Rosa Ponzillo, known as Rosa Ponselle (January 22, 1897 – May 25, 1981) was an American operatic dramatic soprano.
She sang mainly at the New York Metropolitan Opera and is generally considered to have been one of the greatest sopranos of the 20th century."Rosa Ponselle, dramatic soprano dies" by Allen Hughes, The New York Times, May 26, 1981
Early life
She was born Rosa Ponzillo on January 22, 1897, in Meriden, Connecticut, the youngest of three children. The family lived on the city's west side in a neighbourhood chiefly populated by immigrants from Southern Italy, first at the corner of Lewis Avenue and Bartlett Street, then on Foster Street, where Ponselle was born, moving when she was three to Springdale Avenue. Her parents were Italian immigrants from Caiazzo, near Caserta. Ponselle had an exceptionally mature voice at an early age and, at least in her early years, sang on natural endowment with little, if any, vocal training. Instead, her early prowess as a piano student (which was cultivated by a local music teacher, Anna Ryan, the organist of a nearby Catholic church), seemed to incline Rosa to instrumental rather than vocal music. But with the influence and example of her older sister, Carmela, who was then pursuing a career as a cabaret singer, Rosa began to augment her engagements as a silent-movie accompanist in and around Meriden by singing popular ballads to her audiences while the projectionist changed film reels. By 1914, her reputation as a singer led to a long-term engagement at the San Carlino theater, one of the largest movie houses in New Haven, near the Yale campus.Drake, James A., Rosa Ponselle: A Centenary Biography (Amadeus Press: Portland 1997) po+61-62
Vaudeville
By then, Carmela was already an established singer in vaudeville after her debut in The Girl from Brighton, a 1912 Broadway musical. Three years later, in 1915, Carmela brought Rosa to audition for her vaudeville agent. In spite of being markedly overweight (a stark contrast to the fashion-model physique of her older sister), Rosa impressed with her voice, and she was hired to perform with Carmela as a "sister act". Between 1915 and 1918, the Ponzillo Sisters (also known as "Those Tailored Italian Girls") became a headlining act on the Keith Vaudeville Circuit, appearing in all the major Keith theaters and earning a substantial income in the process. The sisters' act consisted of traditional ballads, popular Italian songs, and operatic arias and duets.
In 1918, after Carmela and Rosa demanded a substantial fee increase from the Keith Vaudeville Circuit, their act was dropped. At the time, Carmela was studying in New York with a well-connected voice teacher/agent named William Thorner. Thorner auditioned Rosa, and agreed to give her lessons. (Rosa later denied that Thorner had ever given her voice lessons, but her statements on the subject are contradictory.) Although initially less impressed with Rosa's future prospects than with Carmela's, Thorner changed his opinion after the legendary baritone Victor Maurel, whom Giuseppe Verdi had chosen to create Iago in Otello, auditioned both sisters at his friend Thorner's request. Soon afterward, Thorner persuaded the Metropolitan Opera's great star tenor Enrico Caruso, to visit his studio and hear Carmela and Rosa sing. Caruso was usually wary when asked to listen to amateur singers, but he was deeply impressed with Rosa's voice. Caruso arranged an audition for Rosa attended by the Met's general manager, Giulio Gatti-Casazza. Gatti was equally impressed with Rosa's singing and offered her a contract for the Met's 1918/1919 season.
Metropolitan Opera debut and early operatic career
Rosa Ponselle made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera on November 15, 1918, just a few days after World War I had ended, as Leonora in Verdi's La forza del destino, opposite Caruso and Giuseppe De Luca. It was her first performance on any opera stage. She was quite intimidated for being in the presence of Caruso, and in spite of an almost paralyzing case of nervousness (which she suffered from throughout her operatic career), she scored a tremendous success, both with the public and with the critics. New York Times critic James Huneker wrote: "...what a promising debut! Added to her personal attractiveness, she possesses a voice of natural beauty that may prove a gold mine; it is vocal gold, anyhow, with its luscious lower and middle tones, dark, rich and ductile, brilliant in the upper register."
In addition to Leonora, Ponselle's roles in the 1918/19 season included Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana, Reiza in Weber's Oberon, and Carmelita in the (unsuccessful) world premiere of Joseph Carl Breil's The Legend.
