Mirella Freni obituary

Graceful, clear-voiced and expressive, the soprano Mirella Freni, who has died aged 84, began her long operatic career in lighter roles, such as Susanna in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and above all as a notable Mimì, the spirited, consumptive seamstress in Puccini’s La Bohème.

As she went on to almost every role available to her voice, she observed the verities of good singing – full, easily produced tone, a firm line and expressive phrasing, her portrayals always graceful, decorous, secure.

Her appealing, wide-eyed looks and her easy movement on stage helped her create realistic characters. Freni often sang on stage and disc with Luciano Pavarotti. When babies they shared the same nurse: as Freni put it, and as Pavarotti ballooned: “You can see who got all the milk!”

Both were born in the northern Italian city of Modena. Mirella’s family name was Fregni: her father, Ennio, was a barber, and her mother, Gianna (nee Arcelli), worked alongside Pavarotti’s mother in a cigarette factory.

The two young singers went to Mantua to study with Ettore Campo- galliani. When she was only 20, in 1955, Mirella made her stage debut as Micaëla in Carmen in Modena, where she had first heard opera as a child, scoring an immediate success with public and critics alike. She married her subsequent teacher, Leone Magiera, the same year, and adopted Freni as a more pronounceable stage name.

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After a season with Netherlands Opera, where her Mimì and Liù in Turandot were much admired, she was invited to Glyndebourne in 1960 to sing a delightfully fresh Zerlina in Don Giovanni (with Joan Sutherland as Donna Anna), returning to the Sussex house as a captivating Susanna in 1962. In the same season she was Adina in L’Elisir d’Amore, in a revival of Franco Zeffirelli’s production from the previous year.

She had made her Covent Garden debut, as Nannetta in Zeffirelli’s production of Falstaff, in 1961, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini and with Geraint Evans in the title role, and later added, among other roles, Violetta in Luchino Visconti’s black-and-white staging of La Traviata in 1967, with Giulini again in the pit.

In 1962 she had appeared as Elvira in I Puritani at the Wexford festival and sang at La Scala in 1963, as Mimì in a landmark Zeffirelli staging of La Bohème, originally under Herbert von Karajan, that was filmed and went on to have more than 200 performances. It shows her in her early prime as a wistful, touching, vulnerable heroine – she sang the role for a quarter of a century. Her debut at the Metropolitan in New York, again as Mimì, came in 1965. She later added Suzel in Mascagni’s L’Amico Fritz – a role she recorded with the young Pavarotti – Juliette in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, and Liù.

In 1976 she returned to Covent Garden, when La Scala paid a rare visit to the Royal Opera House, as Amelia/Maria in Giorgio Strehler’s impressive staging of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra conducted by Claudio Abbado, a recording of which was made shortly afterwards.

By this time she was taking on weightier roles. Having made her first appearance at the Salzburg festival as Micaëla in Karajan’s 1966 Carmen, she was invited by him to undertake Desdemona in 1970, Elisabeth de Valois in Don Carlos in 1975 and eventually Aida in 1979. These roles to an extent over-taxed her more delicate resources, but she sensibly approached them from her own, lyrical standpoint.

Later leading roles that extended her range even further, particularly as an actor, were Madama Butterfly, which she sang in a film with Plácido Domingo as her Pinkerton (1974), but never on the live stage. She was also memorable as Puccini’s Manon Lescaut (she had sung Massenet’s Manon charmingly much earlier in her career), Tatyana in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, which she recorded with Thomas Allen and the conductor James Levine, Lisa in the same composer’s Queen of Spades and in the title role in Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur. I caught her as Adriana at the Munich festival in the 1980s and enjoyed her touching interpretation of that tragic actress-heroine.

Freni continued to sing with remarkable ease, giving concerts and restricting herself to a few roles, having always turned down those she considered outside her range. Her final stage role came as Joan of Arc in Tchaikovsky’s The Maid of Orleans in 2005, when she was 70, and what proved to be her farewell concert was a gala at the Met shortly afterwards. She also became an appreciable teacher.

“I am generous in many ways,” she told Opera News in 1987, “but not when I think it will destroy my voice. Some singers think they are gods who can do everything. But I have always been honest with myself and my possibilities.”

Her distinctive art is preserved on many complete recordings that include a fine La Bohème with Pavarotti, under Karajan (1972), her eloquent Violetta in La Traviata (1973), Micaëla, her Mozart roles and many more. All maintain that high standard of performance she always set herself.

Her marriage to Magiera ended in divorce, and in 1978 she married the Bulgarian bass Nicolai Ghiaurov. They can be heard together as soloists in a recording of Verdi’s Requiem under Karajan.

Ghiaurov died in 2004, and she is survived by her daughter from her first marriage, Micaela, two grandchildren and her sister Marta.

Mirella Freni, soprano, born 27 February 1935; died 9 February 2020