Leyla Gencer was born on October the 10th 1928 in Istanbul, Turkey and passed away
on May the 10th, 2008 at her home in Milan, Italy.
She was one of the greatest "Italian" bel canto sopranos of her time.
Her career spanned from the early 1950s through the mid-1980s, and she had a repertoire
encompassing more than seventy roles. Leyla Gencer made very few commercial recordings,
but her legend lives on in numerous "pirates." In particular, Gencer was associated with
the great heroines of Donizetti; she is perhaps one of history's greatest Donizettians.
Gencer grew up in Çubuklu, on the Anatolian side of the Bosphorus.
She began studying singing at the Istanbul Conservatory, but dropped out to study privately
in Ankara with her teacher, the Italian soprano Giannina Arangi-Lombardi. Gencer sang in
the chorus of the Turkish State Theater until she made her operatic debut in Ankara in 1950
as Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana. During the next few years, she became well-known in
Turkey and sang frequently at functions for the Turkish government.
In 1953, Gencer made her Italian debut at the San Carlo in Naples as Santuzza.
She returned to Naples the following year for performances of Madama Butterfly and Eugene Onegin.
In 1957, she made her debut at La Scala in Milan as Mme. Lidoine in the world premiere of
Poulenc's Les Dialogues des Carmelites. She went on to appear regularly at La Scala,
performing nineteen roles between 1957 and 1983, including Leonora in La Forza del Destino,
Elisabetta in Don Carlos, Aida, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, Norma, Ottavia in L'incoronazione di
Poppea, and Alceste. At La Scala, she also appeared as the First Woman of Canterbury in the
world premiere of Pizzetti's L'assassinio nella cattedrale in 1958.
In 1962, Gencer made her debut at Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden as Elisabetta di Valois and as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni.
She made her US debut at the San Francisco Opera in 1956 as
Francesca in Francesca da Rimini. She sang at other American opera houses as well,
but never sang at the Metropolitan Opera, though there had been discussions for her to
sing Tosca there in 1956.
In 1985, Gencer retired from the operatic stage with a performance of Gnecco's La Prova
di un'opera seria at La Fenice. She continued to appear in concerts until 1992.
She is still active and was recently appointed by La Scala's music director Riccardo Muti
to run its school for young artists.
Throughout her career, Gencer was known primarily as a Donizetti interpreter.
Among her best-known Donizetti performances are Belisario, Poliuto, Anna Bolena,
Lucrezia Borgia, Maria Stuarda, and Caterina Cornaro. Her most acclaimed and best-known
performance, though, was Roberto Devereux, which she sang in Naples in 1964.
In addition to the bel canto roles for which she is best known, Gencer's repertory also
included works by such composers as Prokofiev, Mozart, and Puccini. She also appeared in
many rarely performed operas, including Smareglia's La Falena, Rossini's
Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra, Spontini's Agnese di Hohenstaufen, Pacini's Saffo,
and Gluck's Alceste.
The Turkish President named Gencer a "State Artist" in 1988. Since 1996,
the Yapi Kredi International Leyla Gencer Voice Competition takes place in Istanbul.
In 2002, she received the prestigious Puccini Honor Award from the Licia Albanese Puccini
Foundation at Lincoln Center in New York City.
In 2004, the Turkish Mint issued a commemorative coin in silver, bearing her figure
and worth 10 U.S. dollars.
(source Wikipedia)
