Marguerite Bériza
Encyclopedia
Marguerite Bériza was a French opera
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...

 singer
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...

 who had an active international career during the first half of the 20th century. She began her career as a mezzo-soprano
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...

 at the Opéra-Comique
Opéra-Comique
The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...

 in 1900; ultimately transitioning into the leading 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...

 repertoire at that theatre in 1912. She performed extensively in the United States from 1914–1917 and was also heard as a guest artist at theatres in the French provinces, Monaco, Portugal, and Switzerland during her career. In 1924 she founded her own opera company in Paris with whom she actively performed up until 1930.

During her early career, Bériza was married to the French tenor Lucien Muratore
Lucien Muratore
Lucien Muratore was a French actor and operatic tenor, particularly associated with the French repertory.- Life and career :...

. In 1906-1907 they appeared on several Edison cylinder
Phonograph cylinder
Phonograph cylinders were the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity , these cylinder shaped objects had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be reproduced when the cylinder was...

 recordings together where she was billed under the name Magli Muratore. She was also billed under that name on a 1910 Pathé Records
Pathé Records
Pathé Records was a France-based international record label and producer of phonographs, active from the 1890s through the 1930s.- Early years :...

 recording which also included performances by Jane Marignan, Albert Vaguet, and Henri Albers. She divorced Muratore in 1913 so he could marry the soprano Lina Cavalieri
Lina Cavalieri
Lina Cavalieri was an Italian operatic soprano and diseuse known for her grace and beauty.-Biography:...

. On the stage she performed mainly under the name Marguerite Bériza, sometimes shortening it to Magli Bériza. However, she was occasionally billed under the surname Dériza and in her latter career as Mme Bériza-Greven, probably after a second marriage.

Education and early career as a mezzo-soprano

Born in France, Bériza was trained at the Conservatoire de Paris
Conservatoire de Paris
The Conservatoire de Paris is a college of music and dance founded in 1795, now situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France...

. She made her professional opera debut in 1900 at the Opéra-Comique
Opéra-Comique
The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...

 in Paris where she was heard mostly in comprimario
Comprimario
A Comprimario is a supporting role in an opera. Derived from the Italian "con primario", or "with the primary", the term refers to a performer who sings small role pieces....

 roles from the mezzo-soprano
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...

 repertoire during the early part of her career. She performed the part of Geoffroy in the world premiere of Henri Rabaud
Henri Rabaud
Henri Rabaud was a French conductor and composer, who held important posts in the French musical establishment and upheld mainly conservative trends in French music in the first half of the twentieth century....

's La fille de Roland in 1904. In 1906 she sang the role of Kate Pinkerton in the French 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 Madame Butterfly; later taking over the part of Suzuki in successive performances. In 1910 she portrayed the role of Pénélope in the world premiere of Claude Terrasse
Claude Terrasse
Claude Terrasse , was a French composer of operettas.Claude Terrasse was considered by some as the true successor to Jacques Offenbach , one of the originators of the operetta form, a precursor of the modern musical comedy.Terrasse was born in L'Arbresle, Rhône...

's Le mariage de Télémaque.

Some of the roles that Bériza sang during her early years at the Opéra-Comique were the 2nd Priestess in both Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...

's Iphigénie en Aulide
Iphigénie en Aulide
Iphigénie en Aulide is an opera in three acts by Christoph Willibald Gluck, the first work he wrote for the Paris stage. The libretto was written by Leblanc du Roullet and was based on Jean Racine's tragedy Iphigénie...

and Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride
Iphigénie en Tauride
Iphigénie en Tauride is an opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck in four acts. It was his fifth opera for the French stage. The libretto was written by Nicolas-François Guillard....

, Gertrude in Charles Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...

's Roméo et Juliette
Roméo et Juliette
Roméo et Juliette is an opéra in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. It was first performed at the Théâtre Lyrique , Paris on 27 April 1867...

