Gemma Bellincioni
Gemma Cesira Matilda Bellincioni ( born August 18, 1864 in Como, † April 23, 1950 in Naples) was an Italian soprano.
The daughter of the bassist Cesare Bellincioni and the alto Carlotta Soroldoni was trained by her mother and studied in Naples with Giovanni Corsi and Luigia Ponte dell'armi. She made her debut in 1880 at the Teatro della Società Filarmonica in Naples in the opera Il segreto della duchessa by Giuseppe Dell'Orefice. Two years later she appeared at the Teatro San Carlos in Lisbon next to Enrico Tamberlick as Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto.
After a tour of Spain, she joined in 1885 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome in Verdi's La Traviata and in the 1885-86 season at La Scala as Isabella in Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert le diable on. 1886 she married in Buenos Aires, the tenor Roberto Stagno, with whom she performed together from now on, so in 1890 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome at the premiere of the opera Labilia by Nicola Spinelli and Rudello by Vincenzo Ferroni and 1895 in Trieste in Nozze Istriane by Antonio Smareglia.
Above all, Bellinconi had merit as an interpreter of verismo operas. She sang in the premiere of Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome Santuzza, worked in 1892 at the premiere of the opera A Santa Lucia Pierantonio Tasca at Berlin's Kroll Opera and 1898 ( together with Enrico Caruso ) the premiere of the opera Fedora by Umberto Giordano at Teatro Lirico in Milan with.
1901 she sang at the Teatro Constanzidie title role in the opera Lorenza, the Edoardo Mascheroni had composed for them. In 1904 she sang at the Teatro Lirico in the world premiere of Gabriel Dupont La Cabrera, in 1905 she appeared at the premiere of Leopoldo Mugnones Vita Brettone at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples.
Famous was their interpretation of Sappho in the eponymous opera by Jules Massenet, which she sang at the Italian premiere in 1898 in Milan and with the 1911 they said goodbye to the stage. Another of her best roles was the Salomé in Richard Strauss' opera, which she first sang at the Italian premiere in 1906. As a guest Bellincioni stepped et al in Vienna, Berlin, Budapest, Monte Carlo, Paris, Warsaw, Dresden, Prague, Hamburg, Buenos Aires, London, Odessa, Bucharest and Amsterdam.
From 1911 to 1915 she directed an opera studio in Berlin, after DFEM entry into the war in Italy, she moved to Holland, where they are largely forgotten and lived in financial distress. In 1924, she appeared again as Santuzza, as Tosca and Carmen, as before her established the Italian government an Opera Studio in Rome, which she ran until 1931. After a year in Vienna, she taught until shortly before her death at the Conservatory of Naples.
Under the title Io ed il palcoscenico Bellincioni gave 1920 her memoirs out. Her sister Saffo Frigiotti was known as a mezzo- soprano, her daughter Bianca Stagno Bellincioni as a soprano.