Maria Malibran
Encyclopedia
Mezzo-soprano
A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
(she commonly sang both contralto
Contralto
Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
and soprano
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...
parts) Maria Malibran (24 March 180823 September 1836), was one of the most famous opera singers of the 19th century. Malibran was known for her stormy personality and dramatic intensity, becoming a legendary figure after her death at age 28. Contemporary accounts of her voice describe its range, power and flexibility as extraordinary.
Life and career
Malibran was born in Paris as María Felicitas García Sitches into a famous Spanish musical family. Her father, Manuel García, was a celebrated tenorTenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
much admired by Rossini
Gioacchino Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini was an Italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as sacred music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces...
, having created the role of Count Almaviva in his The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's comedy Le Barbier de Séville , which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music...
. García was also a composer and an influential vocal instructor, and he was her first voice teacher. He was described as inflexible and tyrannical; the lessons he gave his daughter became constant quarrels between two powerful egos.
Early career
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Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
with her father in Paër
Ferdinando Paer
-Biography:Paer was born at Parma. His father was a trumpeter with the Ducal Bodyguards and also performed at church and court events. His name, Ferdinando, was after Duke Ferdinand of Parma and was given to him by Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria, Duke Ferdinand's wife...
’s Agnese, when she was 8 years old. When she was 17, she was a singer in the choir of the King's Theatre in London. When prima donna Giuditta Pasta
Giuditta Pasta
Giuditta Angiola Maria Costanza Pasta , born in Saronno, Italy, was a soprano considered among the greatest of opera singers, to whom the 20th-century soprano Maria Callas was compared.-Studies and career:...
became indisposed, García suggested that his daughter take over in the role of Rosina in The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's comedy Le Barbier de Séville , which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music...
. The audience loved the young mezzo, and she continued to sing this role until the end of the season. When the season closed, García immediately took his operatic troupe to New York. The troupe consisted primarily of the members of his family: Maria, her brother, Manuel
Manuel Patricio Rodríguez García
Manuel Patricio Rodríguez García , was a Spanish singer, music educator, and vocal pedagogue.-Biography:García was born on 17 March 1805 in the town of Zafra in Badajoz Province, Spain. His father was singer and teacher Manuel del Pópulo Vicente Rodriguez García...
, and their mother, Joaquina Sitchez, also called "la Briones". Maria's younger sister, Pauline, who would later become a famous singer in her own right under the name of Pauline Viardot, was then but four years old.
This was the first time that Italian opera was performed in New York. Over a period of nine months, Maria sang the lead roles in eight operas, two of which were written by her father. In New York, she met and hastily married a banker, Francois Eugene Malibran, who was 28 years her senior. It is thought that her father forced Maria to marry him in return for the banker's promise to give Manuel García 100,000 francs. However, according to other accounts, she married simply to escape her tyrannical father. A few months after the wedding, her husband declared bankruptcy, and Maria was forced to support him through her performances. After a year, she left Malibran and returned to Europe.
In Europe, Malibran sang the title role at the premiere of Donizetti
Gaetano Donizetti
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore , Lucia di Lammermoor , and Don Pasquale , all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment...
's Maria Stuarda
Maria Stuarda
Maria Stuarda is a tragic opera, , in two acts, by Gaetano Donizetti, to a libretto by Giuseppe Bardari, based on Friedrich Schiller's 1800 play Maria Stuart....
The opera, based on Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
's play Mary Stuart, aroused the fury of the censors, who demanded textual amendments, which Malibran typically ignored. Malibran became romantically involved with the Belgian violinist, Charles Auguste de Bériot. The pair lived together as a common-law
Common law
Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action...
couple for six years and a child was born to them in 1833 (the piano pedagogue Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot
Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot
Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot was a French pianist, teacher and composer.He was born in Paris in 1833, the son of the violinist Charles Auguste de Bériot and his then common-law wife, the famed soprano Maria Malibran Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot (12 February 183322 October 1914) was a French pianist,...
), before Maria obtained an annulment
Annulment
Annulment is a legal procedure for declaring a marriage null and void. Unlike divorce, it is usually retroactive, meaning that an annulled marriage is considered to be invalid from the beginning almost as if it had never taken place...
of her marriage to Malibran. Felix Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
wrote an aria
Aria
An aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...
accompanied by a solo violin especially for the couple. Malibran sang at the Paris Opera
Paris Opera
The Paris Opera is the primary opera company of Paris, France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the Académie d'Opéra and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and renamed the Académie Royale de Musique...
among other major opera houses. In Paris, she met and performed with Michael Balfe
Michael William Balfe
Michael William Balfe was an Irish composer, best-remembered for his opera The Bohemian Girl.After a short career as a violinist, Balfe pursued an operatic singing career, while he began to compose. In a career spanning more than 40 years, he composed 38 operas, almost 250 songs and other works...
