Mirella Freni

Mirella Freni stood out as the model lyric soprano who ventured into spinto territory with measured care, safeguarding her instrument so effectively that vocal freshness and bloom remained intact into her sixties and supported credible performances of Mimi on stages worldwide. Italians often called her “La Prudentissima.” She also brought genuine warmth to her portrayals whether the opera leaned comic or tragic.

She entered the world in Modena on February 27, 1935. An unusual detail of her infancy linked her to Luciano Pavarotti: both infants were nursed by the same woman after their mothers, employed at a tobacco factory, found their own milk unsuitable, and Freni later remarked that he had clearly received the larger share. Already a prodigy, she sang “Sempre libera” at her first public appearance at age ten and, two years afterward, broadcast “Un bel di” during a radio contest. Competition judge Beniamino Gigli cautioned that continued operatic singing risked harm while her voice remained undeveloped, so she waited until seventeen before resuming lessons, this time with Ettore Campogalliani, whose most famous pupil had been Renata Tebaldi.

Her professional bow took place in 1955 as Micaela in Carmen, a role she especially loved. After marrying conductor Leone Magiera and giving birth to a daughter she named Micaela, she paused her career, returning only in 1958 when victory at the Viotti Competition in Vercelli brought the prize of Mimi in La bohème in Turin. That same part later served as her introduction at the Met, La Scala, Chicago, and San Francisco.

Glyndebourne heard her Zerlina in 1960; Covent Garden welcomed her Nanetta in Falstaff the next year; and in 1963 she appeared as Mimi at La Scala in Franco Zeffirelli’s celebrated production of La bohème, conducted by Herbert von Karajan. Karajan became a steady advocate and pressed her toward heavier assignments, among them Desdemona in Otello, which she first sang under his baton in 1970. Their filmed version featured Jon Vickers and Peter Glossop, and Karajan observed that he had waited forty years to encounter such a Desdemona. She added further lirico-spinto parts and recorded the title role of Madama Butterfly with him, yet when he urged Turandot upon her in 1980 she declined, after which he ceased to engage her.

Her marriage to Nicolai Ghiaurov in 1981 encouraged exploration of Russian repertoire. With his coaching she introduced Russian songs into recital programs and, by the late 1980s, took on Tatiana in Eugene Onegin. Lisa in The Queen of Spades followed in 1990. During the mid-nineties she turned for the first time to Giordano, assuming both the title role of Fedora, a part frequently embraced by divas late in their careers, and the occasionally farcical title role of Madame Sans-Gêne. Her final appearance occurred at age seventy in 2005 at Washington National Opera, where she sang the youthful Ioanna in The Maid of Orléans. That same year the Met saluted the fortieth anniversary of her house debut and the fiftieth anniversary of her stage debut.

Following a protracted illness, Freni died at her home in Modena on February 9, 2020. She received the order Cavaliere di Gran Croce della Repubblica Italiana in 1990 and the Légion d’Honneur three years later.