In the following Met seasons, Ponselle's roles included the lead soprano roles in La Juive (opposite Caruso's Eléazar, his final new role before his death in 1921), William Tell, Ernani, Il trovatore, Aida, La Gioconda, Don Carlos, L'Africaine, L'amore dei tre re, Andrea Chénier, La vestale, and the role that many considered her greatest achievement, Bellini's Norma, in the Met's historic 1927 revival. In addition to her operatic activities, which were centered at the Met, Ponselle had a lucrative concert career. A tour of the West Coast of the United States included an appearance at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara on March 14, 1927, in the Artist Series of the Community Arts Association's Music Branch, accompanied by pianist Stuart Ross. As her career progressed, Ponselle negotiated through her manager more concerts and exponentially higher fees before and after each Metropolitan Opera season.Drake, James A., Rosa Ponselle: A Centenary Biography (Amadeus Press: Portland 1997) po+117-120
Appearances abroad and later operatic career
Outside the US, Ponselle sang only at Covent Garden in London (for three seasons) and in Italy (in order, so she said, to honor a promise she had made to her mother that she would one day sing in Italy). In 1929, Ponselle made her European debut in London, at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. Up until that time, her career had been concentrated entirely in America. Ponselle sang two roles at Covent Garden in 1929: Norma and Gioconda. She had great success and was tumultuously acclaimed by the normally staid London audiences. She returned to London in 1930 in Norma, L'amore dei tre re, and La traviata (her first performances as Violetta). In her final London season in 1931, she sang in La forza del destino, Fedra (an opera by her coach and long-time friend, Romano Romani), and a reprise of La traviata.
In 1933 Ponselle sang her only performances in Italy, as Giulia in La vestale, with the Maggio Musicale in Florence. As in London, the audiences were wildly enthusiastic. At the second performance, Ponselle had to encore the aria, "O nume tutelar". Her success was such that she considered an engagement at Milan's La Scala, but after witnessing a Florence audience's brutal treatment of a famous tenor, Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, who cracked on a high note, she decided not to press her luck further with the notoriously difficult Italian opera-going public. Other than her appearances in London and Florence, Ponselle never sang outside the United States.
Ponselle continued in the 1930s to add roles to her repertoire at the Metropolitan Opera. In 1930 she sang her first New York appearances in 1931 as Violetta, a role she had sung with such success in London but which received a more mixed reception from the New York critics, some of whom found her interpretation too forceful and dramatic. "The eminent soprano endeavored to make every number passionately emotional by … spasmodic utterances," wrote critic W.J. Henderson. "Her attempt at transforming Verdi's plaintively pathetic conception into hard-breathing tragedy was most unfortunate."Drake, James A., Rosa Ponselle: A Centenary Biography (Amadeus Press: Portland 1997) po+262 In 1931 she sang in another unsuccessful world premiere, Montemezzi's La notte di Zoraima, which sank without a trace. Like many other opera singers of that time, she made a brief trip to Hollywood and made screen tests for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount Pictures, but nothing came of them.
In 1935, Ponselle sang her first Carmen at the Met. In spite of a great popular success with the role, for which she had prepared meticulously, Ponselle received a drubbing from most of the New York critics, especially Olin Downes in the New York Times, whose savagely caustic review ("We have never heard Miss Ponselle sing so badly, and we have seldom seen the part enacted in such an artificial and unconvincing manner") hurt Ponselle deeply.Drake, James A., Rosa Ponselle: A Centenary Biography (Amadeus Press: Portland 1997) po+296 The only roles Ponselle sang during her last two seasons at the Met were Santuzza and Carmen, roles that did not tax her upper register. Differences with the Met management regarding repertoire led her not to renew her contract with the company for the 1937/38 season. Her last operatic performance was as Carmen on April 22, 1937, in a Met tour performance in Cleveland.
Retirement
Ponselle did not consciously or purposely retire after that Cleveland Carmen in 1937; rather, it was an organic process of relinquishment in response to a range of factors. These included, amongst others, her receding upper vocal range which intensified her nerves; her dissatisfaction with the Metropolitan Opera House's refusal to accede her proposed musical repertoire (she had expressed a desire to sing Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur, which had an appropriately low tessitura, but general manager Edward Johnson blocked any revival due to the opera's poor financial returns during its 1907–1908 season at the Met, despite the presence of Caruso in the cast); mental and physical performance exhaustion from the strain of 21 intensive years of continuous performances and rising levels of performance-related anxiety; her marriage in 1936 to Carle A. Jackson, the socialite son of the then-mayor of Baltimore; and her enjoyment of the life she now led without the demands of performing.Drake, James A., Rosa Ponselle: A Centenary Biography (Amadeus Press: Portland 1997) po+307-310 To mark her transition, Ponselle and Jackson constructed a luxurious villa in Maryland's Green Spring Valley, called "Villa Pace", where she resided for the remainder of her life.
In 1949, Ponselle's marriage to Jackson ended in divorce. The breakup was traumatic for Ponselle, and she suffered a nervous breakdown. Although she never again appeared on the concert or opera stage, Ponselle continued to sing at home for friends, who reported that her voice was as magnificent as ever. This was further demonstrated in 1954, when RCA Victor came to Villa Pace and recorded Ponselle singing a wide variety of songs and arias. In the late 1940s, Ponselle became the mentor of the fledgling Baltimore Civic Opera Company, providing coaching and voice lessons for the young singers who appeared with the company. Among those to have received her tutelage during their Baltimore Civic Opera appearances, at the start of their careers, were Beverly Sills, Sherrill Milnes, Plácido Domingo, James Morris, Lili Chookasian, Joshua Hecht, and Martha King.
Death