.
Last years and death
In 1834, Malibran moved to England and began to perform in London. In late May 1836, she starred in The Maid of ArtoisThe Maid of Artois
The Maid of Artois is an opera by Michael Balfe, written in 1836 to a libretto by Alfred Bunn, manager of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London. The opera received good notices, and the overture was much admired. The opera opened on 27 May 1836, starring the Maria Malibran as the title...
, written for her by Balfe. In July 1836, Malibran fell from her horse and suffered injuries from which she never recovered. She refused to see a physician and continued to perform. She died several months after the accident in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
. She is buried in Laeken Cemetery
Laeken Cemetery
The Laeken Cemetery , located in Laeken in the northern part of Brussels, is one of the major cemeteries in Belgium.-Description:...
, Belgium.
Roles and vocal style
Malibran is most closely associated with the operas of Rossini – she sang, among others, TancrediTancredi
Tancredi is a melodramma eroico in two acts by composer Gioachino Rossini and librettist Gaetano Rossi, based on Voltaire's play Tancrède...
(title role), Otello
Otello (Rossini)
Otello is an opera in three acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Berio di Salsi, based on Shakespeare's play Othello....
(both Desdemona and title role), Il turco in Italia
Il turco in Italia
Il turco in Italia is an opera in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The Italian-language libretto was written by Felice Romani...
, La Cenerentola
La Cenerentola
La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, based on the fairy tale Cinderella...
, and Semiramide
Semiramide
Semiramide is an opera in two acts by Gioachino Rossini.The libretto by Gaetano Rossi is based on Voltaire's tragedy Semiramis, which in turn was based on the legend of Semiramis of Babylon...
(both Arsace and title role) but also sang in Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer was a noted German opera composer, and the first great exponent of "grand opera." At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer of opera in Europe, yet he is rarely performed today.-Early years:He was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf , near...
's Il crociato in Egitto
Il crociato in Egitto
Il crociato in Egitto is an opera in two acts by Giacomo Meyerbeer, with a libretto by Gaetano Rossi. It was first performed at La Fenice theatre, Venice on 7 March, 1824. The part of Armando was sung by the famous castrato, Giovanni Battista Velluti; the opera was probably the last ever written...
and enjoyed great success in Bellini
Vincenzo Bellini
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini was an Italian opera composer. His greatest works are I Capuleti ed i Montecchi , La sonnambula , Norma , Beatrice di Tenda , and I puritani...
's operas Norma
Norma
Norma is a popular girl's name. Norma may also refer to:In science and technology:*Norma , of the southern sky*Cygnus Arm, also known as the Norma Arm, a spiral arm in the Milky Way galaxy*555 Norma, a minor planet...
, La sonnambula
La sonnambula
La sonnambula is an opera semiseria in two acts, with music in the bel canto tradition by Vincenzo Bellini to an Italian libretto by Felice Romani, based on a scenario for a ballet-pantomime by Eugène Scribe and Jean-Pierre Aumer called La somnambule, ou L'arrivée d'un nouveau seigneur.The first...
and I Capuleti e i Montecchi
I Capuleti e i Montecchi
I Capuleti e i Montecchi is an Italian opera in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini.The libretto by Felice Romani was a reworking of the story of Romeo and Juliet for an opera by Nicola Vaccai called Giulietta e Romeo. This was based on Italian sources rather than taken directly from Shakespeare...
(Romeo). Besides Bellini's Romeo, she also performed the same character in two other then-famous operas: Giulietta e Romeo
Giulietta e Romeo
Giulietta e Romeo is a dramma per musica by composer Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli with an Italian libretto by Giuseppe Maria Foppa after the 1530 novella of the same name by Luigi da Porto...
by Zingarelli
Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli
Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli was an Italian composer, chiefly of opera.-Early career:Zingarelli was born in Naples, where he studied at the Santa Maria di Loreto Conservatory under Fenaroli and Speranza....
and Giulietta e Romeo
Giulietta e Romeo (Vaccai)
Giulietta e Romeo is an opera in two acts by the Italian composer Nicola Vaccai. The libretto, by Felice Romani, is based on the tragedy by of the same name by Luigi Scevola and, ultimately, on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It was first performed at the Teatro alla Canobbiana, Milan on 31...
by Vaccai
Nicola Vaccai
Nicola Vaccai was an Italian composer, particularly of operas, and a singing teacher.-Life and career as a composer:...
