PICTURES

INFORMATION

DATE:

from 17 December 2005 to 8 January 2006
 
PLACE:

Via G. Mazzini, 43 Langhirano (PR)
 
OPENING TIMES: Fridays

from 17.00 to 19.00
Saturdays

from 11.00 to 12.30 and from 16.00 to 19.00
Sundays

 from 11.00 to 12.30
 
Opening ceremony Saturday 17th December 11.00 am
 
Closed for public holidays
 
Free admission

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Renata Tebaldi

the images

Dedicated to...

Renata Tebaldi

LANGHIRANO REMEMBERS RENATA TEBALDI

1964. A radiant Renata Tebaldi on the balcony of her home in Piazza Garibaldi at Langhirano, holding New, her little poodle in her arms, inseparable as always. In the background, the clock tower.
Renata Tebaldi was one of us, a Langhirano girl. Born in Pesaro because her family had moved there temporarily, she returned to Langhirano after three months and remained here until, it has to be said, her unique voice carried her far away to be applauded all over the world, wherever there were people passionate about music. Nevertheless, the person dearest to her, her mother, was in Langhirano for a long time, as indeed were many memories. Whoever thinks these memories would have faded with the passing of time would be very much mistaken. In fact Renata cultivated the bond with “her” town with discretion, very much in keeping with her personality. In a long radio interview she gave at the end of the sixties she recalled her early childhood in Langhirano in great detail, enriching the tale with idioms in dialect – and those who had the good fortune to spend time with her know well how the good old dialect would trip off her tongue spontaneously when she found herself with other townspeople.
If one day someone had the patience to transcribe that interview and make a booklet of it you would hold in your hands not just a valuable artistic testimony but also a lively portrait of daily life in a small Emilian town of the nineteen-twenties and thirties.

Renata, who returned to Langhirano discreetly, without making a fuss and without feeling the need to shout it from the rooftops in order to gain plaudits, remembered in her will with the same discretion several charitable institutions of the town where she now rests beside her mother. Now, a year on from her death, Langhirano Town Council, The Accademia degli Incogniti and Langhirano’s municipal tourist board are dedicating a small exhibition to her which, however, has a specific and important purpose, namely to keep the link between Renata Tebaldi and Langhirano alive.
 

Renata Ersilia Clotilde Tebaldi is born in Pesaro on 1 February 1922. After a few months, the parents split up and Renata, together with her mother Giuseppina Barbieri, move to the latter’s home town, Langhirano in the Province of Parma where she spends her youth. At the age of three she is struck down with polio, from which she fully recovers after lengthy treatment. Having been a pupil of Brancucci and Campogalliani at the Parma Conservatory her studies continue with the great soprano Carmen Melis at Pesaro’s Liceo Rossini and are crucial to her development. “Everything I had to learn to tread the boards I learnt from her” she subsequently confirmed. In 1944 Renata Tebaldi debuts at Rovigo in the role of Elena in Arrigo Boito’s Mephisto.
In 1946 she takes part in the concert to re-open the Scala, Milan, under the baton of Arturo Toscanini who on that occasion describes her as “the voice of an angel”, an epithet which followed her throughout her career.
She appeared at the Opera in Rome and at the Arena in Verona in 1948 and from that year began to take leading roles in numerous productions at La Scala, sweeping through an enormous repertoire above all in dramatic-lyric roles. Furthermore she makes her debut at Vienna State Opera in 1958.

Finding herself, through no fault of her own, in rivalry with Maria Callas, something that was blown up by the press, Renata Tebaldi decides in 1959 to leave the Scala permanently, choosing to continue her career primarily on the other side of the ocean where she becomes the undisputed “queen” of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Moreover she performs in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, becoming exceptionally popular throughout the United States, overtaking Callas even though she had American nationality. In addition she continues to earn great success in temples of opera such as London’s Covent Garden, the Paris Opera, the Liceu in Barcelona and the Municipal Theatre in Rio de Janeiro.
From the beginning of the 70s Renata Tebaldi begins to reduce her operatic commitments and devotes herself mainly to concerts. In 1976, after a few tours of the Soviet Union she bids farewell to the stage at a charity evening at the Scala in aid of earthquake victims in Friuli.

In her exceptional career Renata Tebaldi worked with the greatest singers of her time (in particular we are reminded of Del Monaco, Corelli, Bergonzi, Di Stefano, Gobbi…) and with legendary conductors including Toscanini, De Sabata, Giulini, Solti, Karajan.
Renata Tebaldi died on 19 December 2004 at her home in San Marino at the age of 82. She is buried in the family chapel at Mattaleto cemetery, Langhirano.
 

Photos (from top to bottom):
- Renata Tebaldi as a child
- 1931, memento of her confirmation
- Langhirano, Renata Tebaldi voting at the May 1958 elections
- 1964, Renata Tebaldi on her bicycle in Langhirano
- February 1962, Renata Tebaldi sings at a charity concert in Langhirano
- Milan, 1953, Renata Tebaldi at the piano
- “Violetta” at the Regio Theatre, Parma
- Three pictures of the “diva” Renata Tebaldi
- Langhirano, 1994, at the opening of the photographic exhibition

  “Vissi d’arte”
- December 2004, Langhirano’s final farewell to Renata Tebaldi
 

Translation by Sarah J Hyde - www.thelanguage.biz
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