Betty Fabila
Encyclopedia
Born in Mexico City, she studied at Mexico's National Conservatory of Music
National Conservatory of Music (Mexico)
The National Conservatory of Music of Mexico is a music conservatory located in the Polanco section of Mexico City, Federal District, Mexico.-History:...
and the National School of Music at the National Autonomous University of Mexico
National Autonomous University of Mexico
The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México is a university in Mexico. UNAM was founded on 22 September 1910 by Justo Sierra as a liberal alternative to the Roman Catholic-sponsored Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) (National Autonomous...
under the baritone
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
David Silva. In 1950, she made her operatic debut as Musetta in La bohème
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
at the Palacio de Bellas Artes
Palacio de Bellas Artes
The Palacio de Bellas Artes is the most important cultural center in Mexico City as well as the rest of the country of Mexico...
in Mexico City and went on to sing leading roles there in operas including La traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
, Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...
, L'amico Fritz
L'amico Fritz
L'amico Fritz is an opera in three acts by Pietro Mascagni, premiered in 1891 from a libretto by P. Suardon , based on the French novel L'ami Fritz by Émile Erckmann and Pierre-Alexandre Chatrian.While the opera enjoyed some success in its day and is probably Mascagni's most famous work after...
, Faust
Faust (opera)
Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...
, Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
, La serva padrona
La serva padrona
La serva padrona is an opera buffa by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi to a libretto by Gennaro Antonio Federico, after the play by Jacopo Angello Nelli. The opera is only 45 minutes long and was originally performed as an intermezzo between the acts of a larger serious opera...
, Il segreto di Susanna
Il segreto di Susanna
Il segreto di Susanna is an intermezzo in one act by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari to an Italian libretto by Enrico Golisciani...
, Werther
Werther
Werther is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Édouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann based on the German epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe....
, and Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
With her husband, the Italian conductor and musicologist Uberto Zanolli
Uberto Zanolli
Uberto Zanolli , the son of Amelia Pìa Balugani Vecchi and Luigi Zanolli Marcolini, was an Italo-Mexican composer, conductor and writer;...
, she also developed programs for Mexican television. She later became a biologist and ethnologist and taught at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria where she was a founding member of the school's chamber orchestra and its soprano soloist from 1972 to 1994.
In 1962 at the Castle of Chapultepec
Chapultepec
Chapultepec Park, more commonly called the "Bosque de Chapultepec" in Mexico City, is the largest city park in Latin America, measuring in total just over 686 hectares. Centered on a rock formation called Chapultepec Hill, one of the park's main functions is to be an ecological space in the vast...
in Mexico City, Fabila she gave the first modern performances of solo cantatas by the Italian baroque
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
composer Giacomo Facco
Giacomo Facco
Giacomo Facco was an Italian Baroque violinist, conductor and composer. One of the most famous Italian composers of his day, he was completely forgotten until 1962, when his work was discovered by scholar Uberto Zanolli.-Biography:Facco was born in Marsango, a small settlement near Padua and...
, whose scores had been discovered by her husband in the National Library of Paris.
Zanolli and Fabila's daughter, Betty Zanolli Fabila
Betty Zanolli Fabila
Betty Luisa Zanolli Fabila is a Mexican pianist. She is the daughter of the Italian-Mexican composer Uberto Zanolli and the Mexican soprano Betty Fabila....
, is a classical pianist and music teacher.
Sources
- Díaz Du-Pond, Carlos, La ópera en México de 1924 a 1984: testimonio operístico, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1986
- Operacalli, Biografías de Artistas Mexicanos: Betty Fabila