Marcella Pobbe

Vocation

Notable

Italian operatic soprano who sang a wide range of roles in both the lyric and spinto repertory. Pobbe studied with Elena Fava, Rinalda Pavoni and Giorgio Favaretto. She made her stage debut in Spoleto, as Gounod's Marguerite, in 1949, and the same year, first appeared at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, where she was to appear regularly until 1973. She made her debut at the Rome Opera in 1954, in the title role of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, and at La Scala in 1955, as Bathseba in the premiere of Darius Milhaud's David. She appeared at the Baths of Caracalla in 1957, as Mathilde in Guglielmo Tell, and in 1959 as Elsa in Lohengrin. On the international scene, she made guest appearances at the Monte Carlo Opera, the Zurich Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Royal Opera House in London, the Liceo in Barcelona. In North America, she sang at the Philadelphia Opera and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, for a few performances of Marguerite and Mimi during the 1958-59 season. For Italian television in the 1950s, she appeared in several productions, notably Le nozze di Figaro, Un ballo in maschera and Adriana Lecouvreur, one of her most celebrated roles. Pobbe went on performing until the late 1970s, and then became a music critic for Vicenza Gazzettino. In 2000, she published a series of interviews she had made with conductors. She died in Milan on 17 June 2003. Link to Wikipedia biography