Marie Delna

Marie Delna (Paris, 3 April 1875 - Paris, 24 July 1932) was a French contralto. A major singer in Paris, particularly at the Opéra-Comique, she enjoyed an international career in the 1890s through to the 1910s and left several recordings.

Born Marie Ledant to a working-class family in the Marais area of the French capital, she was orphaned aged 15 months, and she and her sister grew up first with her maternal grandmother in Longjumeau. Then from 1881 she lived with her paternal grandparents, who ran the 'Café du Panorama' near Meudon station, while she attended a convent school.

Her grandmother started her with singing lessons and she studied with Rosine Laborde. She began appearing at public auditions and various private concerts in Paris.

She was spotted by Carvalho, director of Opéra-Comique, who suggested her stage name (a rough anagram of her surname). In June 1892, she made a sensational stage debut, just after her 17th birthday, as Didon in Les Troyens à Carthage.

Massenet chose her as his first Charlotte in Werther in Paris, in January 1893, and later that year she created Marceline in Bruneau’s L'attaque du Moulin. The following April she sang the role of Mistress Quickly in the first French Falstaff, supervised by Verdi, and continued to play the role at the Salle Favart.

She sang Marion in Godard's La Vivandière many times in her career, from its 1895 French premiere at the Opéra-Comique and subsequent revivals there to a production at the Gaîté-Lyrique. In 1896, Delna sang Orphée in the first Opéra-Comique production of the Berlioz-Viardot version of Gluck’s opera, to which she returned in 1900 and 1912.

Delna took part in the first Covent Garden performance of L’attaque du moulin in 1894. Her Italian debut was in 1897 in Milan. In May 1898 she moved for a short while from the Opéra-Comique for the Paris Opéra, where she was Fidès in Le prophète and returned to Berlioz as Cassandre in the Paris premiere of La prise de Troie. She also sang La favorite and Samson et Dalila, as well as creating Ginèvra in Victorin de Joncières's Lancelot.

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