Gilda Dalla Rizza

Gilda Dalla Rizza (12 October 1892 – 5 July 1975) was an important Italian soprano.

Born in Verona, she made her operatic debut in Bologna (the Teatro Verdi) in 1912, as Charlotte in Werther. Especially acclaimed in the verismo repertory, she was regarded as being Giacomo Puccini's favorite soprano, creating Magda in his La rondine (1917). Although he composed the part of Minnie in La fanciulla del West for another soprano, when Puccini saw Dalla Rizza in the part, he said, "Behold, at last I have seen my Fanciulla". She also gave the first European performances of his Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi, at Rome in 1919. He also had her in mind for Liù in Turandot, though her voice proved too heavy for the part of the young slave-girl by the time of the premiere.

Dalla Rizza appeared at the major theatres in Rome, Florence, Turin, São Paulo, Buenos Aires (Teatro Colón), Rio de Janeiro, Verona, Naples, Monte-Carlo, Bologna, Lima, Parma, Santiago, Barcelona, Amsterdam, etc. She never appeared in the United States.

Included in her repertoire were the soprano roles in La fanciulla del West, La forza del destino, Isabeau, Manon Lescaut, La bohème (as Mimì, opposite Enrico Caruso), La damnation de Faust, Lohengrin, Parisina, Mefistofele (with Feodor Chaliapin), Pagliacci, Iris (with Beniamino Gigli), Der Rosenkavalier (as Octavian, opposite Rosa Raïsa and Amelita Galli-Curci), Cavalleria rusticana, Le prince Igor, Andrea Chénier, Die Meistersinger, Tosca, Siberia, La rondine (with Tito Schipa), Lodoletta, Manon, Falstaff, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi, L'amore dei tre re, Madama Butterfly, Otello, Francesca da Rimini, Il piccolo Marat (world premiere at Rome, 1921, with Hipólito Lázaro), Giulietta e Romeo (world premiere at Rome, 1922), Louise, La traviata, Thaïs, Fedora, Turandot (the title role), Luisa Miller, La vida breve, Adriana Lecouvreur, Arabella (the Italian premiere, 1936, conducted by Richard Strauss), etc. She also sang the soprano solo of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

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