, The Marquise of Birkenfeld in Gaetano 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 La fille du régiment
La fille du régiment
La fille du régiment is an opéra comique in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti. It was written while the composer was living in Paris, with a French libretto by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Jean-François Bayard.La figlia del reggimento, a slightly different Italian-language version , was...

, and The Muse in Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....

's The Tales of Hoffmann. In January 1909 and January 1910 she appeared as a guest artist at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo
Opéra de Monte-Carlo
The Opéra de Monte-Carlo is an opera house located in the principality of Monaco.With the lack of cultural diversions available in Monaco in the 1870s, Prince Charles III, along with the Société des Bains de Mer, decided on the construction of an opera house. Initially, it was Charles III's...

 performing the roles of Erda, Flosshilde, and Waltraute in Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

's The Ring Cycle. She was also heard there as Stéphano in Roméo et Juliette.

Career as a soprano

In 1912 Bériza began performing leading soprano roles at the Opéra-Comique. There she had major success in roles like Musetta in Puccini's La bohème
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...

, 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...

, Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...

's La traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...

, and the title roles in Ambroise Thomas
Ambroise Thomas
Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas was a French composer, best known for his operas Mignon and Hamlet and as Director of the Conservatoire de Paris from 1871 till his death.-Biography:"There is good music, there is bad music, and then there is Ambroise Thomas."- Emmanuel Chabrier-Early life...

's Mignon
Mignon
Mignon is an opéra comique in three acts by Ambroise Thomas. The original French libretto was by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. The Italian version was translated by Giuseppe Zaffira. The opera is mentioned in James Joyce's The Dead,...

and Puccini's Tosca
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...

. She also continued to perform roles traditionally sung by mezzo-sopranos like Anita in Jules Massenet
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, Massenet's style went out of fashion, and many of his operas...

's La Navarraise
La Navarraise
La Navarraise is an opera in one act by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Jules Claretie and Henri Cain, based on Claretie's novel La Cigarette...

and Mallika in Léo Delibes
Léo Delibes
Clément Philibert Léo Delibes was a French composer of ballets, operas, and other works for the stage...

's Lakmé
Lakmé
Lakmé is an opera in three acts by Léo Delibes to a French libretto by Edmond Gondinet and Philippe Gille. Delibes wrote the score during 1881–82 with its first performance on 14 April 1883 at the Opéra Comique in Paris. Set in British India in the mid 19th century, Lakmé is based on the 1880 novel...

. She sang leading roles as a guest artist at the Grand Théâtre de Genève
Grand Théâtre de Genève
Grand Théâtre de Genève is an opera house in Geneva, Switzerland.As with many other opera houses, the Grand Théâtre de Genève is both a venue and an institution. The venue is a majestic building, towering over Place Neuve, officially opened in 1876, partly destroyed by fire in 1951 and reopened in...

, the Opéra de Marseille
Opéra de Marseille
L’Opéra de Marseille, known today as the Opéra Municipal, is an opera company located in Marseille, France. In 1685, the city was the second in France after Bordeaux to have an opera house which was erected on a tennis court....

, the Opéra de Nice
Opéra de Nice
The Opéra de Nice is the principal opera venue in Nice, France.The théâtre municipal of Nice was inaugurated 7 February 1885 with a performance of Verdi's Aida. In 1902 the théâtre municipal became the Opéra de Nice.-References:...

, and the Opéra National de Lyon
Opéra National de Lyon
Opéra National de Lyon is an opera company in Lyon, France which performs in the Nouvel Opéra, a modernized version in 1993 of the original 1831 opera house.The inaugural performance of François-Adrien Boïeldieu's La Dame blanche was given on 1 July 1831...

.

While still performing occasionally at the Opéra-Comique, Bériza gave numerous performances in the United States during the second decade of the 20th century. In late 1913 she came to the United States for the first time to sing with the Boston Opera Company
Boston Opera Company
The Boston Opera Company was an American opera company located in Boston, Massachusetts that was active from 1909 to 1915.-History:The company was founded in 1908 by Bostonian millionaire Eben Dyer Jordan, Jr. and impresario Henry Russell...

