Parepa-Rosa, Euphrosyne (née Parepa de Boyescu)

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Parepa-Rosa, Euphrosyne (née Parepa de Boyescu)

Parepa-Rosa, Euphrosyne (née Parepa de Boyescu), prominent Scottish soprano; b. Edinburgh, May 7, 1836; d. London, Jan. 21, 1874. Her father was Baron Georgiades de Boyescu of Bucharest, and her mother the soprano Elizabeth Seguin. After studying with her mother, she made her debut as Amina in La Sonnambula in Malta (1855); then sang in Italy, Madrid, and Lisbon. She made her first London appearance as Elvira in I Puritani with the Royal Italian Opera at the Lyceum Theatre (May 21, 1857); appeared at Covent Garden and Her Majesty’s Theatre (1859–65), becoming a great favorite of the English public; also sang in Germany. She then toured the U.S. with Theodore Thomas’s orch. and with Carl Rosa (1865). She married Rosa in 1867, and together they formed an opera company in which she starred as the principal soprano. She returned to Covent Garden (1872), but illness forced her to give up her career the following year. Her husband founded the Parepa-Rosa Scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in her memory.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire