Conchita Badía
Encyclopedia
Concepción Badía de Agustí (14 November 1897 – 2 May 1975) (known by her stage name as Conchita Badía) was a Spanish soprano
and pianist. Admired for her spontaneity, expressiveness, and clear diction, she was considered one the greatest interpreters of 20th century Spanish and Latin American art song
. She premiered many works in that genre, including those by Enrique Granados
, Manuel de Falla
, Frederic Mompou
, Alberto Ginastera
, and Enric Morera, several of which had been specially written for her voice.
on 14 November 1897 and studied with Enrique Granados
, Manuel de Falla
and Pablo Casals
. She had initially enrolled in the Granados Academy as a piano student, but the composer 'discovered' her voice during a solfège
examination. Her first appearance on the opera stage was as one of the six flower maidens in a performance of Wagner's Parsifal
at the Palau de la Música Catalana
in 1913 when she was only 16 years old. Her solo recital debut came on 5 April 1915 in the premiere performance of the Granados song cycle
, Canciones Amatorias, accompanied by the composer. (Two of the songs, "Llorad corazón" and "Gracia mía", were dedicated to her by the Granados). Following the death of Granados and his wife in the 1916 sinking of the Sussex
, she performed in numerous concerts in his memory. In 1935, she made one of her rare appearances on the opera stage to sing the title role in his opera María del Carmen
. It was the first time the work had been revived since its initial performances in 1898-1899.
During the 1930s she gave many recitals and concerts, not only in Spain, but also in London, Paris, and Vienna. In Vienna, she sang Robert Gerhard’s Sis cançons populars catalanes in their 1932 premiere conducted by Anton Webern
. Gerhard had also dedicated his early song cycle L'infantament meravellós de Shahrazada (1916–18) to Badía and later said of her:
In 1936 Badía and her daughters left Spain to escape the Spanish Civil War
. They initially lived in Paris and then in Rio de Janiero before moving to Argentina
where her husband joined them in 1938. In Argentina she continued her close artistic partnership with her fellow exile, Manuel de Falla. She also collaborated closely with the Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera and the Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos
. In 1946, she and her family returned to Spain, where she introduced many of their songs to Spanish audiences. Badía also taught singing and piano, both privately and in her later years as a professor at Barcelona's Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu
. Amongst her pupils were the soprano Montserrat Caballé
and the pianist Joaquín Nin-Culmell
.
Conchita Badía died in Barcelona on 2 May 1975. In 1997, the Archivo Manuel de Falla and the University of Granada
marked the centenary of her birth with an exhibition and a series of concerts in her honour.
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
and pianist. Admired for her spontaneity, expressiveness, and clear diction, she was considered one the greatest interpreters of 20th century Spanish and Latin American art song
Art song
An art song is a vocal music composition, usually written for one voice with piano or orchestral accompaniment. By extension, the term "art song" is used to refer to the genre of such songs....
. She premiered many works in that genre, including those by Enrique Granados
Enrique Granados
Enrique Granados y Campiña was a Spanish pianist and composer of classical music. His music is in a uniquely Spanish style and, as such, representative of musical nationalism...
, Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla y Matheu was a Spanish Andalusian composer of classical music. With Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados and Joaquín Turina he is one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century....
, Frederic Mompou
Federico Mompou
Frederic Mompou i Dencausse was a Catalan Spanish composer and pianist. He is best known for his solo piano music and his songs.-Life:...
, Alberto Ginastera
Alberto Ginastera
Alberto Evaristo Ginastera was an Argentine composer of classical music. He is considered one of the most important Latin American classical composers.- Biography :...
, and Enric Morera, several of which had been specially written for her voice.
Biography
Conchita Badía was born Concepció Badia i Millás in BarcelonaBarcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
on 14 November 1897 and studied with Enrique Granados
Enrique Granados
Enrique Granados y Campiña was a Spanish pianist and composer of classical music. His music is in a uniquely Spanish style and, as such, representative of musical nationalism...
, Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla y Matheu was a Spanish Andalusian composer of classical music. With Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados and Joaquín Turina he is one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century....
and Pablo Casals
Pablo Casals
Pau Casals i Defilló , known during his professional career as Pablo Casals, was a Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest cellists of all time...
. She had initially enrolled in the Granados Academy as a piano student, but the composer 'discovered' her voice during a solfège
Solfege
In music, solfège is a pedagogical solmization technique for the teaching of sight-singing in which each note of the score is sung to a special syllable, called a solfège syllable...
examination. Her first appearance on the opera stage was as one of the six flower maidens in a performance of Wagner's Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
at the Palau de la Música Catalana
Palau de la Música Catalana
The Palau de la Música Catalana is a concert hall in Barcelona. Designed in the Catalan modernista style by the architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner, it was built between 1905 and 1908 for the Orfeó Català, a choral society founded in 1891 that was a leading force in the Catalan cultural movement...
in 1913 when she was only 16 years old. Her solo recital debut came on 5 April 1915 in the premiere performance of the Granados song cycle
Song cycle
A song cycle is a group of songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a single entity. As a rule, all of the songs are by the same composer and often use words from the same poet or lyricist. Unification can be achieved by a narrative or a persona common to the songs, or even, as in Schumann's...
, Canciones Amatorias, accompanied by the composer. (Two of the songs, "Llorad corazón" and "Gracia mía", were dedicated to her by the Granados). Following the death of Granados and his wife in the 1916 sinking of the Sussex
Sussex (French passenger ferry)
Sussex was a cross-channel passenger ferry, which was built in 1896 by William Denny and Brothers, Dumbarton for the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway . She became the focus of an international incident when she was torpedoed by a German U-Boat in 1916. Although severely damaged, she was...