. Bellini wrote a new version of his I puritani
I puritani
I puritani is an opera in three acts by Vincenzo Bellini. It was his last opera. Its libretto is by Count Carlo Pepoli, based on Têtes rondes et Cavaliers by Jacques-François Ancelot and Joseph Xavier Saintine, which is in turn based on Walter Scott's novel Old Mortality. It was first produced at...
to adapt it to her mezzo-soprano voice and even promised to write a new opera especially for her, but he died before he was able to.
Malibran's confort vocal range
Vocal range
Vocal range is the measure of the breadth of pitches that a human voice can phonate. Although the study of vocal range has little practical application in terms of speech, it is a topic of study within linguistics, phonetics, and speech and language pathology, particularly in relation to the study...
was remarkably wide, from G below middle C
Middle C
C or Do is the first note of the fixed-Do solfège scale. Its enharmonic is B.-Middle C:Middle C is designated C4 in scientific pitch notation because of the note's position as the fourth C key on a standard 88-key piano keyboard...
to high E (G3 – E6), and her extreme range extended from D3 to F6 in altissimo, which allowed her to easily sing roles for contralto as well as high soprano. Her contemporaries admired Malibran's emotional intensity on stage. Rossini, Donizetti, Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
, Mendelssohn and Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
were among her fans. The painter Eugène Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...
however, accused her of lacking refinement and class and of trying to "appeal to the masses who have no artistic taste." Describing her voice and technique, French critic Castil-Blaze
Castil-Blaze
François-Henri-Joseph Blaze, known as Castil-Blaze , was a French musicologist, music critic, composer, and music editor.-Biography:...
writes, “Malibran's voice was vibrant, full of brightness and vigor. Without ever lost her flattering timbre, this velvet that given her so much seduction in tender and passionate arias. [...] Vivacity, accuracy, ascending chromatics runs, arpeggio
Arpeggio
An arpeggio is a musical technique where notes in a chord are played or sung in sequence, one after the other, rather than ringing out simultaneously...
s, vocal lines dazzling of strength, grace or coquetry, she posseded all the art can make you acquiering.”
Legacy
Film
Several films depict the life of Maria Malibran:1) Maria Malibran (1943) directed by Italian director Guido Brignone and starring Moldovan-born Austrian soprano and actress Maria Cebotari
Maria Cebotari
Maria Cebotari was a celebrated Moldavian soprano and actress born in Bessarabia, Russian Empire , who made her career in Germany & Austria.-Biography:...
.
2) La Malibran (1944) directed by French auteur Sacha Guitry
Sacha Guitry
Alexandre-Pierre Georges Guitry was a French stage actor, film actor, director, screenwriter, and playwright of the Boulevard theatre.- Biography :...
starring Géori Boué, celebrated singer of the Opéra de Paris.
3) The German filmmaker Werner Schroeter
Werner Schroeter
Werner Schroeter was a German film director and screenwriter, who some consider among the most important German writer-directors of the post-war period.-Biography:...
made a film about her: The Death of Maria Malibran (1971) starring Candy Darling
Candy Darling
Candy Darling was an American actress, best known as a Warhol Superstar. A male-to-female transsexual, she starred in Andy Warhol's films Flesh and Women in Revolt , and was a muse of the protopunk band The Velvet Underground.-Early life:Candy Darling was born James Lawrence Slattery in Forest...
.
Other media
The mezzo-soprano Cecilia BartoliCecilia Bartoli
Cecilia Bartoli is an Italian coloratura mezzo-soprano opera singer and recitalist. She is best-known for her interpretation of the music of Mozart and Rossini, as well as for her performances of lesser-known Baroque and classical music...
dedicated her 2007 album "Maria" to the music composed for Malibran and her most famous roles, as well as an extensive tour and DVD concert dedicated to La Malibran. In 2008 Decca released a recording Bellini's "La Sonnambula" with Cecilia Bartoli in the lead role using many cadenzas that la Malibran herself used and that restored the tessitura of the role to the high mezzo-soprano range (as Giuditta Pasta
Giuditta Pasta
Giuditta Angiola Maria Costanza Pasta , born in Saronno, Italy, was a soprano considered among the greatest of opera singers, to whom the 20th-century soprano Maria Callas was compared.-Studies and career:...
and Maria Malibran sang it).
Sources
- Bushnell, Howard (1979), Maria Malibran: A Biography of the Singer
- FitzLyon, AprilApril FitzLyonCecily April FitzLyon , known as April FitzLyon, was an English translator, biographer, and historian.-Early life:...
, (1987), Maria Malibran: Diva of the Romantic Age
External links
- Information about Malibran's performance in The Maid of ArtoisThe Maid of ArtoisThe Maid of Artois is an opera by Michael Balfe, written in 1836 to a libretto by Alfred Bunn, manager of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London. The opera received good notices, and the overture was much admired. The opera opened on 27 May 1836, starring the Maria Malibran as the title...
, one of her last roles