; making her debut with the company in January 1914 as Musetta to the Mimi of Maggie Teyte
Maggie Teyte
Dame Maggie Teyte DBE was an English operatic soprano and interpreter of French art song.-Early years:Margaret Tate was born in Wolverhampton, England, one of ten children of Jacob James Tate, a successful wine and spirit merchant and proprietor of public houses and later lodgings. Her parents...

. She appeared in several more roles with the company that year, including Antonia in The Tales of Hoffmann, Marguerite in Gounod's Faust
Faust (opera)
Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...

and the title roles in Gustave Charpentier
Gustave Charpentier
Gustave Charpentier, , born in Dieuze, Moselle on 25 June 1860, died Paris, 18 February 1956) was a French composer, best known for his opera Louise.-Life and career:...

's Louise
Louise (opera)
Louise is an opera in four acts by Gustave Charpentier to an original French libretto by the composer, with some contributions by Saint-Pol-Roux, a symbolist poet and inspiration of the surrealists....

and Henry Février
Henry Février
Henry Février was a French composer.-Biography:Henry Février studied at the Paris Conservatoire where his teachers included Jules Massenet and Gabriel Fauré. He also took private lessons with André Messager...

's Monna Vanna
Monna Vanna (Février)
Monna Vanna is a drame lyrique or opera in four acts by composer Henry Février. The opera's French libretto is by playwright Maurice Maeterlinck and is based on his play of the same name. The opera premiered on 13 January 1909 at the Académie Nationale de Musique in Paris.- Roles :-External links:**...

(replacing Mary Garden
Mary Garden
Mary Garden , was a Scottish operatic soprano with a substantial career in France and America in the first third of the 20th century...

 in the role).

Bériza sang Monna Vanna for her debut with the Chicago Grand Opera Company
Chicago Grand Opera Company
Two grand opera companies in Chicago have gone by the name Chicago Grand Opera CompanyThe first Chicago Grand Opera Company produced four seasons of opera in Chicago’s Auditorium Theater from the Fall of 1910 through November 1915. It was the first resident Chicago opera company...

 in 1915. She performed in several operas at Ravinia Park
Ravinia Park
Ravinia Festival is the oldest outdoor music festival in the United States, with a series of outdoor concerts and performances held every summer from June to September. It has been the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1936...

, Illinois, in July–August 1916, including singing Cio-Cio-San in Puccini's Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...

, Marguerite, Santuzza, Tosca, and the title role in Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...

's Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...

. She returned to Ravinia in the summer of 1917 to sing the French national anthem
La Marseillaise
"La Marseillaise" is the national anthem of France. The song, originally titled "Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin" was written and composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792. The French National Convention adopted it as the Republic's anthem in 1795...

, Leonora in Verdi's Il trovatore
Il trovatore
Il trovatore is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El Trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez. Cammarano died in mid-1852 before completing the libretto...

, and, with Orville Harrold
Orville Harrold
Orville Harrold was an American operatic tenor and musical theatre actor. He began his career in 1906 as a performer in operettas in New York City, and was also seen during his early career in cabaret, musical theatre, and vaudeville performances...

, Santuzza and the title role in Massenet's Manon
Manon
Manon is an opéra comique in five acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille, based on the 1731 novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost...

. She performed at Ravinia again in 1928. In 1917 she toured the United States with the Giuseppe Creatore Grand Opera Company and appeared at the Odeon Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

 in the world premiere of Homer Moore
Homer Moore
Homer Moore is an American mixed martial artist from Phoenix, Arizona. Moore's first major win occurred in 1999, with a decision victory over Jason Middaugh.-Wrestling career:...

's Louis XIV.

In 1923 Bériza joined the roster of the Théâtre Fiametta in Paris where she performed in several contemporary stage works. In 1924 she starred in the world premiere of Lord Berners's Le Carrosse du Saint Sacrement at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées
Théâtre des Champs-Élysées
The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées is a theatre at 15 avenue Montaigne. Despite its name, the theatre is not on the Champs-Élysées but nearby in another part of the 8th arrondissement of Paris....

