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SBT 1402
Margherita Grandi: the greatest voice I ever heard
Asked the direct question, which was the greatest voice he
had ever heard in an opera house, the distinguished
connoisseur Desmond Shawe-Taylor responded,
unhesitatingly, “Margherita Grandi... the Glyndebourne
performances before the war. She was sublime.”
Shawe-Taylor was not alone in this judgment. Grove’s
Dictionary commented: “She was incomparable.” In
Opera on Record (edited Alan Blyth, 1979), Lord
Harewood writes of her Don Carlo recording: “Margherita
Grandi, with big-scale phrasing and pulsating tone, sings
the music thrillingly.” Harold Rosenthal, in his Concise
Oxford Dictionary of Opera (1964), summarises her as:
“One of the few modern singers of the ‘grand style’, whose
Tosca and Lady Macbeth were sung and acted with a
sweep and conviction rare today.” And John Steane in The
Grand Tradition says: “It was to the ears of this post-war
generation, longing to hear again singing that could sweep
regally and soar with international authority, that the few
records of Margherita Grandi were so welcome. The arias
from Macbeth were directly in the grand tradition, noble
and commanding, rich-voiced and dramatic.”
A great difficulty in outlining her life and work is the
lack of reliable sources. So the pioneering work of Barbara
and Findlay MacKenzie, Michael Bott and Douglas Hassall
must be acknowledged and welcomed by all subsequent
writers, and I have been fortunate to be helped by Grandi’s
relatives in Milan, Tasmania and New South Wales.
The official records show that Grandi was born
Margaret Gard, second of four daughters of Bernard and
Catherine (née Ryan) Gard, at Harwood Island in the
Clarence River district of New South Wales in Australia on
10 October 1892. Her father “Barney”, an engine driver,
sang and played the concertina. The standard reference
works on opera give differing years for her date of birth,
and her name, and assert that she was born in another
state, Tasmania. In fact, her family did move to Hobart in
October 1903, and it was from that city that she departed
on Regatta Day in February 1910, aged 17, to study in
Europe. Her passage to Europe, together with her board in
Paris and lessons, were funded by a farewell concert at the
Grand Empire Theatre. The local newspaper gave an early
description of her vocal capabilities: “Miss Gard has a
beautiful voice, a voice of exquisite timbre and wonderful
range.” A few months later, another piece reported that
Maggie Gard had impressed Madame Marchesi in Paris,
but that she needed further funding.
In Paris, she is said to have taken lessons with the
legendary Polish tenor Jean de Reszke. Then, in London,
she studied at the Royal College of Music from September
1912, winning an Open Scholarship (against several
hundred other applicants) worth £400 in February 1914. In
November that year, it has been asserted that she made her
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début as a mezzo at the Opéra-Comique in Paris,
appearing in Massenet’s Werther, and singing Carmen in
that same season. At some stage, she stayed as a guest and
studied with another great singer in Paris, Emma Calvé.
The First World War may have disrupted her career, but
having completed her studies at the Royal College in 1917,
she picked it up again at the cessation of hostilities in
France. Perhaps most significantly, she created the title role
in Amadis, in the April 1922 première of Massenet’s opera
at Monte-Carlo, appearing under the name Djemma Vecla,
an anagram of Calvé. It has been suggested that she
appeared at other times under other names.
Bott thinks it “very, very unlikely“ that she sang mezzo
roles in Paris – but she must have done something to earn
a living before her marriage. Margaret Gard married the
Italian stage designer, Giovanni Grandi, in the mid-1920s,
making her home in Milan, and thus Margherita Grandi
was born. They had a daughter, Patricia, born in 1928.
Initially a portrait and landscape artist, Giovanni had
become a leading opera designer and scenery painter, first
in St. Petersburg, then from 1922 at La Scala, Milan, his
début there fittingly with Boris Godunov. In the latter part
of the 1920s, Giovanni went briefly, with Margherita, to be
Artistic Director of the San Francisco Opera.
It was after her marriage that she made the decisive
vocal change – from lyric mezzo to dramatic soprano –
making her well-received début at the age of 40 in Italy as
Aida at the Teatro Carcano in Rome in October 1932 (and
announced initially as Margherita Stralia). This new
direction was achieved with the help of the great Italian
soprano and teacher Giannina Russ in Milan. After
appearances as Margherita in Boito’s Mefistofele and
Verdi’s Aida in other Italian cities, Grandi joined the
chorus of La Scala, touring the Netherlands and Egypt,
where she gave four performances as Aida with fellow-
Australian John Brownlee as Amonasro.
Her major break as a dramatic soprano came when she
replaced the prominent Italian, Lina Bruna Rasa, at short
notice as Elena in Mefistofele at La Scala on 11 May 1934
(with Maria Caniglia and Ezio Pinza). This success led to
other major dramatic roles in a wide range of Italian cities
– Tosca and Leonora (in Il trovatore) in addition to Aida
and Mefistofele. In 1936, she returned to Rome, this time
at the Teatro Reale (in Mefistofele with Pinza, conducted
by Serafin), followed by Amelia in Simon Boccanegra. The
following year, she toured South America with Lauri-Volpi,
giving Trovatore and Aida in Rio de Janeiro and Tosca in
São Paulo. She gave her first Desdemona in 1937 (with
Francesco Merli as the Moor) in Verdi’s Otello – at Genoa,
then Trieste, Brescia and Parma (with Pertile) – and
Elisabetta in Don Carlo in Venice opposite the American
tenor Francesco Valentino. She sang in Beethoven’s Missa
solemnis in Trieste under Felix Weingartner and gave
open-air concert performances – Aida in Milan with Gigli,
and Mefistofele in Naples with De Angelis – also

oadcasting frequently for Italian Radio.