, she performed in numerous concerts in his memory. In 1935, she made one of her rare appearances on the opera stage to sing the title role in his opera María del Carmen
María del Carmen (opera)
María del Carmen is an opera in three acts composed by Enrique Granados to a Spanish libretto by José Feliú i Codina based on his 1896 play of the same name. It was Granados's first operatic success and although largely forgotten today, he considered it to be his best opera...
. It was the first time the work had been revived since its initial performances in 1898-1899.
During the 1930s she gave many recitals and concerts, not only in Spain, but also in London, Paris, and Vienna. In Vienna, she sang Robert Gerhard’s Sis cançons populars catalanes in their 1932 premiere conducted by Anton Webern
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
. Gerhard had also dedicated his early song cycle L'infantament meravellós de Shahrazada (1916–18) to Badía and later said of her:
"She feels such an intense joy when she sings – joy in the music, joy in her own voice – that it is impossible not to share it when you listen to her."
In 1936 Badía and her daughters left Spain to escape the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. They initially lived in Paris and then in Rio de Janiero before moving to Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
where her husband joined them in 1938. In Argentina she continued her close artistic partnership with her fellow exile, Manuel de Falla. She also collaborated closely with the Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera and the Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos
Heitor Villa-Lobos
Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer, described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the best-known and most significant Latin American composer to date. He wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works...
. In 1946, she and her family returned to Spain, where she introduced many of their songs to Spanish audiences. Badía also taught singing and piano, both privately and in her later years as a professor at Barcelona's Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu
Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu
Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu is a music college in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It was created in 1837 with the name Liceo Filo-dramático de Montesión....
. Amongst her pupils were the soprano Montserrat Caballé
Montserrat Caballé
Montserrat Caballé is a Spanish operatic soprano. Although she sang a wide variety of roles, she is best known as an exponent of the bel canto repertoire, notably the works of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi....
and the pianist Joaquín Nin-Culmell
Joaquin Nin-Culmell
Joaquín Maria Nin-Culmell was Cuban-Spanish composer and an internationally known concert pianist, emeritus professor of music at the University of California, Berkeley.-Early life:...
.
Conchita Badía died in Barcelona on 2 May 1975. In 1997, the Archivo Manuel de Falla and the University of Granada
University of Granada
The University of Granada is a public university located in Granada, Spain that enrolls approximately 80,000 students. The university also has campuses in Ceuta and Melilla. Every year, over 2,000 European students enroll in the UGR through the Erasmus Programme, making it the most popular...
marked the centenary of her birth with an exhibition and a series of concerts in her honour.
Recordings
- Conchita Badía: Homenaje – Songs by Manuel de FallaManuel de FallaManuel de Falla y Matheu was a Spanish Andalusian composer of classical music. With Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados and Joaquín Turina he is one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century....
, Juan José CastroJuan José CastroJuan José Castro was an Argentine composer and conductor.Born in Avellaneda, Castro studied piano and violin under Manuel Posadas and composition under Eduarno Fornarini, in Buenos Aires. In the 1920s he was awarded the Europa Prize, and then went on to study in Paris at the Schola Cantorum under...
, Alberto GinasteraAlberto GinasteraAlberto Evaristo Ginastera was an Argentine composer of classical music. He is considered one of the most important Latin American classical composers.- Biography :...
, Carlos GuastavinoCarlos GuastavinoCarlos Guastavino was an Argentine composer.Carlos Guastavino was born in Santa Fe Province, Argentina. He studied music in Santa Fe with Esperanza Lothringer and Dominga Iaffei, and in Buenos Aires with Athos Palma...
, and others. Recordings of the December 1942 concerts broadcast on Radio El Mundo (Buenos AiresBuenos AiresBuenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
) with de Falla conducting his own music, sung by Badía. The album also includes Badía's 1964 Madrid concert dedicated to songs by Argentinian composers, the majority of which had been composed specially for her. Label: Piscitelli. - The Catalan Piano Tradition – Conchita Badía, accompanied by Alicia de LarrochaAlicia de LarrochaAlicia de Larrocha y de la Calle was a Spanish pianist from Catalonia. One of the great piano legends of the 20th century, Reuters called her "the greatest Spanish pianist in history", Time "one of the world's most outstanding pianists" and The Guardian "the leading Spanish pianist of her...
, can be heard singing three songs from Colección de tonadillas by Enrique GranadosEnrique GranadosEnrique Granados y Campiña was a Spanish pianist and composer of classical music. His music is in a uniquely Spanish style and, as such, representative of musical nationalism...
: No 8. "El mirar de la maja", No 7. "La maja de Goya", and No 5. "El majo Olvidado". Recorded in Barcelona circa 1960. Label: VAI (Video Artists International). - The EMI Record Of SingingThe Record of SingingThe Record of Singing is a compilation of classical-music singing from the first half of the 20th century, the era of the 78-rpm record.It was issued on LP by EMI, successor to the British company His Master's Voice — perhaps the leading organization in the early history of audio recording.The...
: Vol. 3 - 1926-1939 – Conchita Badía, accompanied by Oscar Donato Colacelli, can be heard singing two songs from Colección de tonadillas by Enrique Granados: No 4. "El majo discreto" and No 6. "El majo timido". Recorded in Argentina, 5 October 1940. Label: Testament.