Olivia Bonelli - 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...

, 1920-1990. Her career covered a span of almost 30 years, from the late 1940s through the 1970s. While short of attaining "super-star" status, she nevertheless enjoyed a popular, steady and accomplished vocal career. She went from a small town choir (Troy, New York

Troy, New York

Troy is a city in the US State of New York and the seat of Rensselaer County. Troy is located on the western edge of Rensselaer County and on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. Troy has close ties to the nearby cities of Albany and Schenectady, forming a region popularly called the Capital...

) to become a soloist at New York's Radio City Music Hall

Radio City Music Hall

Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue located in New York City's Rockefeller Center. Its nickname is the Showplace of the Nation, and it was for a time the leading tourist destination in the city...

, to several of the USA's major opera companies, to a debut at New York City Opera

New York City Opera

The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...

,(1956–1964) to the Metropolitan Opera

Metropolitan Opera

The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...

, for a special reading performance of Marvin David Levy's, "Mourning Becomes Electra." Along the way, she spent a year traveling with the USO

United Service Organizations

The United Service Organizations Inc. is a private, nonprofit organization that provides morale and recreational services to members of the U.S. military, with programs in 160 centers worldwide. Since 1941, it has worked in partnership with the Department of Defense , and has provided support and...

, entertaining wounded WWII service men in hospitals across the USA, premiered new works,(Earl Wild

Earl Wild

Royland Earl Wild was an American pianist widely recognized as a leading virtuoso of his generation. Harold C. Schonberg called him a "super-virtuoso in the Horowitz class". He was known as well for his transcriptions of classical music and jazz...

's oratorio,"Revelations", ABC-TV, 1962) and pioneered in the early days of television opera (La Traviata, ABC-TV, 1959). A web site, OliviaBonelli.com, commemorates her musical life and serves as an historical record of one singer's journey through the operatic world of the 1950s and 1960s.

"Olivia Bonelli sang Micaela last night in Carmen at the Carter Barron Amphitheater, and stopped the show with her third act aria. She is a young singer, with the manner, vocal and dramatic, of a patrician. Her singing is etched in clear lines of the most elegant sound, and her French enunciation was the model other members of the cast might well have followed. When she was on the stage there was an aura about the whole thing. I can think of a whole raft of roles in which I hope to hear her in the very near future. The evening brought us Olivia Bonelli as a new artist of great promise and for that we are grateful." -