Somigli, Franca (real name, Maria Bruce Clark)

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Somigli, Franca (real name, Maria Bruce Clark)

Somigli, Franca (real name, Maria Bruce Clark), American-Italian soprano; b. Chicago, March 17, 1901; d. Trieste, May 14, 1974. She was a pupil of Malatesta, Votto, and Storchio in Milan. After making her operatic debut as Mimi in Rovigo (1926), she sang at Milan’s La Scala (1933–44), in Chicago (debut as Maddalena in Andrea Chénier, 1934), in Rome (1934–43), at the Salzburg Festivals (1936–39), at Buenos Aires’s Teatro Colón (1936–39), and at the Metropolitan Opera in N.Y. (debut as Cio-Cio-San, March 8, 1937). She was married to Giuseppe Antonicelli. Among her most prominent roles were Kundry, Sieglinde, Fedora, the Marschallin, Arabella, and Salome.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire

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Somigli, Franca (real name, Maria Bruce Clark)

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