned, was usually perpetuated (even after Callas’s demise) by over-zealous admirers on either side, so there’s some irony in the truth that it was Callas who helped to launch Scotto’s worldwide profession. Refusing to look in a fifth efficiency of Bellini’s La Sonnambula – inserted by the administration towards her needs – on the Edinburgh competition in September 1957, Callas proposed Scotto as her substitute. Her efficiency as Amina was an enormous success, incomes her a dozen or so curtain calls and enthusiastic approbation from Callas.
The latter, now retired, was once more within the viewers at La Scala 13 years later, when Scotto sang the function of Elena in Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani for the primary time. No sooner had Scotto walked on stage than a Callas claque started to shout “Maria, Maria!” and “Viva Callas!” Fanatical passions had been enflamed additional by Scotto’s withering private feedback about Callas in a post-performance interview.
Comparable incidents occurred subsequently on the Metropolitan Opera, New York, on the opening evening of Norma in 1981, for instance, when Callas’s title was shouted as Scotto walked onstage, and on the night of a telecast of Luisa Miller, when an attention-seeking idolater shouted “Brava, brava Maria Callas” as Scotto was about to start Luisa’s cavatina (the outburst was later eradicated from the recording).
Scotto was however enormously widespread on the Met, giving greater than 300 performances in 26 roles between 1965 and 1987. That recognition was exhausting received, nevertheless. Scotto complained to the redoubtable basic supervisor, Rudolf Bing, that within the three seasons after her 1965 debut she had solely been provided the identical operas: La Traviata, Madama Butterfly, L’Elisir d’Amore and Lucia di Lammermoor.
On Bing’s refusal to supply any new roles, she declined to look in any respect as soon as her contractual obligations had been met. She carried out her risk and it was solely after Bing’s retirement in 1972 that she returned to the Met, two years later, to sing Elena in I Vespri Siciliani beneath the baton of James Levine, who grew to become musical director in 1976.
The 2 established a harmonious partnership and Scotto’s recognition soared larger than ever. In 1975 she drew an estimated 100,000 folks to a live performance efficiency of Madama Butterfly in Central Park. The next 12 months she grew to become the primary soprano to sing all three main roles within the trilogy of one-act operas of Puccini’s Il Trittico on the Met in the identical night, whereas in 1977 she featured as Mimì, alongside Pavarotti as Rodolfo, in La Bohème, the primary reside telecast from the Met.
For all her lodging to the approach to life of a diva, Scotto was born right into a disadvantaged fishing group at Savona, on the Mediterranean coast close to Genoa. Her father, Giuseppe, was a police officer, her mom, Santina – in a poignant echo of Mimì, one in every of her favorite roles – a seamstress (a parallel to which she favored to attract consideration).
On the age of 12 she was impressed, by the expertise of listening to Tito Gobbi reside within the title function of Rigoletto, to grow to be an opera singer. In her teenagers, she was despatched to Milan for classes in voice (initially as a mezzo-soprano) and piano, lodging at a Canossian convent, which she later described as “someplace between a jail and a really austere kindergarten”.
She made her operatic debut in the home at Savona on the age of 18, singing Violetta in La Traviata, showing the subsequent day in the identical function on the Teatro Nuovo in Milan. Her La Scala debut in 1954 got here within the trouser function of Walter in Catalani’s La Wally.
At barely 5ft tall, she was thought-about by some to be too brief to play a male function; she was additionally obliged to put on a false nostril as her personal was felt to be too small. She however obtained extra curtain calls than her distinguished co-principals, Tebaldi and Mario Del Monaco, mixed. Together with her 1957 Edinburgh success as Callas’s surrogate, her star was within the ascendant. She carried out in main homes all around the world, together with Covent Backyard, the place she sang a number of Puccini roles, in addition to Gilda and Violetta within the 60s.
Returning to the home in 1981, after a 10-year absence, she sang the primary Woman Macbeth of her profession, a compelling portrait of a lady within the grip of a demonic obsession. London critics famous the stridency continuously getting into her tone – lengthy acquainted to New York audiences – leading to a efficiency that was squally however riveting in equal measure.
It was to roles akin to Woman Macbeth – and to different heavier ones akin to Leonora (Il Trovatore), Amelia (Ballo in Maschera), Desdemona (Otello), Elisabeth de Valois (Don Carlos), Manon Lescaut, Adriana Lecouvreur and La Gioconda – that she gravitated within the center a part of her profession from the lighter bel canto roles. Later nonetheless she essayed much more difficult roles akin to Kundry, Elle in Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine, Klytämnestra, the Marschallin and even the unnamed girl in Schoenberg’s Erwartung.
On the Met in 1987 she grew to become the primary girl to direct an opera (Madama Butterfly) whereas additionally singing in it, and went on to direct, with a certain quantity of success, such operas as La Traviata at New York Metropolis Opera, Norma at Finnish Nationwide Opera, Turandot in Athens and Un Ballo in Maschera in Chicago. Her last efficiency as a singer got here in 2002, after a profession lasting 50 years.
Her husband, Lorenzo Anselmi, was on the time of their marriage in 1960 a violinist within the La Scala orchestra. He deserted his profession to grow to be her voice coach and enterprise supervisor, and died in 2021. She is survived by their two youngsters, Laura and Filippo.
