Eugenia Burzio
Encyclopedia
Italian people
The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...
operatic
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
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...
known for her vibrant voice and passionate style of singing
Singing
Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
.
She was particularly prominent in the verismo
Verismo
Verismo was an Italian literary movement which peaked between approximately 1875 and the early 1900s....
repertoire, creating the role of Delia Terzaghi in Ruggero Leoncavallo
Ruggero Leoncavallo
Ruggero Leoncavallo was an Italian opera composer. His two-act work Pagliacci remains one of the most popular works in the repertory, appearing as number 20 on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide.-Biography:...
's Goffredo Mameli as well as singing Minnie in the Italian premiere of Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
's La fanciulla del West
La fanciulla del West
La fanciulla del West is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini, based on the play The Girl of the Golden West by the American author David Belasco. Its highly-publicised premiere occurred in New York City in 1910...
. While many music critics found her interpretations imaginative and exciting, others criticized her for the unevenness of her voice and other technical shortcomings.
Career
Burzio was born in PoirinoPoirino
Poirino is a comune in the Province of Turin in the Italian region Piedmont, located about 20 km southeast of Turin.Poirino borders the following municipalities: Chieri, Riva presso Chieri, Villanova d'Asti, Santena, Villastellone, Isolabella, Cellarengo, Pralormo, Ceresole Alba, and...
, Piedmont
Piedmont
Piedmont is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has an area of 25,402 square kilometres and a population of about 4.4 million. The capital of Piedmont is Turin. The main local language is Piedmontese. Occitan is also spoken by a minority in the Occitan Valleys situated in the Provinces of...
. Initially, she pursued a career as a violinist but decided instead to concentrate on opera singing while still aged only in her twenties. She studied voice at the Milan Conservatory
Milan Conservatory
The Milan Conservatory is a college of music which was established by a royal decree of 1807 in Milan, capital of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. It opened the following year with premises in the cloisters of the Baroque church of Santa Maria della Passione. There were initially 18 boarders,...
with Carolina Ferni
Carolina Ferni
Carolina Ferni was an Italian violinist and operatic soprano.She began her career as a violinist in Paris and Brussels, and later studied voice with famed soprano Giuditta Pasta...
(the mother of the baritone
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
Eugenio Giraldoni
Eugenio Giraldoni
Eugenio Giraldoni was an Italian operatic baritone who enjoyed a substantial international career. In 1900, he created the role of Baron Scarpia....
) and made her professional début as Santuzza, in Pietro Mascagni
Pietro Mascagni
Pietro Antonio Stefano Mascagni was an Italian composer most noted for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece Cavalleria rusticana caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the Verismo movement in Italian dramatic music...
's Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from a play written by Giovanni Verga based on his short story. Considered one of the classic verismo operas, it premiered on May 17, 1890 at the Teatro...
, at the Teatro Regio di Torino in 1899.
She went on to enjoy a highly successful career throughout her homeland as a lyric-dramatic 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...
, although her ardent, larger-than-life mode of vocalism was not calculated to appeal to the taste of more conservative British and American audiences, and this limited the scope of her international reputation.
Burzio was a magnetic actress and she became particularly associated with the music of the verismo school of composers, exemplified by Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Umberto Giordano
Umberto Giordano
Umberto Menotti Maria Giordano was an Italian composer, mainly of operas.He was born in Foggia in Puglia, southern Italy, and studied under Paolo Serrao at the Conservatoire of Naples...
and, to a certain extent, Puccini. She was a regular performer at Italy's pre-eminent opera house, La Scala
La Scala
La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
, Milan, during the first two decades of the 20th century, appearing in a wide repertoire, often under the baton of Arturo Toscanini. Surprisingly, given her lack of a true bel canto
Bel canto
Bel canto , along with a number of similar constructions , is an Italian opera term...
technique, her La Scala roles included Gluck’s Armide
Armide (Gluck)
Armide is an opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck, his fifth for the Parisian stage and the composer's own favourite among his works. It was first performed in Paris at the Académie Royale on 23 September 1777....
and 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 Norma
Norma (opera)
Norma is a tragedia lirica or opera in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini with libretto by Felice Romani after Norma, ossia L'infanticidio by Alexandre Soumet. First produced at La Scala on December 26, 1831, it is generally regarded as an example of the supreme height of the bel canto tradition...
.
She also sang in South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
and in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
—at St Petersburg's renowned Mariinsky Theatre
Mariinsky Theatre
The Mariinsky Theatre is a historic theatre of opera and ballet in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Opened in 1860, it became the preeminent music theatre of late 19th century Russia, where many of the stage masterpieces of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov received their premieres. The...
.
In addition, Burzio cut a number of frequently gripping 78-rpm gramophone
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
recordings in Milan between 1905 and 1916. Towards the end of her career, however, she suffered from a nervous disorder and general ill-health. She made her final stage appearance in 1919, in Ponchielli’s Marion Delorme
Marion Delorme
Marion Delorme was a French courtesan known for her relationships with the important men of her time.- Early life, life as a courtesan, early death :...
. Burzio died at Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, three years later, aged 49, of kidney failure.
Recordings on CD
- Eugenia Burzio: Verismo Soprano Complete Recorded Operatic Repertoire (FonotipiaFonotipia RecordsFonotipia Records, or Dischi Fonotipia, was an Italian gramophone record label established in 1904 with a charter to record the art of leading opera singers and some other celebrity musicians, chiefly violinists. Fonotipia continued to operate into the electrical recording era, which commenced in...
, Milano, 1905-1910; ColumbiaColumbia RecordsColumbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
, PathéPathé RecordsPathé Records was a France-based international record label and producer of phonographs, active from the 1890s through the 1930s.- Early years :...
and Phonodisc Mondial, Milano, 1912-1916) Label: Marston Records 52020.
External links
Biography- Robert Rideout, Eugenia Burzio
Audio files
- Eugenia Burzio – "Spunta l'aurora pallida" from BoitoArrigo BoitoArrigo Boito , aka Enrico Giuseppe Giovanni Boito, pseudonym Tobia Gorrio, was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist and composer, best known today for his libretti, especially those for Giuseppe Verdi's operas Otello and Falstaff, and his own opera Mefistofele...
's MefistofeleMefistofeleMefistofele is an opera in a prologue, four acts and an epilogue, the only completed opera by the Italian composer-librettist Arrigo Boito.-Composition history:...
(recorded 1910) - Eugenia Burzio – "Voi lo sapete, o mamma" from Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticanaCavalleria rusticanaCavalleria rusticana is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from a play written by Giovanni Verga based on his short story. Considered one of the classic verismo operas, it premiered on May 17, 1890 at the Teatro...
(recorded 1908)