Bottom 30 (1980) Placing: #18
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Cathy Berberian was born on 4th July 1928 in Attleboro, MA of
Armenian parents and died on 6th Martch 1983 in Rome, Italy.
Genuinely talented and a serious and famed artist. Her inclusion here is due solely
to theinappropriateness of the material - not her voice.
She was an opera
buff from the age of seven, and used to sing along with records of Chalia-pin and
Lily Pons. Popular films, featur- ing Deanna Durbin and Jeanette Mac-Donald, also
pushed her towards music. She trained as an opera singer and acquired a fantastic
range of techniques as a coloratura: but of course, she was stu,dying for all the
wrong parts, for at this stage her voice was not placed. In Berlin, Herbert Graf
told her she was really a mezzo, and her whole world crumbled. She realised in any
case that her voice wasn't large enough for grand opera.
So she changed her repertoire and began to concentrate on recital work, singing
Debussy and Ravel in particular. In Italy, subsequently, and in collaboration
with Berio, she found herself as a singer. "I had what you might call the icing
without the cake when I got there. I got technique before I had my voice placed,
which was very strange: I could do all kinds of coloratura, and I had the
three-octave range (low C to high C) but my voice tired very quickly."
Her first recital with Berio in 1957 showed her the path she might take.
From then on she has lived dangerously, never relaxing in her missionary zeal on
behalf of the musical creators of today. She recorded Stravinsky songs with the
composer. John Cage wrote his Aria for her. Berio's compositions gave her a central role.
Links ...
Meirion Bowen memories
Remoniscences by Jennifer Paull
