I want to leave quietly... I don't want public announcements, or wakes, or anything. I came into the world and no one found out, so I want the same thing when I leave, ”said Teresa Berganza (actually Vargas last name).
The mezzo-soprano has wanted to say goodbye to this world only with her extraordinary voice singing Rossini's Addio in a video. As her daughter, the soprano Cecilia Lavilla, indicated yesterday in a statement, her tribute will be to remember her in all her fullness and continue enjoying her through her interpretations.
The Madrid singer, born in 1933 and a woman of arms -or character-, as she would be described according to parameters of the 20th century, has died in San Lorenzo del Escorial, at the age of 89, and after having lost a sister of covid .
When the news was announced yesterday, the world of opera went into mourning urbi et orbe. From the Vienna Opera they remembered his Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro, his Dorabella in Così fan tutte and his Sesto in La clemenza di Tito, works by Mozart with which he not only stood out but also left his mark.
The artistic director of the Liceu, Víctor García de Gomar, defined her, in this sense, as a workhorse that transformed vocal performance. “The creation of the myth took place with her plan that she gave to the conductor Herbert von Karajan, whose tempi in the rehearsals of Le nozze she did not see as adequate. Berganza did not show up at the premiere, and thus left the signature of a category in Cherubino”, she analyzed.
Later came many other roles and a special liaison with Claudio Abbado with whom he vindicated Rossini: Ceneretola , L'italiana in Algeri... “She leads the way after Giulietta Simionato and will be followed by Frederica von Stade and Cecilia Bartoli. These are the best Cenerentola, Il Barbiere di Siviglia or Carmen”, adds De Gomar.
The latter, a title by Bizet, had been very French until Berganza burst into the Edinburgh festival in 1977 and suddenly the gestures and words and this world of bullfighting and gypsies that until now had been represented from French fantasy , were made to be understood from the Spanish nature of the character.
His was a sensitive, human, polyhedral cigarette case, like the one Victoria de los Ángeles also made, and not strictly passionate like Maria Callas's. And when she surrounded herself with Plácido Domingo or Josep Carreras, those characteristics multiplied.
That outstanding student of Lola Rodríguez de Aragón, who before choosing singing studied piano, harmony, chamber music, composition, organ and cello – she won the final prize in 1954 –, was a perfectionist woman whose recordings still drink today many students.
"For me he was a great reference, he knew everything he had done, with that pure way he had of singing, he was a unique case of perfection", assured yesterday the Barcelona mezzo Carol Garcia, the great Spanish voice of Rossin today.
“Berganza was one of the greatest singers in the history of music. Because of the wonder of her voice and her technique, but above all because of that disarmingly natural singing – confirms Joan Matabosch, artistic director of the Teatro Real. Everything sounded natural, simple, expressive, even when it came to the pyrotechnic vocalizations of a Rossini. She achieved that there was not the slightest desire for gratuitous artifice. Virtuosity was never the goal, but the means to increase expressiveness”.
From the Scala in Milan to the Vienna Opera, Covent Garden in London or the Metropolitan in New York, Berganza was part of the international Olympus, recording the Rossini repertoire for Deutsche Grammophon or shooting Don Giovanni with Joseph Losey, together with José van Dam , Ruggero Raimondi and Kiri Te Kanawa. Maria Callas claimed her for Norma.
“It was difficult to say no, but my voice was not ready then. When she was already, I told her, but then she couldn't anymore, it was too late, ”explained the mezzo. In any case, they coincided in Medea, in Dallas, a live show of which there is an iconic recording.
All in all, it was also key in enhancing the zarzuela, but at the same time in spreading the song, at a time when people in Spain might have heard of Schubert and Schumann's lieder and the new Mahlers arrived late. And he put the focus on the national repertoire.
Along with Victoria de los Ángeles and Montserrat Caballé, he revitalized the genre (Guridi, Obrador, Montsalvatge, Mompou...), recorded it and went on stage when recitals used to be a collection of opera arias. Her sympathy and grace were mythical, but also that character for which she was able to cancel concerts from one day to the next, hence the nickname of Madame annulation.
In 2008 he retired from the stage. Ten years later, she collected the International Opera Prize for her career in London.
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