Still she had not been taken up by the leading opera
houses outside of Italy, but John Christie, founder of
Glyndebourne Opera, must have heard her and been
impressed, booking her to be his Lady Macbeth in 1939
under Fritz Busch. As Michael Bott notes: “Few sopranos
have the vocal armoury to tackle the enormous difficulties
of Lady Macbeth, a role which demands tremendous vocal
agility and ranges from a low B to the pianissimo D flat of
the famous sleepwalking scene… with substantial vocal
athletics including powerful chest tones, trills in all
registers and two octave runs.”
It was this role that established Grandi’s reputation
internationally. Astonishingly, Verdi’s Macbeth had not
been performed prior to 1938 in England – but these ten
performances were a revelation and a triumph for Grandi.
“Anyone who heard Margherita Grandi sing [“Vieni,
t’affretta”] at Glyndebourne or Edinburgh knows that it
can, with its cabaletta... produce an effect of tigerish
ferocity, and it is not unreasonable to assume that this is
what Verdi had in mind and could obtain in his own day,”
wrote Lord Harewood in his new edition of Kobbé in
1954. The Sunday Times noted that “she is magnificently
voiced; it was thrilling to hear those notes… rolling out
with such power and freedom”, and The Observer
commented that she was “the prima donna that appears
only in the dreams of conductor and producer”.
In more normal times, she would have gone on to
become a great international star but the Second World
War loomed. Initially she was sent to a camp at Avellino,
near Naples, but her husband retrieved her and she
retreated to the Italian Alps near Bergamo for the duration,
only emerging occasionally, most notably taking the lead
role in the Italian première of Richard Strauss’s Friedenstag
in Venice in January 1940, and as Ottavia in Monteverdi’s
L’incoronazione di Poppea in Rome in April 1943 under
Serafin. In the mountains she is said to have actively
supported the partisans, helping to smuggle Allied airmen
to safety in Switzerland.
This enforced break was particularly disastrous for her.
In 1939 she was still in her prime at 47 years old, but by
the end of the war she was already 53 (late for a dramatic
soprano) and would soon begin to decline vocally.
However, she did pick up her career again in 1945, reemerging
in Verdi’s Requiem under Serafin at the Teatro
Lirico (the temporary home of La Scala) in Milan in June,
then in La Gioconda (with Stignani and Gigli) in July 1946
in Rome, opening Verona Festival’s first post-war season in
August in Aida.
Quite soon she came back to Britain, the scene of her
pre-war triumph as Lady Macbeth, repeating that success
with Glyndebourne Opera when they opened the first
Edinburgh Festival in 1947. There were nine performances
of Macbeth between 25 August and 13 September, and it
was the broadcast of that production on 27 August that
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forms the largest part of this new CD. After Edinburgh, she
sang Senta in a BBC broadcast of Wagner’s The Flying
Dutchman, then returned to Italy, giving Verdi’s Requiem
again under Serafin, this time at the Palazzo Ducale in
Genoa.
She also sang with the highly-regarded New London
Opera Company at the Stoll and Cambridge Theatres in
London between 1946 and 1949 (Donna Anna in Don
Giovanni and Tosca), her husband Giovanni with her as
director and designer. In the latter year she returned to the
Edinburgh Festival with Glyndebourne Opera as Amelia in
Un ballo in maschera under Gui, a role she shared with
Ljuba Welitsch.
She also finally made her Covent Garden début in
September, creating the role of Diana in Bliss’s The
Olympians. There, soon after, she gave five performances
of Il trovatore, and her stage career ended at Covent
Garden on 27 November 1951 as Tosca. Her husband,
Giovanni, retired as director of scenic design at La Scala
two years later. Margherita Grandi died in Milan in 1972.
Considering her stature, Grandi made a pitifully small
number of commercial recordings – her most famous
scenes as Lady Macbeth, recorded in 1947 and 1948 with
the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Beecham,
Elisabetta’s aria from Don Carlo (also with the RPO, under
Erede), and “Pace, pace” from La forza del destino
(unfortunately destroyed) – these all for HMV. For Decca,
she recorded under Beecham the role of Giulietta in his
complete Tales of Hoffmann, the soundtrack to Michael
Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1947 film (which starred
Robert Helpmann, Moira Shearer and Frederick Ashton).
All her other surviving performances are from late in
her career, derived from radio broadcasts and rare ‘private
recordings’ – perhaps there are more still to be discovered?
For years collectors and connoisseurs have sought out
individual recordings by Margherita Grandi. Here, for the
first time, is a whole CD devoted to her ravishing artistry –
a unique opportunity for a new generation of singers and
opera-lovers to discover her.
Roger Neill, 2006