Food for the soul

"Opera for me is music, and music is food for the soul. When I hear the music, it nourishes and enriches."

"Audiences are like lovers. There are nights when you are singing and at the beginning of the performance you get this feeling – it is not something you can see, not visible or palpable, but it is a feeling. As I begin to perform, if I have that feeling, I know that I’ve got them, they’re mine. Sometimes that comes at the beginning, sometimes it comes a little later on, and sometimes it doesn’t come at all. So that’s why they’re like lovers."

The marvellous Spanish mezzo-soprano Teresa Berganza is 80 years old today. Renowned for her interpretations of Mozart, Falla, Bizet and Rossini, she has sung in most of the great opera houses of the world with conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Carlo Maria Giulini, Herbert von Karajan, Lorin Maazel, Riccardo Muti and Georg Solti.

Señora Berganza participated in the opening ceremony of the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, and in 1994 she became the first woman elected to the Spanish Royal Academy of Arts. To this day she teaches singing at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía, and continues to perform music of Spanish composers and gives master classes all over the world.

Here are just a couple of examples of her sublime artistry.

Teresa Berganza - Habanera [from Bizet's Carmen]

Teresa Berganza - La tarántula é un bicho mu malo [from La Tempranica by Giménez]

¡Muchas felicidades!

Teresa Berganza Vargas (born 16th March 1935)