LEYLA GENCER
Istanbul, Turkey, October 10, 1928 – Milan, Italy, May 9, 2008

Turkish soprano Leyla Gencer, who reigned for a quarter-century as an incomparable interpreter of bel canto heroines — in addition to making significant excursions into Verdi, Mozart, Prokofiev and Puccini — has died at the age of 79. Gencer died of respiratory problems and heart failure on Friday. Her death was reported by Milan's Teatro alla Scala, where, between 1957 and 1983, the soprano sang nineteen roles, and later administered its young artist program.

Endowed with a dramatic coloratura voice memorable for its thrust, force and an upper register often deployed by means of haunting pianissimos, Gencer's career was rather idiosyncratic: unfairly labeled as something of a Callas imitator because of the breadth of repertoire that the two shared, Gencer's voice was never granted a single commercial recording, but was rather preserved for posterity by means of a spate of pirate recordings of live performances — a fact which earned the soprano the sobriquet "The Pirate Queen." In addition, while Gencer performed at a number of U.S. opera houses, she never graced the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. Negotiations over 1956 Tosca performances at the Met failed to come to fruition; 1972 performances of Verdi's Attila at New Jersey State opera — billed as her "New York area debut" — and Carnegie Hall performances of Donizetti's Caterina Cornaro were the closest the soprano ever came to the house.

Born in 1928 to a Polish Catholic mother and an affluent Turkish Muslim father, Gencer credited her French au pair with instilling in her an appreciation for the arts at an early age. The soprano enrolled at the music conservatory in Istanbul, but, following an impromptu audition, fell under the tutelage of Italian soprano Giannina Arangi-Lombardi, who had been vacationing in the city. Gencer regularly performed in the chorus of the Turkish State Theater, and, following Arangi-Lombardi's death, began studying with Italian baritone Apollo Granforte, who maintained a teaching residency at a theater in Ankara.

The soprano made her professional debut in 1950 at Ankara's State Theater, singing Santuzza in a Turkish-language Cavalleria Rusticana. An invitation by RAI to present a recital in Rome was followed by an audition at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. Gencer was offered a run of Italian-language Cavallerias at the outdoor Arena Flegrea, scheduled for the following week. One of those outings, witnessed by Tullio Serafin, garnered the soprano her official Italian debut as Cio-Cio-San in 1954 Butterfly performances at the Teatro San Carlo, conducted by Gabriele Santini. The following month, in the same venue, Serafin paced the young soprano as Tatyana in performances of Eugenio Onegin that effectively launched her career. Butterflys and Traviatas in Italy followed, and, in 1956, the soprano made her U.S. debut, singing the title role in San Francisco Opera performances of Francesca da Rimini. Gencer would go on to sing in Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, New Orleans and San Diego.

In 1957, Gencer made her La Scala debut, singing Mme. Lidoine in the world premiere of Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites. The performance marked a personal triumph as well as the beginning of the soprano's long association with the venerable Italian house. Between 1957 and 1983, Gencer took on nineteen roles at La Scala, which included a number of Donizetti heroines in addition to Leonora in Forza del Destino, Elisabetta in Don Carlos, Aïda, Lady Macbeth, Norma, Ottavia in L'Incoronazione di Poppea and Gluck's Alceste. The company's 1958 world premiere of Pizzetti's L'Assassinio Nella Cattedrale found Gencer performing — by the composer's request — the First Woman of Canterbury. The soprano's Covent Garden debut arrived in 1962, with performances of Elisabetta and Donna Anna.

During the height of her career, Gencer combined traversals of bel canto heroines — including Lucia, Amina, Puritani's Elvira, Gilda, Anna Bolena, Lucrezia Borgia, Poliuto's Paolina, Caterina Cornaro and Norma — with performances of principal roles in Verdi works, including Macbeth, La Traviata and such rarities as La Battaglia di Legnano, Gerusalemme and I Due Foscari. Her 1964 performance of Elisabetta in Donizetti's Roberto Devereux remains something of a seminal interpretation, at once calling on her distinctive capacities for ethereal pianissimos and jarring glottal attacks. In fact, Gencer hinted that it was American critics' insistence on the qualities of a "voce pura" that prevented her from finding greater success in the United States.

The soprano illuminated the rationale behind her distinctively dramatic approach to bel canto works in a 2003 OPERA NEWS interview: "For me, Donizetti is a very great composer of the nineteenth century, who has never been understood, never had his proper value. Donizetti can be very interesting if it has great interpreters, because he is a true man of the theater. When we arrive at Donizetti, there is no longer the bel canto of the Baroque era. Now, the melodrama becomes sung theater, really. In my era I understood it this way — no one taught me. This was my truth. But I feel it was truth also because, if any of it has remained true to you all, it means that which I did was true."

While Gencer retired from the opera stage in 1985, following a performance of Gnecco's La Prova di un'Opera Seria at La Fenice, she continued to concertize until 1992. After her own career had ended, the soprano helped to foster those of young artists, sitting on competition juries, giving masterclasses, and serving as the jury chairman of Istanbul's Yapi Kredi International Leyla Gencer Voice Competition. Maestro Riccardo Muti, with whom she had performed, chose Gencer to run La Scala's School for Young Artists in the late 1990s.

More information can be found at the OPERA NEWS Archives (HERE and HERE), the BBC and Hürryet.

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