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Renata
Tebaldi, an Italian soprano, entered the Parma Conservatory at
the age of 15 (the only daughter of a violin teacher) and made her
professional debut as Elena in Mefistofele, in Rovigo in 1944.
She was chosen by Toscanini to sing at the re-opening celebration concert
at La Scala (which had been shut during WWII) in 1946, performing the
soprano part in Giuseppe Verdi's Te Deum. Her career then
took off and she continued to sing at the great opera houses of the world
until her retirement in the 1970s. Toscanini said she had the
"voice of an angel" and Pavarotti also said that she was
"an angelic person," going on to say "Farewell, Renata,
your memory and your voice will be etched on my heart forever," shortly
after her recent death. Riccardo Muti, music director of La
Scala (where Tebaldi stayed from 1946 until 1954), praised her as
"one of the greatest performers with one of the most extraordinary
voices in the field of opera." She said that Desdemona in
Verdi's Otello was one of her favourite roles because it so ideally
suited her personality. At the height of her career she was
always seen as a great rival to Maria Callas
(a "competition" really beginning in 1950), and the opera world
was split into two camps. After not-quite-succeeding as Violetta in
her first production of La Traviata, Callas called Tebaldi
"poor thing." Tebaldi gave her final performance on
the opera stage in 1973, and her last concert took place in 1976. She
was a Knight Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic and
had received a Commander, Order of Arts and Letters from France.
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