. She was also heard at that theater in April of that year as Isabelle in the world premiere of Henri Sauguet
Henri Sauguet
Henri Sauguet , was a French composer. Born in Bordeaux as Henri-Pierre Poupard, he adopted his mother's maiden name as his pseudonym. His output includes operas, ballets, four symphonies , concertos, chamber and choral music and numerous songs, as well as film music...

's Le plumet du colonel.

In 1924 Bériza founded her own opera company in Paris in which she starred in many productions throughout the 1920s. In the 1924-1925 season she sang leading roles in her company's presentations of Paul Le Flem
Paul Le Flem
Paul Le Flem was a French composer and music critic. Born in Brittany and living most of his life in Lezardrieux, Le Flem studied at the Schola Cantorum under Vincent d'Indy and Albert Roussel, later teaching at the same establishment, where his pupils included Erik Satie and André Jolivet...

's Aucassin et Nicolette, Francesco Malipiero
Francesco Malipiero
Francesco Malipiero was an Italian composer. He was the father of conductor and pianist Luigi Malipiero and the grandfather of composer and musicologist Gian Francesco Malipiero. Trained in Venice, he composed a large number of operas; many of which premiered at La Fenice...

's Les Sept Chansons, Charles Koechlin
Charles Koechlin
Charles Louis Eugène Koechlin was a French composer, teacher and writer on music. He was a political radical all his life and a passionate enthusiast for such diverse things as medieval music, The Jungle Book of Rudyard Kipling, Johann Sebastian Bach, film stars , travelling, stereoscopic...

's Jacob chez Laban, Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla y Matheu was a Spanish Andalusian composer of classical music. With Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados and Joaquín Turina he is one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century....

's L'Amour sorcier
El amor brujo
El amor brujo is a piece of music originally composed by Manuel de Falla for a chamber group, then re-scored as a symphonic suite, and eventually as a ballet...

, Georges Migot
Georges Migot
Georges Migot was a prolific French composer. Though primarily known as a composer, he was also a poet, often integrating his poetry into his compositions, and an accomplished painter...

's La Fête de la bergère, and Gabriel Dupont
Gabriel Dupont
Gabriel Édouard Xavier Dupont was a French composer, known for his operas and chamber music.Dupont was born in Caen. Following after his father who was teacher at the Malherbe secondary school and the organist at the Church Saint-Étienne in his home town, at the age of 15, Dupont began his studies...

's La Farce du cuvier at the Trianon-Lyrique in Paris. The company then established its own performance venue, the Theatre Bériza, but occasionally performed at other theatres. With her company she portrayed the title role in the world premiere of Jacques Ibert
Jacques Ibert
Jacques François Antoine Ibert was a French composer. Having studied music from an early age, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire and won its top prize, the Prix de Rome at his first attempt, despite studies interrupted by his service in World War I.Ibert pursued a successful composing career,...

's Angélique at the Theatre Femina in Paris on 28 January 1927. In 1928 her company made the ususual but successful choice of presenting two secular cantata
Bach cantata
Bach cantata became a term for a cantata of the German Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach who was a prolific writer of the genre. Although many of his works are lost, around 200 cantatas survived....

s of Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

 in staged productions: The Peasant Cantata
Mer hahn en neue Oberkeet, BWV 212
Mer hahn en neue Oberkeet , BWV 212, is a secular cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. It was entitled the "Cantate burlesque" by Bach himself, but is now popularly known as the Peasant Cantata...

and The Coffee Cantata. One of her last stage appearances was as Polly Peachum in Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...

's The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera is a musical by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, in collaboration with translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and set designer Caspar Neher. It was adapted from an 18th-century English ballad opera, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and offers a Marxist critique...

in 1930. Her whereabouts and activities after this are unknown.

External links

  • Marguerite Bériza at Google News Archive
    Google News Archive
    Google News Archive was an extension of Google News providing free access to scanned archives of newspapers and links to other newspaper archives on the web, both free and paid.-History:The archive went live on June 6, 2006....

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK