Angela Peralta, an operatic soprano of international renown and a key figure in Mexican opera during the 19th century, was born in Mexico City on July 6, 1845, and died in Mazatlán on August 30, 1883. By the age of 20, she had already performed to great acclaim in important European opera houses, earning the nickname “Mexican Nightingale” in Europe. She was primarily recognized for her singing, but she was also a skilled pianist and harpist, as well as a composer.
Singer Angela Peralta Biography
Manuel Peralta and Josefa Castera de Peralta were the parents of ngela Peralta. She displayed early singing and musical talent. She achieved great success when she performed a cavatina from Belisario by Gaetano Donizetti at the age of 8, and she later enrolled in the Conservatorio Nacional de Msica in Mexico City to further her studies. At age 15, she made her operatic debut at Mexico City’s Teatro Nacional as Leonora in Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore. She continued on to study singing in Italy under Leopardi with the help of her father and a wealthy patron named Santiago de la Vega. She made her stage debut on May 13th, 1862, at La Scala in Milan with a well-received rendition of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor.
Singer Angela Peralta Career
At the Teatro Regio in Turin, she performed La sonn ambula by Bellini for King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, to 32 applauses. Between 1863 an She performed in opera houses in Rome, Florence, Bologna, Genoa, Naples, Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, St. Petersburg, Alexandria, and Cairo between In 1865, she accepted an invitation from the Second Mexican Empire to perform in the National Imperial Theatre there once again. vitation. In 1866 she sang She performed in front of Maximilian I of Mexico and Charlotte of Belgium in 1866, earning the title of “Chamber singe She made her way back to Europe in December 1866 as the Second Mexican Empire was about to fall, giving performances in New York City a Album Musical de Angela Pe Angela Peralta’s most well-known composition is Album Musical de Angela Peralta. work is Angela Peralta’s musical album. during their first year of marriage. Castera passed away in 1876 after being admitted to a mental hospital in Paris.
During a trip to Mexico in 1871, Peralta founded her own traveling opera company, for which she frequently performed her signature roles, Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor and Amina in La Sonnambula. (During her lifetime, she performed 166 times of Lucia and 122 times of Amina.) She started an affair with the businessman and lawyer Julián Montiel y Duarte in the middle of the 1870s, which caused a scandal in Mexico City. The social elite of the city avoided her performances and paid thugs to jeer her while she performed. Following her appearance in Linda di Chamounix, her reputation began to improve, but she stuck to her promise to never perform in Mexico City again.
She started a tour of northern Mexico in 1883 with her group of Italian opera singers, even though her reputation (and financial situation) were once again on the decline. The tour set out from Guaymas for La Paz, in Baja California Sur. She performed the lead role in Maria di Rohan for the final time on stage in La Paz, with the performance taking place in a theater that was improvised out of an old sand pit. The group traveled to Mazatlán, a port city, on August 22 to perform Il Trovatore and Aida. The people of Mazatlán gave her a lavish welcome. A band playing the Mexican National Anthem welcomed her as her boat landed on a pier adorned with floral garlands. Her supporters unhitched the horses when her carriage arrived, and they drove it themselves to the Hotel Iturbide, where she once more waved to the crowds from her balcony. She and 76 of the troupe’s 80 members, however, were to pass away in the yellow fever epidemic that quickly swept the city after their arrival.
Read More: Catherine Glenn Foster President & CEO of Americans United for Life.
Marriage and death-
Angela Peralta passed away on August 30, 1883, at the age of 38, in the Hotel Iturbide in Mazatlán. On her deathbed, she married Julián Montiel y Duarte, her lover. She was already unconscious when the marriage ceremony took place, according to an eyewitness account. Lemus, one of her company’s singers, held her up by the shoulders. Lemus made a head movement to give the impression that she was nodding in agreement when asked if she accepted Montiel y Duarte as her husband. Her body was laid in state, wearing one of her opera costumes and her finest jewelry, prior to her burial in Mazatlán. Her remains were exhumed and brought to Mexico City’s Panteón de Dolores’ Rotunda de Hombres Ilustres (the Rotunda of Illustrious People) in 1937. She has theaters named after her in San Miguel de Allende and Mazatlán.
Singing and repertoire
A Mazatlán opera-lover and journalist, who watched Peralta rehearsing in the Teatro Rubio on 22 August 1883, wrote in his diary:
She is a woman with an agreeable presence, slightly obese, with bulging but very lively eyes. She sings beautifully, producing notes from the highest to the lowest with astonishing ease. She sang several variations with notes that were so delicate they resembled a goldfinch’s trill.
In addition to the title roles in Aida, Dinorah, Linda di Chamounix, Maria di Rohan, Lucia di Lammermoor, and Norma, Peralta also performed the roles of Leonora in Il trovatore, Violetta in La traviata, Elvira in I Puritani, Marie in La fille du régiment, Amina in La sonnambula, and Adina in L’elisir d’a In three operas by Mexican composers—Ildegonda (1866), Gino Corsini (1877), and Guatimotzin (1871)—she also wrote the leading female roles, according to the composers’ biographies.
Tribute
Google created a Google Doodle to honor her 175th birthday on July 6, 2021.
| Homepage | Click Hear |
